by Will Crudge
“She wasn’t alone,” Steve said. “Shadow had staged his own capture to keep an eye on things. Plus, she had an LRF stashed away in a shipping container that was labeled ‘Freeze Dried Vegetables’ so none of the crew had any incentive to rummage through it.”
“Wait? An LRF? As in ‘LRF-90’?” Kara looked over to Sasha to see if she could get independent verification.
Sasha just casually looked at Kara with her big motherly feline eyes. “LRF-90A to be exact, dear. It’s known as Death-Nail.”
“How in the hell did you even know that, Steve? Is that how she got on board the Cerberus in the first place?” Kara scoffed. She felt frustrated that Steve hadn’t shared this with her already.
“I knew because it’s NAV, Death, reached out to Kindle while we were sitting there all bored to death in the dock of the Cerberus. He gave us the skinny. She got on board by faking her academy credentials from a private military school in New Quebec. The Crimson Alliance doesn’t have any centralized academy of their own, so they recognize the accreditation of most major military education institutes throughout Crimson controlled space. The smaller private school had mediocre security protocols in their records mainframe, so she was able to fabricate an impressive academic record. She was commissioned shortly after, and she managed to get her request for the Cerberus approved,” Steve replied.
Kara remembered that Kindle was the name of the NAV system in the LRF known as Blood-Reaper. When Kindle had achieved sentience, she decided on a female persona, and her given name of Blood wasn’t feminine enough. “Why the Cerberus?” Kara asked.
“Because, we’ve been keeping tabs on every Crimson vessel that we suspected was trying to hunt down any trace of our guild, and its members. The Cerberus was one of a few vessels we had encountered on multiple occasions. It was fast enough to remain elusive, but powerful enough to over-power most anything it came across. It was Jimma’s best shot at gathering the INTEL we needed,” Sasha explained.
“Death explained he’d been stowed on the large container and transferred to the Cerberus when Jimma first reported to her assignment. He was there to provide a quick escape for Jimma… and later Shadow as well. Shadow volunteered to get captured after her initial reports started coming in. Val and Midas had pieced together the theory that the Crimson Fleet were either posing as, or directly supporting pirate activities on the outskirts of UAHC space. So, Val dropped Shadow of at a private museum that held relics of the War Master Guild. The museum was in some lawless backwater habitat on the edges of contested space. Jimma’s reports put that museum on a short list of potential targets for the Cerberus to stage a fake pirate raid.”
“And now I know! Jimma is very brave to go through all that.”
“It was her idea, dear,” Sasha pointed out.
“Who’s idea? And for what?” Jimma said, as she exited the shower and began to dry off.
Kara just sighed. “Your choice to infiltrate the Cerberus.”
“Oh, that?” Jimma said rhetorically. She continued to towel off while she spoke. “I was the perfect option. It required a War Master to be separated from their mount for an extended period of time. Once a War Master is paired, the bond is extremely deep. The separation can be emotionally traumatic. I have yet to be officially paired, so I wasn’t at risk for being emotionally compromised.”
“It makes perfect sense, actually.” Kara rubbed her chin. “How long were you on your mission before Shadow came on the scene?”
“Geesh! Must have been seven or eight months, I guess.” Jimma said as she stared off. Kara assumed that Jimma was trying to think of a more accurate answer.
“How’s about focusing on covering up those meat-curtains of yours!” Kara said with a laugh.
“What’s a meat-curtain?” Jimma asked with a sincere tone. Kara began to laugh even louder, and Sasha rolled on to her side while trying to cover her eyes with her forepaws.
“What’s so funny?” Jimma asked. Her eyebrows were furled, and she just stood there completely naked. She held the towel over her right forearm, and placed her hands on her hips. Kara appeared to be intentionally diverting her eyes as she began to add snorts to her laughing.
“Just get yourself covered up, dear.” Sasha said with a motherly tone. “We have an LRF-90 waiting for us to board.”
The Chase
Location: Clarke Station, Interstellar Port, Outbound Taxi Lanes
Date Time: Post Interstellar 08/01/4201
System: Tiber System, Mid Region
“Looks like we’re going to be traversing the gate any minute now!” Kara announced from the cockpit of the Skull-Crusher.
“So what rinky-dink regional hub are we heading towards?” Steve asked.
“Have you not been paying any attention, Steve?”
“I’m an AI, not omnipotent!” Steve shot back.
“Ugh. Clarendon Station.”
“But that’s controlled by those gray wearing security fuck-tards that are a front for the Crimson!” Steve jeered.
“That’s the point, jackass!” Skull answered. “Clarendon’s gate to Tangine is operational because those bastards are controlling access to it!”
“Look, I’m not a two-thousand-year-old sentient NAV thingy, and I’m not even a military spec AI, but even I can see the danger in that.”
“Steve, don’t sell yourself short, buddy. Law enforcement spec AI’s are only a few lines of code away from military specs. Besides, how else do we get to Tangine?” Kara interjected.
