by C. G. Hatton
“We’re not Earth,” NG said softly, trying to gauge how to play this.
The captain shook his head, not believing it. “This is an act of war,” he warned. “Release my AI.”
“Not going to happen,” NG said and got another blow to the back of the head.
The captain looked disgusted again and walked away, commanding his crew to stand by to resist boarding. He was thinking that they were not going to be taken that easily.
The comm crackled to life suddenly and a voice that was unmistakably from Earth commanded, “Expedience, stand down. This is the Imperial Diplomatic Vessel Tangiers. Stand by.”
The captain stared for a moment then turned and indicated to the comms officer to open a channel. He replied in an icy tone, “This is Captain Ramsay of the Expedience. To whom am I speaking?”
There was a pause then another voice came through the comm. “This is Colonel Hones of the IDV Tangiers. It would appear that you have mistaken one of our mining colonies for pirates, Captain Ramsay. Surrender our citizens and you will be allowed to leave. Do you understand?”
The captain turned and stared at him again. NG stared back through the one eye he could still open. Garrett must have got the message out and his commanding officer was playing along so at least something was going right.
Ramsay frowned and turned back to the console. “We caught two of your people sabotaging our vessel, Colonel. I must admit, we have been on deployment for some time. Was war declared while we have been busy hunting down pirates?”
‘What games these mortals play… they are hilarious, they really are.’
There was a moment of silence then a laugh. “You’re mistaken, Captain. You understand as well as I that the rules of engagement here in the Between are often grey, but no, we have no wish to attack, with either subterfuge or force. You must be mistaken. Hand over our citizens and you will be allowed to leave.”
That didn’t go down well. “I am well aware of our current location and the ambiguity of its politics, Colonel. We have your men right here and I am wondering what we do with them. As you say, out here in the Between the usual conventions hold no ground.”
NG heard Fiorrentino open a tight wire link to the captain, the conversation easy to pick out from the surface of their minds. “Hand over Tierney and his scum,” he sent casually. “I just need these two.”
The captain’s frown deepened. “Whatever your business, Fiorrentino,” he sent privately with total disdain, “I still have my orders and we will fulfil this mission.”
This close it was easy to read that the captain wasn’t happy at having Fiorrentino on his ship. What should have been an easy clean up mission had turned into a nightmare and this flash corporate suit was right in the middle of the mess with his so-called private business.
Fiorrentino sighed theatrically. “You’re dead in space, Ramsay. There is no mission. This is the mission, you fool. Stand in my way and you’ll never command so much as a tug boat or garbage scow again.”
The comm hissed. “Excuse my blunt observations here, Captain Ramsay, but you do not seem to have shields, weapons or a functioning drive system. Hand over our people and we will assist you with repairs.”
Ramsay forced a laugh. “It is you that is mistaken, Colonel. We have evidence that these people are criminals. Does the Earth Empire tolerate piracy now? Your agents have disabled my ship, we are effectively at your mercy yet the people you demand we hand over are pirates. You see my dilemma?”
“Expedience,” Hones transmitted in an almost bored tone of voice, “I’d hate to have to send my troops in there.”
NG listened to it all, hard pushed to stop himself breaking into a grin.
No captain ever wanted to be boarded but it was Fiorrentino who punched the console. “Hones, wait. You can have your people.”
“Who is this?”
“I have the authority to speak on behalf of Zang, owners of this fleet. We stand down. You may retrieve your colonists and we hope you accept our most sincere apologies.”
NG sat and watched as they arranged the release. They’d made him sit at the back of the bridge and refastened the manacles to secure his wrists to the chair.
He used the time to heal and listen, drawing energy from the conveniently placed guards at his side. He checked in with Martinez and got a running commentary as she teamed up with Duncan and Garrett in a slick coordinated operation to slip out of confinement, extricate LC from the infirmary and sneak onto the Duck, Elliott adding to the chaos on the battle cruiser and covering them. It was impressive. Easy. Until they tried to reach Hil.
“Fiorrentino isn’t taking any chances. Hilyer’s alive but unconscious,” Elliott sent. “He’s in isolation, locked down tight. Unless you want to deploy that unit of assault troops and the weapons platform you have on standby to launch an all-out attack, there’s no way we’re getting close.”
“I’ll work on Fiorrentino,” he sent back. “You get clear.”
Sebastian growled, unsettled and making it known. ‘Damn right I’m unsettled,’ he snapped. ‘You should deploy that Thundercloud. You’re making a bad mistake here. Playing games with a bastard like Jameson is one thing, at least he is a bastard that knows you. Fiorrentino is psychotic. You’re going to get me killed and you’re enjoying it.’
Hardly. It wasn’t like he had much choice.
He tugged on the restraints, more to make a point than really test them. They weren’t safetycuffs so there were no biometrics to fool and they weren’t simple plasticuffs so he couldn’t just snap his way out of them. They were mechanicals. Tight around the wrist, no room to move, unlocked with a key or a remote. As he rattled the arm of the chair, one of the guards smacked him round the head with a rifle butt. It wasn’t like he’d get far even if he did break free.
