Badlands_Defenders of the Rim

by Randal Sloan

  A day later their ship arrived at the Badlands. Jarra knew that this was where she needed to be, but she didn't really know what it all meant. She was encouraged by the progress with the work on the Katarina, amazed in fact. But how would those new abilities help them in the current mission?

  Her last orders to the Katarina were to go to full stealth and hide just inside the Badlands. They were as ready as they could be. Whatever was going to happen, Jarra knew it was going to be big. She suspected it was going to change everything.

  She had no idea.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Plans

  The Relentless and the accompanying squadron took position outside the Badlands. Even for Jarra, who had seen the Badlands before in person, seeing it up close once again with what she knew now was quite unsettling. The area of space just absolutely looked impossible to navigate, even for a super-dreadnought. She couldn't believe the Katarina had been inside there.

  For the first time in days, the Admiral came onto the bridge along with the Captain. It was obvious to everyone that the Captain wasn't happy about where they were, but he kept quiet about it. As commander of the squadron, the Admiral controlled the movement of the Relentless and the escorts. Normally, he just told the Captain where he wanted to go and the Relentless handled the squadron movements.

  Apparently the Admiral had decided to change things. This time he went to stand in front of the Lieutenant Commander in charge of communications. "Send the following message out," he told the man.

  Attention all escort ships! You are immediately directed to move to the opposite side of the anomaly and take up position there as a blockade force.

  The Lieutenant Commander couldn't believe what he was hearing from the Admiral for a moment, but the Admiral didn't say anything else. He quickly started composing the message; no one kept an Admiral waiting and most especially this Admiral.

  "You intend to strip Relentless of her escorts?" the Captain finally asked. As Captain of the ship it was within his rights to question an order potentially threatening his ship.

  "It's my intent to blockade the pirates within their own lair. I have received top secret communications indicating their base is somewhere within this area of space." He gave the Captain a disgusted glance. "Surely, the mighty super-dreadnought can handle a few pirates."

  "As long as that is all we face, certainly. What if we run into a rebel squadron out here? The ship will be vulnerable without her escorts."

  The Admiral laughed, a rather unpleasant sound. "From where? There's no way they could be hiding in there. If they were to attempt an attack here, they would have to come to us and we'd spot them in plenty of time to recall the escorts."

  The Captain knew he had no choice. "I will, of course, obey your orders, but I must do so under protest. It is entirely against Imperial doctrine to separate a command ship from its escorts."

  "Do what you want. My orders stand." The Admiral turned and walked off the bridge, leaving everyone staring after him.

  As soon as he was outside the range of their vision, the Admiral smiled. The first step in his plan was in place. In a few hours, the second part of his plan would begin.

  Jarra was staring just as much as everyone else. But her thoughts turned along a different bent. Just what are you up to, Admiral? She knew she had to be ready, whatever it was.

  #

  Mad Dog had mostly recovered from the ordeal inflicted on him by those crazy Marines. He still walked with a slight limp and his blackened eye looked bad, but he tried not to let that bother him. The looks the other Marines gave him bothered him a lot more. They were no longer afraid of him!

  He would have to do something about that. More and more, though, he spent every waking moment planning his revenge on her. It was all her fault.

  The Admiral's bribe to give her to him helped a lot. He had come up with several ideas that he wanted to try out. First and foremost, he had to be sure she didn't have a way to surprise him and use her advanced skills to escape his clutches. I can't believe I'm afraid of her, he tried to tell himself, but he wasn't going to take any chances.

  A little research suggested the best solution was to give her a shot of nanites that he could control. They would take control of her limbs so she couldn't move them, yet he could leave all her pain centers intact. He wanted her to feel everything he did to her. A little black market purchase landed him a supply of the nanites and a quick bit of illegal programming did the rest.

  He needed a way to escape if he was discovered in the process of grabbing the girl, so he worked out a plan for that too. The idea had come to him one evening as he brooded in a hiding place near the shuttle bay. Shuttles flew on their own power until they reached the ship, but they were pulled into the bay by an automated system. If he could fake a shuttle crash as it returned to the ship, he could exit the shuttle and do a space suit run back to the ship instead of remaining aboard. The little modification he planted in the shuttle bay's control system would produce a big enough crash that no one would think he was alive or worry about looking for a body.

  Then all he would have to do was hide out on the ship. The hack that would prevent his implants from being tracked was something that he already used. He would just have to use it the whole time he hid out. He should be able to remain hidden until they reached civilization and then he could escape. It didn't hurt that the Admiral was paying him a lot of money; he would use that as his nest egg, so to speak.

  He started thinking about where he could hide. That was easy enough. There were areas of this ship that no one ever went to. He would have to set up a cache of the things he needed and liquidate his assets. He smiled. I think it's time for a career change.

  #

  On the bridge, Jarra racked her brain trying to come up with the Admiral's plan. Unable to figure it out, she knew she would have to play along for a little longer, although the whole thing enraged her. Even if he wasn't a traitor, that man needed to go; he obviously was a danger to the ship and squadron.