“Isn’t the UAHC Battle Cruiser Hailstorm still docked there? If the UAHC HQ is secured, then wouldn’t they be notified of the threat, and then seize control of the station from those Crimson fuck-sticks?”
“We have no idea if the crew had any clue what’s going on. They’re still on their liberty leave, and the AI’s are probably infected. Besides, only the senior acting officer of the ship can use the Quantum Entanglement Transmitter (QET), and he or she is probably blowing off steam as well. Even if the fake security bastards can’t actively block the ship from receiving data burst messages, the subverted AI’s would intercept them for sure. The CIC will be running on a skeleton crew, so there won’t be too many human eyes to notice any time stamp or data buffer anomalies,” Skull explained.
“Well, shit!” was all Steve could say. “STC is on the line, by the way.”
“Skull!” Kara shouted.
“On it!” Skull took over the controls and jerked the LRF-90 out of the freighter’s way. The two vessels missed a collision by a mere three meters. Then a heavy impact shuttered the fighter in a loud thud. Kara would have been thrown from her seat had she not been harnessed in properly. She could hear random objects falling and rattling around back in the berthing area. The sound of a massive predatory cat being knocked off the bed, and on to the deck. A feline growl immediately followed.
“That was a mi
ne!” Skull shouted. Kara could see the shield status icon was flashing yellow, which was a good sign. That meant the shields held and were at least at fifty percent or higher charge.
“Looks like we were just a target of opportunity. They’re making a bee-line for the gate!” Kara shouted. She realized the only way to get word of the presence of a War Master on Clarke Station, was to rush the gate and shoot a data-burst out on the other side. Hyper gates couldn’t be shut down fast enough to stop the freighter from getting through.
Kara regained control of the fighter through her neural interface, then rolled it out to the left and into the narrow space that separated outbound and inbound traffic. She hit the thrusters at full burn and opened up her weapons bays.
“No need for the bays to be open, Kara,” Skull chimed in, and then closed the bays on his own. “It makes us too bulky. Besides, this LRF variant comes equipped with stationary forward pulse energy blasters hidden in the intake at the nose!”
“What?” Kara didn’t have time to learn about new bells and whistles. She had only learned that her fighter was fully armed less than a week prior. Skull flashed an icon on the HUD to tell Kara that her cannons were online.
“How do I shoot?” Kara spat.
“You can’t… not without the manual control stick installed. I’m taking the conn.”
Kara noted in her mind that she needed to reinstall that thing. Jimma had used it to bring the LRF into the dock at Clarke Station, but Kara removed it when she strapped herself into the pilot seat less than an hour ago.
Skull sent a readout on the HUD that indicated the inertial dampening system was at full capacity. Kara felt the wave of artificial gravity whoosh through her torso as it powered up from its normal forty percent capacity. Had it been fully engaged when they hit that mine, then there wouldn’t be a mess to clean up back in the berthing. The cobalt blue finish of the Skull-Crusher glimmered in the reflection of the energy shield cone that formed the edges of the hyper gate approach. The blueish hue of the shield culminated into the large circular hyper gate itself. The gate looks like a pond of gently rippling water that was caused by the slight gravitational effects of massive commercial ships passing in and out of it. Kara noticed the shield cone was rippling a little, but then settled. She recognized that the unauthorized freighter had messed up the pre-calculated energy field that the shield used to offset any gravitational forces that pulled on the cumulative mass of all the ships in the taxi lane.
Hyper gates were highly sensitive to any fluctuation in gravity, and the gigantic energy cones that enclosed the taxi lanes was dual purpose. Not only did the shield insulate the gate from random space debris, but it actively off set the combined mass in the lanes to prevent the ships themselves from causing ripples of gravity. The secret to not expending incalculable amounts of energy to keep a gate stable, was to protect it from outside gravitational forces. Which is why hyper gate stations are built in open space, and as far away from planetary bodies, asteroids, or stars as possible. It was a delicate dance of physics and efficiency.
Kara snapped to the present situation in a flash. It was too easy for her mind to wander when she wasn’t flying her bird on her own. Skull had closed the gap between them and the freighter to within 750 meters, but the banged-up freighter was grazing other vessels on either side of the narrow corridor. Debris from dozens of minor collisions indicated that the freighter either didn’t have a functioning energy shield, or all of the cumulative strikes with other craft had overloaded it and cause it to flare out completely. Fortunately for the innocent ships that had been struck, their shields bore the brunt of the impacts, and no civilians were likely to be hurt.
The LRF’s shields were back up to over ninety percent, but every time it hit full charge, another tiny piece of freighter hull would strike it at relative speeds well into the supersonic realm… had they been in atmosphere to even form a soundwave. The ships in the right outbound lane ahead realized what was going on behind them and began to glide slightly to make room for the rogue craft charging at them from the rear.