“All accounted for,” Martinez sent finally. “Except you and Hil. NG, tell me you have a plan to get out of this.”
“Just tell me you have the intel from Gallagher.”
“It was the Erica system, out near one of the bigger asteroids in the belt.” She gave him the exact coordinates and added, “The Tangiers wants Gallagher and the freighter, NG. What do you want us to do?”
“Go with it. Make sure Hones takes the bait and goes to Erica. Get Ghost and Skye to follow. I’ll see you there.”
He sat back then and waited patiently until he got word that the Duck was hooked up to the Tangiers and the warship was preparing to leave.
He opened a connection to Elliott, “Ready?”
“As always.”
NG switched to Fiorrentino and sent, “You want to know what an Imperial warship is doing in the Between this close to your line?”
Fiorrentino was standing beside the captain. He turned lazily. “I want to know where Anderton is with my package.”
“So do they.”
There was a pause then, “You son of a bitch.”
“You blackmailed my field operatives into stealing technology from the Imperial military, Fiorrentino. You started this war. They want that tech back and they just picked up someone who is going to tell them exactly where to go to meet with LC Anderton.”
Another pause. “And what do you want?”
“I tell you where, you take us there and you let us go, all of us, me, Anderton and Hilyer. You can fight with the Tangiers over the package. I don’t care who has it. I just want my field operatives back.”
“Deal. Now release my AI.”
“Done.”
NG listened in as the crew of the battle cruiser took back control as Elliott kicked the AI free. The Tangiers jumped and the Expedience jumped right after it.
They should have been heading into quiet, deep dark space, but the noise screaming into his head the instant they emerged was excruciating.
He doubled over, gasping, and passed out.
Chapter 30
“If we had tried to seed the beginnings of a war,” she said, “we could not have done better. We are beyond the brink. Have
you considered how much of this whole situation may have been manipulated by one of the Seven?”
“There is no proof,” the Man said. He’d instigated an investigation. High priority and top secret. Outside the guild. Far outside the guild. They’d uncovered nothing. Whatever Elliott had been doing, he’d been careful to cover his tracks. But then, he had no choice. To even dabble as much as he had, had been to risk discovery.
She picked up her goblet. “But that is a terrifying thought?”
“Indeed it is. Nikolai has been playing with fire, the danger of which even he did not fully appreciate.”
“And Erica?”
“He played Earth against Winter. I suspect he was assuming the Bhenykhn did not really exist.”
•
It felt like his eyeballs were going to melt.
It was quiet. Really quiet. The battle cruiser was moving, slow and steady. He was vaguely aware of the thousands of life forms on board but he couldn’t hear a thing.
‘What happened?’ he thought, nausea pulling at his stomach, breathing erratic.
‘You screamed and passed out,’ Sebastian said, deadpan.
He felt like shit. He didn’t want to open his eyes and he didn’t want to move. He was slumped in the chair. He didn’t want to be there, heart pounding and a cold sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.
It was eerily quiet but the kind of quiet where you know something is locked behind the door waiting to jump out at you.
There was something wrong.
‘Sebastian, what’s going on?’ he thought weakly.
‘I would guess that you’ve found the Man’s enemies. You want another listen?’
It was like a switch flicking on. Overwhelming. NG tried to curl up against it, in absolute agony for a brief second before it vanished again. He could feel the effort it was taking Sebastian to block it out.
‘You can thank me later. Figure out a way to help, I’m not sure how much longer I can do this.’
He was caught between a desperate desire to listen in and a greater need to get as far away as possible.
There was a slap at his cheek.
NG struggled to blink open his eyes.
The bridge was in chaos.
All the screens were lit up, long range scans overloaded with data. A mass of tiny markers were flitting around two massive shapes on the monitors, warnings flashing up, telemetry throwing back numbers that were off the scale.
‘Oh, what it is to meet such an adversary. They don’t know what it is. Can you feel their panic?’
He could make out one of the shapes to be the Tangiers, up there on the main screen, squaring up to another vessel, no chance to do anything other than confront it, close quarters, one massive warship against another. The crew were trying desperately to identify the other ship and they were failing.
It was the ship Gallagher had encountered.
It was real.
Ramsay turned to face him, ramrod straight, arms behind his back. “You sent us here. Who are they?”
The alien ship was beginning to circle, hunting. It was bombarding the Earth warship, knocking the shit out of it.
“Unknowns,” NG said simply.
They were trying to add it up – it couldn’t be Earth because the Tangiers was taking a pounding and it wasn’t Wintran unless another corporation had developed technology off the radar, desperately trying to think which corporation was capable of this.
“It’s not corporate,” he said. “It’s not human.”
Fiorrentino spun around. “Are we talking first contact here?” he said, incredulous. “Are you serious?”
Every hit on the alien ship seemed to dissipate into nothing. The Tangiers was trying desperately to turn but it couldn’t move fast enough.
NG didn’t reply. The battle cruiser was moving in and the closer they got, the more difficult it was to block out the intensity of the interference that was filtering through his subconscious.
