Jake turned away and shook his head.
Ayan watched him. Something had him irritated. Turning pirate was an easy step forward from their current situation and she was sure the thought had occurred to him. If anyone knew how to lead a pirate ship, even a massive carrier like the Triton, it was Jake. No, there was something else causing his frustration. She wanted to know what it was, to get him past it so she could see if there was anything beneath, anything for her. “What's wrong?” the question seemed limp and wide of the mark. She cringed at the sound.
“I just thought I could buy more time. I thought I would have been able to cash my accounts in on Pandem.”
“The banks were closed,” Ayan chuckled, she couldn't help it. “Nothing you could do.” Her eyes never left him as she leaned against the transparent bulkhead, the whirling expanse of asteroids behind her.
He sighed. “I'm glad to see you've gotten on well with the crew. They like you.”
“They're easy to get on with. Most are just happy to get some direction.”
He looked at her, she watched him. A long silence hung in the air. His expression started to harden, his back began to straighten. “We should get back to the bridge.”
Ayan stepped forward with urgency and caught his hand before he completely turned away. “What's wrong? What's really wrong? Please.”
The fearless, stoic Captain Valance had replaced the man she'd been speaking to just a moment before, the man she wished could stay just a little longer and he said; “Nothing.”
She threw his hand away and stepped back. “God! I'm just trying to understand what's happening, no, wait, sorry! What's not happening for us! I didn't expect you to carry me through the airlock then down a path of rose petals into your quarters or anything but I try to talk to you and that's just what I get;” she squared her shoulders and drew her face down into a blockish expression and said; “nothing,” in as flat and low a voice as she could manage. “All I'm asking is what's wrong and I'm starting to care less about what the answer is, as long as I get one!”
“It's you!” he burst in return.
All the fury and frustration faded from Ayan. Her face felt hot, her eyes started to well up and she fought the instant urge to cry.
“Wait, I didn't mean-”
“You said it. I'll be a faithful officer, whatever you need. I'll even do it for free,” she rushed past him and through the door before it was completely open. Ayan stopped in the hall once she heard the door close, grateful for the narrow private passage. Her vision blurred as she looked back, hoping he had come after her. The low lit hall was empty.
Compartmentalization. It was something she'd learned well during her time in the military. Regardless of how she felt, how she just wanted to find a dark, out of the way bunk and let it all out, she knew that Laura, Oz, Jason, and the rest of the crew were counting on her to be on the bridge, ready to take a position in command at a moment's notice. She took a few deep breaths, wiped away a few errant tears and shut all her emotions away before striding the rest of the way down the hall.
Chapter 5
First Flight
“Are we launching or memorizing the punter system from the inside?” Minh asked Oz as he came online. His squadron had completed a second briefing and been ready for over eighteen minutes according to his command and control unit. Sure he liked the chatter, most of the pilots with him got along fine, but they were all there to do one thing; fly. The exploration mission they were about to undertake was one of the most exciting things to happen on Triton excluding active combat.
It was also the first Triton based mission Minh was leading outside of a simulation. He had to admit to fighting some tension at the prospect of running into raiders. Infantry training helped him shrug it off, but three of his pilots had only seen active combat in simulations. They were hyper-realistic, but it still wasn't the real thing.
“We had a delay on the bridge. Everyone shows green on the flight deck, punting in thirty,” Oz replied.
“Was there drama? Don't tell me I missed drama.”
“There was drama. I'm sure it'll linger long enough for you to catch the tail end when you get back.”
“Why am I always as far away from the action I can get? I try to be exciting, but the ripples don't seem to radiate from this pebble, somehow I'm always at the far edge of the pool.”
“If I didn't know you so well you'd be impossible to understand sometimes,” Oz replied. “Punting in fifteen.”
“Shouldn't we focus on what we're doing?” asked Nathan, his Sensor Intercept Officer and copilot sitting behind him in the two seated Uriel starfighter. He had earned the call sign 'Slick' because he flattened his hair on his first flight from the Triton so his helmet wouldn't ruin his hairdo. No one had told him that they didn't wear a helmet with the vacsuits they used, which did cover their heads but generally didn't leave one's hair a mess.
“I'm multitasking. Besides, we've done the checklist three times.” The launch system catapulted them into the open space beneath Triton. Minh took direct control of his Uriel Fighter with his hands and feet, turning the ship into a skid, facing the asteroid field. His six squadron members followed his lead. “Good morning everyone, it's time to go see why this asteroid field is so damned quiet. There should be a whole bunch of eager traders here but for some reason we're not picking up so much as an active satellite. Oh, and we'll be passing through a magnetically contained obscuring field just to see what's on the other side. There should be raiders, according to some late intelligence.” Minh double checked the intelligence update by glancing at the appropriate icon in his head's up display and was surprised to discover Oz and Jason had just added more information. "So, if I can't make nice with 'em, we're going to be on pest removal duty."
"Make nice? With raiders?" Slick asked.
"Those are the orders, check it," Minh replied, sending the update to his copilot's main display.