  Since pre-space naval history, no one had ever deliberately planned to leave the lynchpin of their fleet stranded without its escorts. Neither did well without the other; the super-dreadnaught needed its escort ships to run interference against a faster, more maneuverable enemy, yet the escorts were at risk without the firepower of the super-dreadnought.

  She could think of only one idea that made sense and that scared her; the Admiral had to have a fleet of ships somehow hidden in the Badlands and he planned to use that to attack and force the surrender of the Relentless. Since the pirates apparently knew how to navigate through there, why not a whole squadron of ships? Once he had the Relentless, he'd probably go after the escorts. She needed to warn the Katarina!

  "Jynks," Jarra said internally to her AI. "I need to get a message to my ship but I can't leave the bridge; my shift won't end for hours. I don't think I can afford to wait that long."

  "I heard what the Admiral said. So you think he has ships hidden in the Badlands? I can easily get a message into the ship's com queue," he replied to her prompt.

  "That would work. Here are the Imperial command codes you will need. Can you make it look like it has come from the Admiral?"

  "Easy enough," Jynks told her. "I can send it immediately. One of the Admiral's staff left his com line open so I'll route it through his connection. The com officer won't question that it might not be from the Admiral."

  "Good. That way even if it's seen by the com tech, he won't bother it or wonder about the encryption."

  Jarra smiled at that. Normally, such a message would have prompted a verification request by the com officer, but not under this Admiral; too likely to get a chewing out by the Admiral. The com officer would leave the message alone; for once the Admiral's demeanor would help her.

  "Here's what I want you to say..."

  #

  Unbeknownst to Jarra, the Admiral sent his own message out. He used his own set of Imperial codes, but it wasn't actually going to
an Imperial ship. Hidden within the Badlands was a special new ship and the signal he sent activated it. The alien Aerstone had built this ship as part of their plan to end the war the stupid humans weren't even aware they were fighting. What was even more unbelievable, the humans were even stupid enough to help their enemies, with the rebels foolishly working with them. To the Aerstone, that was completely illogical.

  The humans were now a target to the Aerstone because of their huge industrial base. After they were under Aerstone control, that industrial base could be used to fight their real enemy, the Borjon. The humans would become unwilling slaves until they were no longer needed, and then they could be eliminated.

  The new ship was the first of a line of ships they expected would make short work of the humans. It combined all the tech the humans lacked: the powerful reactors, the strong shields, and the beam weapon, but most importantly, an Aerstone AI. Yet by using their foolish allies, it could pass as one of the human ships so they could remain hidden behind the scene.

  Although their first human puppet had failed them miserably, the second of their puppets was going to test the ability of the new ship. He would take all the risk for them. If it performed as expected, a whole fleet of them would be built. Once the human puppet had accomplished their goals, he would be eliminated and the AI would take control of the ship.

  All in all, it looked like a good plan to the Aerstone Council. If the Council had been willing to admit it, something their control circuits wouldn't allow, they were more than just a little worried about this upstart human race. Why had their enemy joined up with them? And why had they been willing to accept such a subservient role to the humans? Their logic circuits must be missing something — until they reasoned it out, they would only build the one ship.

  What the Aerstone could not understand was that some things can't be reasoned out. Something the Borjon understood very well and a very few of the humans were beginning to understand. Things like premonitions that came true and prophecies that lasted through the ages. There was no logic to such things.

  #

  Sasha stared at the message in front of her. Somehow the Princess had managed to send it to her through the com system on the Relentless. The contents of the message worried her quite a bit, but there was nothing she could do but follow the advice of her Princess.

  After the spectacular test of the beam weapon, Sasha had moved the Katarina deeper into the nearby nebula and anchored her there with their stealth systems on full force. Then she had the team conduct an exhaustive review of the tests. Despite the astounding results, the firing of the beam had still been a near thing; it had almost triggered a second scram of their reactors. After examining the details, she quickly came to that conclusion. She immediately pulled the team together to talk. Even then they had been running out of time with the arrival of the Relentless imminent.

  "Guys," she told them quietly. Sasha knew they weren't going to like what she had to say. "First, I want to say I'm extremely pleased with all our testing. But," she said with a bit of emphasis, "you've got to find a way to protect our systems. The analysis just completed indicates somewhere near a fifty percent chance of an overload, triggering another cascade of failures like the last time, if not worse."

  Gabo nodded. "Galen and I have already been discussing that issue. I have come to believe it is because the beam weapon actually attempts to channel the energy of hyperspace. That energy is somewhat incompatible with our reactor systems."

  "Why is that?" Sara asked. She had listened in on their conversation earlier but had refrained from interrupting because most of what they said had been beyond her level of understanding. "Why can't we just modify the reactors to work at that same frequency?"

  Gabo just stared at her a moment. Her question sparked an inkling of an idea. "That won't work because the frequency varies with the connection to hyperspace. But I'm wondering, what if you wrote an interface program to read what I'll call the hyper frequency and adapted our systems to it? Could you pull that off?"