There was a buzz of excitement. Fiorrentino was thinking technology. The repercussions were vast. First contact with an alien species. It was easy to read without reading his mind. And he wanted to beat the Tangiers to the prize. He turned to the captain. “Ramsay, engage.”
Ramsay spun on his heels and barked out the command. More markers began to fill the screens as Wintran fighters joined the fray.
They closed in fast.
It turned nasty quickly.
They watched on the monitors as explosions started to blossom out from the hull of the Tangiers, flashes flaring from the alien ship as Wintran missiles and fighters disintegrated against its shields. The Tangiers shifted mass suddenly to arc round, firing at the alien ship.
‘Earth and Winter versus a common foe. How sweet. They don’t have a chance against those weapons.’
They didn’t. They were losing. The best combined military force from both sides of the line and they were getting destroyed. The smaller alien ships were running rings around them, one shot one kill on the swarms of Earth and Wintran fighters that were getting depleted rapidly. The Expedience itself was taking a barrage of direct hits now, alarms blaring as vital systems were breached.
The alien warship changed its focus of attention in a heartbeat, turning to the larger vessel and firing. The deck rocked with the impact. Damage reports flooded the screens and warning sirens wailed.
“Where are they from?” Fiorrentino said without turning.
NG didn’t speak.
Someone slapped the back of his head.
“Another galaxy,” he muttered. “We can’t beat them. You should get away while you can.”
He kept his breathing steady. He had what he needed. Now he just needed to get away and get back to the Alsatia.
‘Don’t fool yourself, Nikolai,’ Sebastian murmured. ‘You’re more of a fool than I thought if you think you can just walk back into the guild.’
It wasn’t foolish. The Man needed him.
‘Needs you?’
Sebastian let the floodgates open, full force. NG almost screamed again. The bridge turned black. The space around him cold. As if his soul had been sucked out and extinguished.
It shut off.
‘You think you can fight them? You can barely face them without passing out.’
He shivered.
The Tangiers and the Expedience were in serious trouble.
The atmosphere on the bridge changed as the crew realised they were outgunned here.
A wailing mayday started to emanate from the Tangiers, long-range emergency beacons calling out for help that had no chance of getting here in time. It sounded desperate.
‘It is desperate. The start of the end. You wanted to know if they were real – they’re real. Now come up with a plan to get out of here.’
Ramsay initiated his own mayday, desperately issuing orders that wouldn’t make a difference. The alien aggressors were targeting main engines, weapons, life support – pinpointing vital systems as if they were working off blueprints. Ramsay’s crew were running out of options.
‘They’ve run out of options,’ Sebastian observed dryly. ‘We just passed Arunday’s convergence.’
‘No one uses that any more,’ NG replied vaguely, watching the crew as they began to realise that they’d committed to an engagement they had no chance of surviving.
Ramsay had already worked it out, without the need to reference an outdated theory of military strategy.
Fiorrentino was looking around, confused.
NG watched out of the corner of his eye, listening in as the captain relayed messages privately to his senior officers. They were beyond the point of retreat, too damaged to have much fight left and nothing in reserve to fire a winning salvo.
Explosions rumbled through the ship.
They were arranging a collision course. Ramsay was about to abandon ship.
‘Nikolai, you’re surrounded by armed troops who think it is your fault that their ship is about to be destroyed. I take it you have some kind of a
plan to get out of here? And trust me, I need you to get out of here – I can’t do this much longer.’
He could feel that the headache was getting worse.
Ramsay turned, stared straight at him, then spun and hit the comm. “Tangiers – Hones – get out of here.”
The battle cruiser was shifting on pure inertia, slewing sideways through space towards the alien vessel.
Ramsay punched in a code and a banshee howl began to rise in pitch, screaming at the crew to evacuate. Abandon ship. A captain’s worst nightmare.
The crew reacted on automatic, hustling to get out, only the second officer pausing to argue with his captain. Ramsay spoke to him quietly and the guy turned, glared at NG and stalked off the bridge.
Fiorrentino had gone already, hustled out by his entourage.
Ramsay turned, leaning back against the main console and staring at NG. He pulled a gun from a holster at his waist, the screens behind him filled with the looming mass of the alien warship.
“You were expecting this,” Ramsay said again, resigned, eyes cold as he prepared to die. He was tapping the gun against his thigh. “Who are you?”
NG stared back. It wasn’t the first time he’d played chicken.
The proximity alarm was loud, the collision alert louder as it suddenly blared out its warning.
Ramsay’s finger was twitching on the trigger of the pistol. He raised his voice, disdain mixed with disgust. “At least tell me that.”
NG didn’t break eye contact but he switched his concentration briefly to sense the intricacies of the tiny control circuits inside the restraints, following them, nudging and finally throwing the switch.
The cuffs popped open.
His head was pounding in time with the screaming alarms.
Ramsay straightened as NG stood.
“Come with me,” NG said. “You don’t have to die here.”
Ramsay turned to face the main screen, squaring his shoulders, stubborn defiance.
NG backed away and broke into a run.
The Senson engaged as he pushed his way through to the stairwell, the deck trembling and lurching beneath his feet. “NG, we’re coming in to get you.”