by Reiter
“Good looking out, Centerpointe,” Silnee replied. “Headed to launch bay!”
Jocasta ran into the hangar and she could hear the engines of her fighter. Kryltane was just climbing down from the wing of the craft. Cilrus was in his heavy armour standing beside the spacecraft. “Sorry, CeCe, Momma’s taking this one alone!”
“Aye, Captain,” Cilrus said, dropping to one knee, “… but I’d hate for you to be out there without me. Tank put the finishing touches on this a few days ago. I test-fired it, and lowered the power settings to where I think you can handle it.” Cilrus strapped a long housing construct to her left leg. It quickly wrapped around her thigh and connected with her weapons belt. The tone coming from her brace-com told Jocasta that the weapon had been designed by her First Mate and was now locking into place. She chuckled and patted the large man on his shoulder.
“You need to shadow Boss now, CeCe,” she directed. “I want him looking better when I get back.”
“That’ll just mean you and I will have to fight over him,” Cilrus replied as he stood up. “Give ‘em hell, Captain.”
“CeCe, hell is just the appetizer!” Jocasta climbed up into the fighter and noticed that a drone had been placed into the second seat. “You got a name, drone?”
“Milo, Captain,” the drone replied.
“Milo, if you want to continue to function, you’ll find some other place to be in three seconds!”
“Enjoy your trip, Captain,” the drone said as it moved out of the fighter and out of the hangar.
“That’s part of the plan.” Jocasta tightened her gloves, plugged the line coming from her seat into her weapons belt. She tapped her choker and it became her helmet. It only took seconds for the computer to align all systems, and she could see the launch capacitors nearly at maximum capacity.
“The portable storage-ware is already set to launch from your rear starboard wing,” Kryltane advised. Jocasta gave a thumbs-up sign as her canopy closed over her.
“Boss, Daedalus is ready to fly,” she said calmly, lifting the landing gear. The fighter floated in place and she secured her shoulder straps. “But we can’t afford an assisted launch.”
“Roger, Daedalus,” Llaz replied. “Please recognize this is my ship and we will launch as I see fit… unless the Captain wants her ship back right here and now.” The channel changed from the one in the cockpit to the one in her helmet. “I realize that trust is a major issue for you. But last I checked–”
“Launch when ready,” Jocasta interrupted. “Just remember the toll for every scratch you put on my baby, Llaz. I might bed you afterwards, but depending on how many scratches there are, only one of us might enjoy the sex!”
“Open the launch tube,” Llaz commanded. “Tolip, Pinion is yours to command, but I’ve chosen specific targets along with suggestions as to who should do what. Review and respond, please.”
“Targets reviewed. After simultaneous launch of all fighter craft, Feather and Cruel Intentions will engage the fighters. Trident will stand-by for support and stealth field generation. When you give the all-call, we disappear and rendezvous with the Xara-Mansura. Permission to speak freely?”
“Denied,” Llaz quickly returned. “If you want out, I will get someone else to sit in that chair.”
“Feather is mine!” Silnee shot back. There was anger in her voice, but she did not yell her response. “Orders received and understood. Does anyone want out?” Silnee only allowed a few seconds for an answer. “Pinion is ready to fly!”
“Just for Kots and grins,” Siekor said softly after muting the Bridge, “… who would you put in that chair?”
“Nobody knows everything, Siekor,” Llaz replied.
“Oh, that guy! Yeah, he’s pretty good!” Siekor re-engaged the sound system.
“Contact!” Feldspar called out. “We’ve got three more energy signatures! All three are five times the size of the first three! Confirmed, it’s the same energy pattern. We’ve got more doors forming!”
“Are they in range of our pulse?” Llaz asked.
“With only half of the emitters dedicated, we can reach only two of them.”
“Trident, this is Boss. You’ve got a new target. It will be emerging from the coordinates you are now receiving. I want that ship as dysfunctional as you can make it! Launch Pinion and ready pulse emission!”