  "Maybe..." Sara scrunched her face in concentration as she looked over the data from her implants.

  Gabo found that more than a little distracting, because it emphasized her facial features which he found very attractive. He knew from the team's implant joining on their past mission that she had to know of the feelings he had for her. So far she hadn't done anything to either accept or reject those feelings.

  But he patiently waited for her answer. Someday they would have to have a conversation about some of that, but that day wasn't today. The need to fix the ship had to be priority right now.

  "You'll have to modify the control system on the reactor," she finally answered. "The existing control system is too slow and inflexible. If you can do that, I think I can make it work."

  Gabo looked over at Sasha. "I'll have to shut the reactor down to do that. That means we'll be out of action until I can bring it back up."

  Sasha didn't like the sound of that one bit. She started to answer with a flat no, but something told her that was a mistake. Logic said it was too big a risk, that they probably wouldn't need to fire their beam anyway. After all, the Relentless and her squadron was due to arrive shortly and the addition of those ships would mean they had much more firepower than they needed.

  But Sasha's intuition was screaming at her. It told her they would need that beam and more before everything was done. I guess I've been hanging around Jarra too long. She's starting to rub off on me. It's just not logical.

  "How long?" she finally asked.

  "Maybe fifteen or twenty hours, a little less if Galen helps."

  Sasha shook her head. "That's too long. Galen, I know you've started mapping the area around us, but I need you to help Gabo. This has to be highest priority."

  She gave them both the stare, the one she'd been practicing in secret since she'd learned she was going to be in charge. The one the Princess gave them when she wouldn't accept no for an answer. "You've got ten hours. If it's not ready, you'll have to switch back to the old control system."

  Even then the Relentless and her squadron had been due to arrive at any moment and Sasha knew they had to be ready. Jarra had warned her to be ready for anything. Logic also warned her, That's still too long! But she knew it would have to be what it was.

  The stare must have worked, because although Gabo wasn't happy, he nodded. Galen didn't even do that; he simply logged his display out of the mapping program and linked in to Gabo's console.

  That discussion had been only a few hours ago and their reactor was still offline. From reading the message her Princess had sent, time was running out. No time to call a meeting, she queried the team by implant.

  "How much longer?" she asked. "We need our reactor back now!"

  "I think I can get you fifty percent power in a few minutes. It'll be at least a couple of hours before I can get you one hundred percent. We just can't move any faster without it overloading the reactor. One mess up and we might go boom!"

  "Do what you can. I just received a message from the Princess and it's about to get busy around here."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Not Part of My Plans

  "Captain Nicholas Arkwright, Commander Jack Ashford, Lieutenant Jarra Carsean, report to the Admiral's ready room."

  The message came across on the ship's command circuit. It was a general announcement, but they received it on their implants. Intercom systems had long ago gone away with the advent of implants. That also meant that one couldn't avoid answering a call on the command circuit, since their implants were always active.

  Jarra gave Amy a surprised look, but she knew one didn't hesitate to move when called by an admiral. Especially not a mere lieutenant. She hurried out the bridge hatch, turning toward the area of the ship where the Admiral resided. Perhaps now she would find out what he was up to. Jarra was ready to pull her Princess card if necessary at that point.

  Even moving as fast as she was, the Captain and XO both were in front of
her as she entered the passageway to the Admiral's suite.

  "What's this about, sir?" Jarra whispered to the XO.

  "I don't know, Lieutenant," Jack answered her. "We'll clear it up soon, I'm sure."

  Unable to say anything more, Jarra followed the two into the Admiral's suite. What's the man up to now?

  As they entered the Admiral's ready room, the Admiral looked up with a smile, albeit a predatory one. "I've called the three of you in here because I have a bit of a problem."

  He glanced toward the Captain and XO. "You two are entirely too competent and I can't leave you in charge when I leave. You might be able to save the ship when I plan to destroy it."

  He waved at Jarra. "Her, she defied me a few days ago and I can't let that stand. I also needed her as a bribe for him."

  Jarra sensed rather than heard someone coming up behind her, but before she could move, something struck her on the back of the head. Falling to the floor, she struggled to maintain consciousness. Just before everything went black, she heard the sound of stunner fire.

  #

  Mad Dog was excited to finally have his hands on the girl, but he was unhappy the Admiral had brought the Captain and XO into the room. Nevertheless, he obeyed the direct "Stun them!" command the Admiral had sent to his implants. Just in case, he shot the girl too. That was going to be the least of her problems soon.

  "What have you done?" he demanded from the Admiral as soon as he had control of himself.

  "That's 'What have you done, sir?'" the Admiral said. "It's simple enough. You and I are leaving the ship now. We're going to lock the two of them in here and with my command codes to block them, they won't be able to escape or call for help. That'll make sure they don't interfere with our departure."

  "Personally," he went on. "I'm not planning to come back here. I don't know what your plans are, but you're not going to be able to just fly back on board either." He smiled, another one of his rather nasty ones.