The shuttle swooped down suddenly and entered the terminal, slowing quickly, docking in short order. The lights in the cabin flashed as the doors opened.
"Good luck," whispered Emshi as she stepped out onto the platform. Before Ayan could reply the woman disappeared into the crowd.
No one realized that there were several shuttles seconds behind them while they were in flight, but when they stepped onto the gray concrete and metal platform they were confronted with a bustling mob. Everyone was hurrying to get to a shuttle, the tram or a transit pod. There were thousands of people, dozens of shuttle platforms and it was the same on every level above and below them. The ceiling was open like a long gash in the top of the building, providing just enough room for the shuttles to arrive and depart. A rush of air announced the impending arrival of a high speed tram across the platform to their right.
"Please ensure that all your extremities are behind the yellow line until the doors open. If you are not a Sub-Tram passenger, please proceed to your destination, thank you," crackled a recording in Ayan's proximity radio. From the looks of her team, they had heard it as well.
"This way, we have to get to an info station," said Victor.
Ayan followed his lead, trying not to bump into anyone on her way. She quickly discovered that no one else had such scruples. If she was in someone's path, they simply pressed past her or bumped her out of the way.
The smell was overpowering. Urine mixed with sweat, grease, ozone and garbage assaulted Ayan's olfactory, and there was no relieving it, as though the whole place had bathed in it. Laura glanced at her wide eyed and tilted her head over her shoulder.
Ayan looked up and caught sight of a larger, twenty meter long transport above offloading a long rush of goats. The people guiding them down the ramp and into a narrow hallway with the help of prearranged metal barriers didn't look anything like spacers. Their manner of dress made them look like they were farmers from an old period film.
Victor looked behind and followed what Ayan and Laura were staring at. “That's something you don't see every day.”
“I've never seen one in person,” Laura replied.
“You'll see a lot more if I'm right,” said Jenny. “Livestock owners are probably making more than ever, I'd guess. It’s cheaper to grow food and keep livestock on an old terraformed planet like this than it is to run materializers who eat up power than can be used for industry. The smell takes some getting used to though.”
Ayan looked at the symbol in the bottom left corner of her hood that manually activated the face plate of her vacsuit, sealing her in. In seconds the suit cleaned the air and the fragrances were gone, but she could still smell them to a lesser degree, as though they had nested in her nose and wouldn't let go.
There was no commonality to the way the other travellers were dressed. Some were in vacsuits that came in every colour and shape, while most wore clothing of every cut imaginable. Many of the people not dressed for space travel were wearing synthetic clothing made for warm weather. They finally reached the information kiosk, a narrow post that had been plastered over many times by animated and non-animated advertisement postings.
"All right, we're looking to buy food, survival supplies, and find somewhere to move to, right?" asked Jenny as she pulled at advertisements covering the front of the information booth.
"Right, food first," Ayan confirmed.
Jenny managed to pull an advertisement for skin pigmentation modification pills called Sliskin off the main panel and gave it a withering look as it declared; 'insert five UCW or equivalent credits' with a colourful holographic projection.
Ayan dug in her messenger bag for a moment and presented the three GC pennies she’d gotten for change. “I think the exchange is pretty brutal for UCW credits.” She said as she dropped two of them into the slot that was easy to find, thanks to a large green, bouncing arrow. The machine said; “Thank you, your information is being prepared.” A rotating dish appeared on screen and animated for several seconds before it was replaced with a message that read; ‘MORE PLEASE’ before the bouncing green arrow appeared again. "What the?" she asked no one in particular.
A traveller with a salt and pepper beard stopped and tapped her on the shoulder. "Most of these have been hacked, miss. You just paid someone somewhere whatever you dropped in the slot. You could wait around and shoot whoever ripped you off when they come along to empty the machine or you can get on with things. What are you looking for?"
"We're looking to buy food wholesale, and survival gear."
He reached over her head and pulled a plastic page from the post with two hard jerks. "You can't access the free net through that thing. Not since the H virus. Look for open postings."
Ayan took the sheet and smiled at the stranger. "Thank you,"
"Your welcome. One thing; are you the folks that landed in the Dower Wastes a little while ago?”
“Maybe,” Ayan answered with an upraised eyebrow.
He pointed over her head and behind her; “Word’s out.”
A flickering projection displayed footage from her speaking to the customs officer in the rain. It began sending audio to her proximity radio the moment she looked directly at it. “…can say why this controversial, known associate of Freeground and Jonas Valent is here, but judging from her companions, their armament and level of combat readiness, we’d best hope they’re here to help in the fight against the Order of Eden,” said an excitable narrator’s voice. “This woman, simply known as Ayan, an old Earth name that means ‘Sheppard’ or ‘bright light’, is the re-inception of Ayan Rice, a Freeground Military Officer who is said to have been present when Jonas Valent allegedly released the base code of the Holocaust Virus into a base ship nearly a decade ago. The Carthans maintain that Regent Galactic and the Order of Eden have not gathered enough evidence to warrant the arrest of the memory transfer clone, Jacob Valance, or his cohorts. According to records we obtained only moments ago, Ayan is the registered owner of a small armada of combat ready ships, and even claims to be a commanding officer of the Triton, the ship that Regent Galactic claims Jonas Valent was most recently seen on. She has been given a privateering licence by the Carthan government, whether they believe Jonas Valent is secretly pulling the strings as we do, no one can say. What matters now is that they are here, and they have been given permission to move from the Dower Wastes to a recognized port.”