As the three ships moved under their own power out of the Xara-Mansura, the noses of the three large ships were emerging from the portals. It was easy to see two were battleships and one was a carrier. Fighters were launching from the deck of the carrier and Llaz gave the order to fire the pulse. The portals flickered, turning blue and then purple before they closed, ripping through the hulls of the two ships. Only the second battleship was unaffected. The count of thirty-six fighters had only grown to forty-two when the portal closed. Two of those ships were already signaling Mayday, veering away from the larger fighter group.
“Bait and switch, Murder,” Silnee commanded, dropping her stealth field. “Ready a one-two delivery!” She throttled up and turned her ship to pass through the cloud of fighter-craft. Charged to deliver just over one-third its maximum potential, her nose cannon fired, hitting three ships as she pressed back against her seat.
The speed her ship was able to attain was everything the simulator had promised and, as Pristacia had already warned them, no matter how good Z made the simulator, the act of climbing into one already let you know your life is not on the line. “It’ll be different in the real, people,” she had said. “The best you can do is breathe it in, suck it up, and let it all hang out! Z’s gotten us to the limit, but you can only push it so far in the safety of these pods. That is when you’ll find if you’re a flyer or not!”
“I’m a flyer!” Silnee shouted, jerking her stick to the right and sending the Feather into a spiraling barrel roll. She scored another two fighters, but none of her shots managed to get through the shielding each enemy craft possessed. At best she had rattled them, infuriated them, and caused them to more eagerly pursue her… which was the aim of her maneuver. As fifteen fighters filed into a tight line formation firing on a ship that was pulling away from them, Cruel Intentions came from their rear, with Agatha firing lancinators to take out their shields. Marlene then fired laser cannons to take out the ships. Twelve of the fifteen were either destroyed or left unable to continue. The rest of the fighters scattered and the Cruel Intentions turned, engaging one of its two booster packs.
With two thirds of the battleship through the portal, the black fighter craft launched its one extra bomb. Llaz smiled when he saw the energy signature of the device. It struck the frame of the portal and, like the other two, it too flickered and collapsed, cutting off the engine section of the battleship.
“Contact!” Feldspar announced. “Two more portals and both are out of pulse range!”
“Now is as good a time as any,” Llaz said as he opened a channel. “Daedalus, you are go for launch!” he stated. Jocasta did not have time to respond when the launch tube came alive with a gravity field that hurled Daedalus out into space, streaking away from the Xara-Mansura. “Okay, Pinion, let’s say goodnight!”
“I’ll be damned,” Silnee whispered as she turned her ship to rendezvous with the Cruel Intentions.
“I’m sorry, what was that, Tolip?” Llaz inquired.
“Nothing, Boss,” she said clearly. “Closing the curtain. All ships on me.” As the three fighter craft converged on one another, Marlene fired on any enemy fighters that might have gathered up enough courage to make an attack run on them.
“Sorry about the over-coverage there, Trident,” Agatha said.
“You are,” Deolun replied, “… but we’re not. We might have left the nest as three, but we’re returning as five!”
“Way to go, Trident!” Marlene exclaimed. As the three-man spacecraft came into view, a fighter craft was on its port flank and an attack shuttle was on its starboard; with visible damage to the canopy and entry door respect
ively. Deolun called up a stealth field and made it large enough for all five ships, but they had to fly in tight formation. They were headed out of the sector in one direction, the Xara-Mansura was already out of the sector headed in the opposite direction. The rendezvous point was six hours away, and much closer to the Onyx Barony.
The Daedalus continued on its flight toward the Pearl Barony with the security features of Kryltane’s storage facility now overrun by the seekers. They were broadcasting, and Jocasta throttled up her ship. She only had to keep it up a few more minutes. She changed course every fifteen seconds or so just to keep her pursuers honest and away from using majikul portals that might block her off from her destination. After her countdown, she jettisoned the storage pack and made a tight turn away from it, locking on to a destination point not too far from her current position. Two minutes after ejecting the pod, another portal opened and this one was bright white, appearing to be encased in some sort of shielding. Fighters flew out of it, quickly locking on to the storage pack and then the Daedalus.