Then the HUD lit up with an indication of a clear forward shot. Skull let out a sinister laugh and unleashed a barrage of pulse energy blasts from the hidden cannons. Streaks of glowing energy bolts were hurled in a straight line and into the thruster array of the freighter. Destroying the ship wasn’t an option, however. There was too much potential for collateral damage. The flash of ion thrusters rupturing on the stern of the freighters made Kara cover her eyes with her forearm. She looked back up and saw the freighter was slowly spinning in an erratic fashion, and trails of leaking atmosphere began to trail from the craft. Luckily for the sake of the other vessels, the freighter was still on its original vector, for the most part. However, even without thrust, it had acquired enough forward momentum at its peak velocity and would make it through the gate anyway.
“There’s nothing we can do now.” She realized all she could do was watch the ripples of space-time envelope the tumbling freighter. The rogue ship was consumed, and reborn hundreds of light years away. “All we can do is follow it and try and scan for traces of data burst signatures.”
“Remember, dear… This fighter might be deadlier than anything smaller than a dreadnaught, but it… and by extension, I… am almost two thousand years old. We don’t have that kind of super awesome tech! We’re not cops, or spies! We kill things!” Skull used the term we as to reference that the NAV system was the brains of the LRF, and the hull was the brawn. They were two separate entities, but in a symbiotic package. Which is why the naming convention is always hyphenated.
“Touchy little bastard today, aren’t we?” Steve jibed.
“Take back the conn, sweetheart. Let me know when there’s more stuff to shoot at. And maybe consider using the control stick and throttle lever once in a while. I can’t give you weapons control with that bullshit neural crap you have linked up to me. Sticks have triggers, and neat buttons for missiles and other toys.”
“OK, OK, buddy. You can give me a lesson on manually killing things with a stick later. Let’s just get through that gate and find a way to make it to Tangine without having to threaten the lives of thousands of civilian ship crews!” Kara sneered. Then she sent a neural link signal to flight control system to throttle up and into the gate.
Lies and Subversion
Location: Clarendon Station, Interstellar Port, Inbound Taxi Lanes
Date Time: Post Interstellar 08/01/4201
System: Vulcan System, Outer Region
In a flash of folded space, the Skull-Crusher plowed its way through the hyper gate that linked Clarke Station to the small regional hub of Clarendon Station. Kara held her breath for a moment until the photons of a completely new region of space snapped into view. Ahead she could the damaged freighter tumbling out of control and losing velocity fast. Streams of venting atmosphere made strange but beautiful flowing patterns, as the unstable freighter drifted towards to the right and bounced off the protective energy shield that formed the taxiway into and out of the gate.
The hull of the freighter buckled from the impact, and debris filled the relatively confined space. The vast corridor was large enough for mega-freighters to safely glide passed one another without fear of collision, but the debris field began to spread and begin to bounce of the lines of massive ships as they glided lazily along. Kara could see the main shield around the taxi lane flare slightly, and ripples of the disturbed energy shield flowed down the cone shaped corridor until they finally dissipated. Ripples appeared in the once invisible energy shields of the ships passing by, but no physical damage was incurred by the huge boxy mega-ships.
“Wow,” Kara said, but in a very reserved tone. Then the familiar crackle of a Station Traffic Control net rose up in her awareness.
Unum registered vessel, this is Clarendon STC. Kara decided her vague flight plan might actually be useful. Then a wink came up on her HUD from Skull. Kara realized he had altered the transponder to only transmit the minimu
m information required by law. Only a keen eye, that knew what an LRF-90 looked like, would be able to know who was aboard.
Clarendon STC, I acknowledge your transmission, go ahead. Kara decided to keep it casual, but not give up any information that she didn’t need to.
Unum registered ship, do you have eyes on that freighter hull that just impacted into the shield wall?
So far, so good! She thought. The attacking freighter may not have gotten out a data burst. If there were any survivors, then it may take a while to get to them with the heavy traffic in the lanes. By then they might just make it into Tangine Station before that happens.
Affirmative, STC. I have eyes on the wreckage.
Are there any escape pods visible? The STC wouldn’t have asked if the freighter’s IDENT had automatically sent a status when pods were deployed. Either it wasn’t transmitting, or nobody escaped. Either way was fine with her.
Negative STC, no escape pods on visual. Not reading any IDENT signals either.
Copy that, Unum vessel. We’re going to need to dock at the attached assignment. A security representative will need to take your witness statement in person. When Kara heard the words, she could’ve swallowed her throat, if it were physically possible
STC, is that going to be necessary? I can transmit a visual playback from my HUD. I’m on a tight schedule. Besides, there are dozens of other ships who had a good vantage point, won’t you need them to dock as well?
The vessels directly to your front and adjacent to you are either drone piloted or have limited visual fields of view. Besides, the wreck occurred directly in front of your vessel. We need the statement signatures to be witnessed in person. It’s standard protocol. Proceed to your docking assignment accordingly. STC, out.
“What’s the status?” Sasha’s sleek but massive head and neck stretched to the left peripheral of Kara’s vision.
“Whoa! You scared me, Sasha.” Kara jerked back and turned to see Sasha craning her neck around to look straight at her.