Ayan realized several people were watching her and looked away. “I can’t believe this, Regent Galactic put us right in the middle of everything and they’ve got so much of the story completely wrong.”
“They also have some of it right,” Laura told her. “This could work to our advantage.”
"Best of luck, you’re on two out of five news streams. Hope you’re here for the right reasons, and if Valance is really with you, tell him he’s got a few friends on the ground. Good luck, miss," he said as he fell in step with the crowd headed to the shuttles.
Ayan watched him disappear into the press of bodies. "Let's get out of here so we can take a better look at this."
They followed each other as though they were moving through a grand melee. Ayan had instinctively taken the lead and regretted it almost immediately. Vic passed her a moment later and she stepped in behind him as though she were riding his wake. Laura was behind her with her hand on her shoulder and everyone else followed.
They made their way up an incline and through the doors, emerging onto the edge of an expansive circular courtyard. The star and sword emblem of the United Core World Confederation was the main feature in the centre of the circle, and it looked as though someone had come along with heavy equipment and had tried to scrape it clear, denting it in places and smoothing the indentations of the lines out in others. Wandering across its surface was a man stripped to the waist. On his chest the words; HATE FATE had been written in tall black letters. “The Order is everywhere! Look to the ones who stayed alive, stayed rich and never met a bot they didn’t use! They are the footho
ld, they will make the beach head, and while the war rages in the stars our children will buy into the promise of paradise, and become the new consumers! Tear away the devices! The trappings! Grow food! Live in the jungle! Turn away from the paradise they promise, make your own!”
The energy and conviction he put into the words pushed more people away than it attracted. Several by passers watched and listened from a distance, however, it was impossible not to. Ayan didn’t want to make her attention obvious, however, and turned her attention to the structural surroundings once again, looking up. There were fifteen storeys above them, each with their own balconied open air walkway looking down into the courtyard. Along each railing ran a myriad of departure and arrival times, current news items along with the current position of each moon.
The courtyard wasn't nearly as densely packed, and the going was easy as they quickly made their way to a pair of unoccupied benches. "You know, I thought I had seen a lot after taking leave on other worlds, but this is just beyond," Ayan said as she watched a family of four wrapped in black and green robes casually stroll into the transit centre.
"I know the feeling. It's just like the movies set in the core worlds after the Third Fall." commented Jenny as she watched a flock of pigeons peck at seed scattered by an old woman.
"Pandem was like this in some places. Always busy, just barely enough room to move," Victor said quietly.
"Ima gets busy around crop time, but not this busy. Didn't like it much there either, it gets hard to find a quiet place,"
"I think I know why the Carthans are giving privateer permits out to anyone with a ship registered to them," Ayan said as she watched a pair of men in business suits carrying long weapons cases emerging from the transit station.
"They're afraid of what a ship Captain can do if they're based here," Laura finished.
"What do you mean?" asked Victor.
Ayan held up the interactive advertisement sheet in her hand and pressed SHOP. Several smaller ads appeared around a query button. She pressed it and said; "List all postings for ship to ship weapons sold from a local slip."
"Local slip?" asked Jenny.
"It means from a ship mooring or landing area," Laura explained.
Everyone's eyes went wide as the list appeared; it contained over ten thousand results. Ayan set the system to list the cheapest first and wasn't surprised to see a mixture of electromagnetic and particle pulse weapons. "Okay, these look like rebuilt Vindyne weapons, so I'm thinking a lot of Captains have cargo hold operations where they strip and rebuild whatever weapons they manage to take from their captures. I'm pretty sure any of them would be arrested or at least fined if they tried selling this stuff in Greydock, but here it's pretty much open season as long as they are willing to make it look like they're making an effort to hide the fact that these guns come from a Regent Galactic or Order of Eden ship."
"Wait, you said Vindyne?" Laura asked quietly.
"These pulse weapons, their stats, they look Vindyne. Regent Galactic bought up a lot of Vindyne territory and whole fleets while they were collapsing. It was in my, um, predecessor’s journal."
"Oh, I didn't know Regent took their fleets."
Ayan began a new search for food and started browsing as everyone looked on.
A thought donned on Laura then and she smiled. "Wait, we know how to track Vindyne ships, or at least I do."
"You do?"
Randolph Lalonde
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments
"Jason was working with Freeground Intelligence while they were figuring it out. I got pulled in to consult a few times because of my experience with their shield tech. Most Vindyne ships keep their combat shielding up all the time because they like using flimsy materials for their ship interiors, sometimes for their hulls. As one of the experts who helped isolate unique characteristics of their shielding, I can recognize the energy barriers, including in raw data form."
"Like the kind of data you get when you run long range scans or analyze a faster than light ship's transit trail," Ayan grinned back.