“Come get me if you dare,” Jocasta whispered, opting not to erect a stealth field. An energy beam fired from the nose of her ship; it was the necessary signature to open a draft-hole to the slipstream. According to what she had gained from Hansel, the aperture would remain open for thirty seconds without another burst of energy. Only the fastest of her pursuers stood a chance at making it inside. When the opening closed, three fighters were in the tunnels with her.
Taking a tighter grip on her controls, Jocasta piloted the Daedalus down the tunnel. The curves and contours had been mapped… by probe. Where she was now – the charts aboard the Field Marshal’s yacht had showed them as uncharted by man – not even the probes had managed to make it out of the area. There was pressure in the tunnels and gravity, but the environment would not support human life. Jocasta smiled. She had learned a long time ago that human life only made up a small fraction of what could be found in the Rims.
The only thing that should surprise us is that there are still some things that can surprise us.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld
(Rims Time: XII-4203.27)
Looking at his screen, the young Communications Officer did not want to believe what he was reading. He was nearly at the point of praying for the line in the message that would read, ‘Psych’, or ‘… made you look!’, anything but the words: message confirmed.
“How bad is it?” a colleague asked as she checked her own console.
“They’re still counting the dead,” the young Com-Off replied, lowering his head, closing his eyes. How many times had he seen others seated in this chair – tasked with being a messenger – leave to deliver bad news to the Field Marshal only to never be seen or heard from again? “They lost the McKendrick.”
“They what?!” she gasped, covering her mouth after she had spoken.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “They lost her along with two gunships and over twenty fighters. And that was at the point of attack! I have to go.” Getting up from his seat, the young man started for the door but stopped as he looked at Officer of the Watch.
“O-Dub, call me a hypocrite, but I’d rather not have a pool running,” the young man requested. “If there is a need to, I’d like all of my personal effects to be sent to my sister.”
“Will do… hypocrite,” the soldier said without ever changing from his far-off stare.
The Com-Off made his way out of the room and started the long walk to where the Field Marshal could be found. According to the locator program, Uhnveer Plarzo was still on the terrace; he had received a guest earlier… apparently that party was still at the station… making made matters worse. The young officer knew if he delayed delivery there would be no chance of his disappearance; it would be a foregone conclusion!
“It seems that time has caught up with both of us, my friend,” Pwalzikun Haggenshire said before finishing the last of his wine.
“Only a fool races against time,” Uhnveer Plarzo replied as he gazed out of the window. “Dreamers! Always racing against things they can never beat. But then again, when ample life has been handed to you, one can afford to engage in such fantasies. Gods know, you have nothing else to do with your time. Ask a poor man what he does with his spare time and he will look at you as if you’re speaking in a foreign tongue.”
“Perhaps, but you are hardly a poor man,” Pwalzikun argued.
“I’m not as wealthy as I was yesterday,” Uhnveer stated, crushing his drinking glass in his hand. His skin was too tough to be cut by fancy glass, but a few pieces managed to stick in the flesh of his palm.
“Neither of us are,” the man admitted watching the Delbred man destroy a perfectly good drinking glass.
“When I find the people responsible for this… let’s just say I will reconcile all accounts… very slowly!”
“Ahh, if only you could do that sooner rather than later,” Pwalzikun said as he stood up from his chair. “It would spare me a load of expenses.”
“A load?!” Uhnveer said, turning away from the wall-sized window. “You had hundreds of millions of credits in your vaults.”
“All of the on-the-books currency was insured,” Pwalzikun replied, shrugging his shoulders.
“And the gemstones?”
“The same, after they had been appraised at greater than their actual worth.”
“And the other materials?”
“Now that is where it hurts,” Pwalzikun admitted. “And a particularly bad sticking point. The off-the book materials… wide in range, let me assure you.