"You're right. Well, I guess a trade is a trade when you're out here on your own."
"I think, and this isn't to say that we're supposed to do much interpreting on our own, but I think they mean we're supposed to make nice if it's too late to save anyone. That's what I'm going with, anyway."
"Good thinking."
Minh-Chu, or Ronin, as every pilot and Flight Command officer called him, fired the six engines sending it towards the nearby asteroid field. The other fighters followed, fanning out in a predetermined forward pointed V formation so they could coordinate and get a more complete scan.
The asteroid field was massive, hundreds of thousands of kilometres across and even though it had settled in a rapidly rotating plane it was still several thousand kilometres deep. They approached the edge of the field quickly, drifting out on course to pass across the seemingly flat top of the asteroid field.
“I was wondering, why doesn't the Triton do this? I mean, doesn't she have a better sensor suite?” Asked Jaime, coined 'Joyboy' because of his great big toothy grin, though he liked to tell people that the name was inspired by a few very memorable dates.
“Sure they do, but they're also a great big juicy target for anything that could be hiding in this mess. For all we know there's an EMP or nuke trap hiding in this mess.”
“So they send seven fighters. And here I was thinking we were too important to be expendable.”
“If it makes you feel any better there are another fourteen fighters and a gunship ready to launch on my say so. Hey Tempest, you're drifting too far to port. Get back in position,” Ronin ordered.
“Aye, sorry sir.”
“All right, we're moving on to formation two. Forty two hundred kilometres apart in a lateral V. SIO's coordinate so we're getting complete readings. Our top priority is finding signs of defence platforms, transmitters, outposts and anything else that could cause a problem or be worth communicating with,” Minh ordered as he looked at the grey, white and blue expanse of asteroids ahead. There were no operable monitoring posts or other pieces of technol
ogy above the field. A few long shipping containers and the wreckage of several old ships had been picked up by the Triton, but they were nowhere nearby.
“What about composition analysis or scouting for dense material for Triton’s manufacturing systems?” asked Sprocket, so named because Mia had qualified as a pilot after being on the maintenance team ever since Triton was taken.
“Our uplink to Triton is feeding all that information to people there who can analyse the data better than any of us,” Slick answered from behind Minh-Chu. “Now keep your eyes on what's important. There should be some kind of defence perimeter ahead.” Minh's SIO sighed and spoke exclusively to him. “I can't wait until they finish rebuilding the analysis and status software without the AI components. I have to admit, I wouldn't mind being out of a job and taking the stick.”
“If you're trying to distance yourself from me it won't work. You're already slotted as my wingman,” Minh flipped the Uriel fighter upside down, continuing in a straight path towards the centre of the asteroid field. "Maybe even as a Squad Leader if you can get your scores up a little."
“With your cover and kill record I don't much mind. All I ask is that you try being a little more predictable.”
“Ha! Fat chance!” Minh burst as he looked across the churning, level field of asteroids. The group of fighters were starting to drift to the right, slowly matching the spin of the expanse of ice and stone. He watched for anything that didn't seem to belong, for something to lock his focus on that might tell him what happened before the Triton arrived. “There should be a ton of traffic if the information Alice included is even half right. She's the only one aboard who knew anything about this spot.”
“I just think it's amazing that she even found this place. There's got to be a story behind that,” Slick added from behind Minh as he looked through sensor data.
“I'm sure she'll be happy to tell you all about it as soon as she wakes up. Until then I'm just glad she found us a cool place to park while Triton makes repairs.”
“How long did they say it would take?”
“At least two days to rebuild the engines, the rest is mostly minor structural stuff so it'll be done before the rebuild.”
“Damn, they really knew where to hit us. I saw the damage they did to the engines, they're a write off. If we didn't have our own manufacturing systems we'd be down to two engines indefinitely.”
“You've got that right. Triton used to be Wheeler's ship so he knew exactly where his shots would count. He manned her with about a hundred people and a ton of automation.”
“I believe it. Sprocket was saying that they're still finding looped circuits and control taps. She couldn't be happier to be out of maintenance.”
“She earned it. Mia's a steady stick.”
“Her name is Mia? I always have trouble getting to know people by their civie names.”
“To know a thing's name is to have power over it,” Minh muttered as he scrolled through his threat assessment interface. The overlay on his vacsuit faceplate found no identifiable threat so he paid more attention to the formation of his fighter squad. Everyone was in place, doing a broad scan and gathering a fantastic amount of data, most of which would be reviewed in the Triton flight control Centre.
“I thought that's what rank was for?”
“When someone's starting to panic they might not answer to a call sign, so it's important to know their real name. They didn't cover this when you trained with the military?”
“Well, they did in basis psyche, but that was a long time ago. That, and I'm an infantry field analyst. I'm still learning to apply that to being a Sensor Intercept Officer.”
“Funny thing, I was in the infantry before I discovered the wonders of being a pilot. How goes the scanning?”
“A few terabytes of data. I'm seeing a lot of heavy metals, there really should be some kind of defence systems down there but there's nothing bleeding power or registering on thermal.”