"They're speaking a whole other language. Did you get any of that?" Victor asked Jenny.
Jenny shrugged; "We just have to make sure they don't get shot."
"It means we can find supply routes using the Clever Dream's wormhole generator and a bunch of micro wormholes. The hyper transmitter on the Triton could do a much better job, but if we have a place to start, the Clever Dream could do." Laura explained. “I know it’ll work for Vindyne ships, I might be able to adapt it to Regent Galactic ships if we can get close enough to one to get a detailed scan of their emitter systems.”
"So we can start privateering as soon as you explain all this to the Captain. Sounds fun," Jenny smiled.
"Aye. As soon as we solve the supply and landing problem." Ayan said as she selected a seller advertising a large quantity of varied foodstuffs. She started her search in a category for sellers who had permanent landing spaces. "Bloody hell, it looks like this one knocked over a caravan of convenience store suppliers," she chuckled as the sheet erupted in brand names.
There were twenty-one matches, all of them offering not only a massive variety of captured goods, but had landing slips to lease. Many of them claimed to have purchased the land before the Carthan Government took over, others offered space to land and security for an extra fee. None of them quoted prices for the landing space, or mentioned how much space they had available.
Ayan and Laura browsed for several minutes, sampling prices from different vendors, until they finally settled on one in particular. The prices were irresistibly low for food stuffs, and the explanation behind the acquisition of their goods simply said; SUCCESSFUL PRIVATEER. Under the land lease section of their profile it simply claimed; LONG TIME OWNER, WILL BARTER, SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY.
"Wow. I wonder if he has any real food," Laura chuckled. "Looks like mostly meal replacements, candy and inebriants. Best prices and they've got a lot of good feedback from past customers."
"I'm good with that kind of diet," Jenny grinned. "As long as he throws in a case of fitness supplements."
"Beggars can't be choosers. Looks like they're one of the best and they have land. Let's find a taxi stand and get to his slip before he sells out." Ayan said as she rolled the advertisement up and tucked it into her thigh pocket.
Chapter 22
The Gunnery Deck
The rattle and pound of Sgt Cumberland's pulse rifle had become so familiar it was like a second, frantic heart beat. The curving halls and inclines of Triton made it feel like the great corpse of some living creature as he and his Unit ran for their lives, trying to get behind cover only to find themselves under attack at every turn.
It was the issyrian. He hadn’t seen it, but it was definitely his men and women leading the charge in their thin, sealed suits. Their rifles showed signs of overuse, the charging chambers at the top of the weapons had burned wide open. When they fired, they were bathed with the mad strobe of white light from the loud, crackling power coursing through their rifles. It was as if that was all they were, a man or woman wearing a suit that barely protected them and a rifle. No matter how many Cumberland’s men injured or killed, they just kept coming, rushing, firing.
It was as though the issyrian was waiting for them to finish repairing the lift and move. Somehow he knew exactly which floor he’d come up on, and when they arrived, the nightmare began. They didn’t fire into the express car, they waited. His people had crawled into maintenance hatches, waited inside crew quarters, and around corners. When they were all out of the car and down the first stretch of hallway, the attack came. From behind, the sides, and from one of the hallways ahead; they were forced down a specific hall, where there was no visible resistance, and he’d lost four of his people in that initial attack.
Major Cumberland almost wished he was fighting the cloak suited horrors that caught the boarding parties in the quiet places, it would almost be better than the relentless assault and the const
ant effort it took to keep from being outflanked. It took every ounce of his skill and experience to manoeuvre his people through the long hallways and be wary of traps.
At every turn they had the advantage. There was no time to find out how the other squadrons were doing in detail. He knew they were winning on the command deck, and that a unit had just entered through the upper mooring points, but he didn't have time to find out the details or review the short reports each Sergeant filed as they moved through the ship and entered one engagement after another.
That damned issyrian had them running frantically, with few choices. Just moments before Major Cumberland had lost three of his men when they took a left into a hallway that had been supercharged with a bare power feed. Where the issyrian had gotten a live line, he'd never guess, and his lead tech didn't have time to answer either.
They were forced into a broad concourse that slowly curved upwards from deck to deck. Even as he was under fire he wished that the ships he served on were designed so well. They tried to take cover in one of the larger crew quarters but found the door rigged to three arc charges, grenades that unleashed a massive amount of power in one burst, it was like touching ball lightening. Two more men, dead the instant the door opened.
The next hall was sealed. None of the doors would open but they finally got a chance to rest and create cover with portable barriers. “Who the hell are these people? We’ve killed at least a dozen and put down twice as many, but they just keep coming,” remarked Sergeant Loman, still out of breath from the long, backward run. He was leaning on the stock of his rifle, using it like a short cane.
“There are hundreds of them, gotta be,” agreed Private Voleman.
“Tracker says we’ve killed seventeen, disabled thirty eight,” Cumberland said, knowing that the auto tracker hadn’t been accurate since they had to remove the operations AI from the system. “We’ve only lost six, I’d say we’re up.”
Fragments sf-6 Page 20