“And what insurance is there to protect me from Guilds and operatives of the baronies?” Pwalzikun thought. “… or the Empire, for that matter?
Pwalzikun shook his head, thinking of all that had been taken from him… and so quickly. “Mind you, there was insurance for those as well, but there is no policy that covers the divots this event has hammered into my reputation. The platform may have to spend a few seasons off the circuit.”
“During which time you’ll find more pockets to take care of your recapitalization,” Uhnveer muttered.
“And here I thought you had nothing but resentment for all things financial,” Pwalzikun smiled.
“Don’t worry, that is all I have for such things.”
“That sounds like a man who resents the fact that he did not have insurance to cover his secret base,” Pwalzikun said as he approached. He put his hand on Uhnveer’s shoulder. “Look at it this way, Uhn–” Though the Field Marshal was shorter than the tall and lean Master of the space platform, he was of both Terran and Delman bloods; the latter had afforded him great strength and surprising speed of movement. The fingers of his powerful hand closed around Pwalzikun’s neck.
“I trust you also have life insurance, eh, Pwalzikun?” Uhnveer asked. “Surely having that allows you some measure of comfort as you die!
“I was commissioned to do a job, you pompous fool! Not only did my men fail to obtain the objective, but in retaliation from a still-unidentified party, I lost a major base of operations… one that was hidden inside the slipstream! Thousands of personnel, billions of credits and that region of Tween-Space were lost… and I don’t even know who to exact my revenge upon!” Uhnveer released his grip and Pwalzikun fell to his hands and knees, gasping for air. He looked up to see his Com-Off walk out onto the terrace. The young man noticed Pwalzikun Haggenshire on the floor, but it did not cause him to hesitate. He walked directly to his Field Marshal and saluted.
“Sir!”
“What is it?”
“Sir, it is a personal matter regarding the Black Gate Keeper,” the young man reported.
“With me,” Uhnveer said as he walked off the terrace, signaling his guards to tend to his guest. Once they were alone in the corridor, Uhnveer turned to face his soldier. “Any word from Black Gate?”
“Nothing confirmed, sir,” the Officer said as he took a step forward. “But I did not think you wanted to receive the actual information in front of
unsecured company, sir.”
“What information?” Uhnveer asked, placing his hands behind his back.
“In undeclared space, someone breached our carrier grid-waves. Transmission Seekers were transmitted, but they were collected and immediately taken offline.”
“Any decent Jockey could have done that,” Uhnveer commented.
“Yes, sir,” the Officer quickly agreed, “but the seekers were transmitting their location when they were taken. The coordinates were in the middle of nowhere, not even the relay satellites could see a ship or send-grid.”
“That is different.”
“Commander Kopolo scrambled fighters and had InvokeRs create teleportation apertures.”
“How many fighters?” Uhnveer asked.
“Three squadrons.”
“Damn fool,” the Delbred male muttered. “Too many! He didn’t even know what he was dealing with.”
“When Squad Leaders reported no ship, Commander Kopolo took his Gunship Group into the area.”
“The McKendrick?” Uhnveer asked.
“Yes sir. But something happened, sir.”
“What do you mean something?”
“The InvokeRs experienced backlash as the ships were in transit,” the young man reported. “The two gunships were immediately destroyed… the McKendrick was taken out shortly thereafter. Numbers have not yet been confirmed, but it looks like all souls lost, sir, with extensive damage done to Crystal Pointe.”
“How the hell did they hit headquarters?!” Uhnveer barked as he put his hands on his hips.
“When the portals were destroyed, the backlash tore through the InvokeR Corps. Only the two masters who teleported themselves away survived, sir.”
“Are you telling me I got cut down to two casters?! Two! From a dozen!”
“I’m afraid so, sir,” the Officer stated, keeping himself facing forward. Eye contact with the Field Marshal was, at best, ill-advised, and the Officer still had every hope of returning to his post.