“Check your silhouette recognition,” Minh advised, bringing a small display up and starting the software up for himself.
“Here? I mean, there's got to be a few thousand objects per square klick.”
“I bet we'll find something before the barrier,” Minh said as he brought up a shape and cross referenced it, manipulating the interface with nothing more than his eye movements and nerve impulse sensors in his vacsuit's headgear. “There, an armed hauler. It's right behind us, got twisted up in the asteroids.”
“Scanning. You're right, and it was badly damaged by energy weapons fire.”
“This is Luckshot, my SIO just found two disabled perimeter cannon emplacements. The blast profile she picked up on one of them matches Eden Fleet. The damage is dead cold though, so it happened at least a week ago.”
“Good work. This is Ronin to Flight Operations.” Minh addressed. “We have evidence of Eden Fleet here. Looks like they've been and gone though.”
“I show you just about to breach the obscuring field. Proceed with caution. I want to know exactly what's in there. Remember, our resident astrophysicists said there could be a class two giant planet in there, so you could run out of space real fast,” Oz replied.
Minh momentarily cleared all the secondary displays from his viewpoint and looked at the field ahead with his naked eye. The vista was blurred severely, but he was certain that there was a lot of empty space ahead. “I'm eyeballing the field and I'll bet my oversized officer's quarters that we'll just find a really thick rock in the middle of this.”
“He says refraction could be to blame for black space. Just be careful,” Oz retorted neutrally. “It'd be pretty embarrassing to nose into a big rock on your first mission.”
“You speak the naked truth, my friend.” Minh checked the weapon systems and powered down the three particle accelerator cannons he'd loaded onto the fighter, leaving two missile pods, a pair of 21mm rail guns for him and another pair on a turret for Slick. “All right everyone, passing through the barrier. Redirect everything you can to your shields. We don't know what's waiting for us.”
He watched the small flight status display at the bottom of his visor as the other six fighter crews followed orders. One of them had loaded themselves with energy based weapons and he shook his head. “You're no longer allowed to determine your own loadout Finger. Looks like you need babysitting.”
“What? What'd I do?”
“You need to load at least two hull piercing weapons that can fire on reserve power alone. You knew it, you ignored it and now you'll be leaving yourself unarmed every time you shunt all power to shields.”
“I can take a few shots on what's left in the-”
“One more word and you're on your way back to Triton,” Minh said firmly.
“Yes sir.”
“Man, meeting you in the sims I'd never think you could be so serious,” Slick mentioned off the squad channel as he ensured the ship's shields and power generation were set as high as possible.
“It's the price of doing it for real.” Minh watched as the space blurred by the obscuring field loomed so largely that he couldn't see around it. His ship punched through, the energy shields around his fighter protected them from any electromagnetic interference. His eyes went wide.
Around a grey, brown and white dwarf planet were arranged a massive latticework of docking platforms, factories, refineries, living sections, defensive systems, solar collectors, factories and other less notable subsections. Spaced evenly out across the dwarf planet's equator were five large installations with pylons extending out like fine silver thorns. They were moving before their eyes, slowly shifting in waves around the top of the station's circular bases.
As Minh looked closer and checked his threat scanner he noticed that there were very few power readings coming from the station. The defence systems were all marked as inoperable. The remnants of hundreds of other ships, most of them long range haulers, were adrift, dead in space.
As two of his squadron moved through the barrier be
hind him he noticed what was keeping everything within the obscuring barrier that surrounded the dwarf planet. “I have at least nine cruisers, all different profiles. There are other active ships as well,” Minh announced.
“Confirmed. Nine ships varying in mass, all armed. A couple are modified galleons, the others are cruisers. I see one carrier, looks like the command ship. There are about thirty other ships, between twenty five and ninety meters in length. Looks like one of the cruisers is launching fighters. Half of them don't match anything on record. Wait-” Slick worked his comm controls for a moment, fine tuning and trying to filter out a layer of wavering static. “I have an emergency transmission here, looks like it was from a boosted personal comm. It's a digital stream of text that says the miners are holed up in the central complex. They were attacked and disarmed by Eden Fleet and a group of raiders just rushed the station. They don't think the two groups are connected, but they've been fighting a losing battle. The text is recent, seems to back up our intelligence.”
“Eden Fleet and then raiders. That's epic bad luck. Are we getting a ping from Triton?”
“No. No two way comm through the barrier and I can't raise the installation.”
“All right. Finger, take your scan results along with the text from the installation and head back through the barrier just far enough to get a message to Triton.”
“Aye!” he replied as his starfighter spun and accelerated in the opposite direction.
“This is RAD comm. We have laid claim to this salvage. If you do not leave immediately we will interpret your actions as a challenge and will force you out of our space,” came the communication from the largest vessel, the Palamo.
“First, what's a RAD comm?”
“We are Royal Acquisition and Distribution, a licensed salvaging operation.”
“You've laid claim to this entire space?”
“Yes. You read as Triton intercept forces. Please confirm.”
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