Dassiova considered her words, not to give them more time to soak in but more to better slap down her accusation so that she wouldn’t make it again.
“Massey,” he said in a voice like hard ice, “feel free to come to me with evidence of treason at any time but be damn sure of yourself before you accuse anyone.”
“Understood, Admiral,” she said, her eyes cast down as she dropped the train of thought. Dassiova gestured for her to move aside as he worked the controls himself; fingers dancing less deftly over the icons than hers did but still fast and efficient in contrast to his gruff manner. He worked more slowly than she did, but he trawled through the data to the end of the trail of breadcrumbs, finding that she was right and the trail did go cold at the Ichi.
“Ahh, shi-it,” he said, dragging out the curse word as he did when he was frustrated. “Alright, I’ll have Torres look through his crew manifest.” He looked up at her expectantly. When she raised her eyebrows in question as to what was expected of her, her spoke gruffly to make his silent point clear.
“Go see if you can encourage the space station op to move quicker. Dismissed.”
~
“Sir, incoming hail on subspace from the Indomitable. It’s the Admiral and is marked for your attention only,” the comm officer cut in.
“My compliments to the Admiral,” Torres answered distractedly as he looked at the sensor data from the enemy ships, “I’ll get back to him just as soon as I have the time. Advise him that we’re currently monitoring unusual enemy activity.”
“Aye aye, Sir,” the comm officer responded as she tapped at her console and spoke quietly into the boom-mic attached to her earpiece.
“Talk to me, tactical,” Torres said loudly.
“Captain, the two at the front are the same type of standard fighter we encountered last time but the third is different. It looks like a transport container and doesn’t appear to have its own propulsion and… All ahead stop! Power down to dark mode!”
The tone of his voice, the panicked higher octave of the orders in particular, were met with instant reaction from Rogers at the helm. Dropping the ship’s power output to almost nothing was a task for his own station, so quite why he blurted it out was beyond him, but he killed the lights, so to speak, regardless.
Stationary, emitting as little power as possible, the Ichi hung in enemy-controlled space and held its breath just like the crew did.
“Care to tell me why, Ensign?” Torres asked, careful to keep his raging pulse from affecting his words.
“They… they responded to us, Sir. Somehow,” the tactical officer whispered, lending an air of conspiracy to the darkened bridge, “when we sent the last subspace comm.” Torres watched the display, seeing the unmoving icons of the three enemy ships hanging in space as they did. Tense seconds ticked by until the time-delay of using the passive sensors gave a refreshed and updated set of data, and to the captain’s relief, the enemy hadn’t moved.
“Another signature detected,” came the whispered report from tactical, “shrouded but definitely there; fifteen thousand kilometers off our starboard.”
“Hold position, crew to battle stations,” Torres instructed carefully and quietly, not falling into the curious trap of whispering just because another person was doing so, “gunners to make ready.” The flurry of quiet activity as the orders were issued calmed him slightly, as though action was safer than doing nothing.
“Four ships now on sensors,” the bridge heard, “conducting active search pattern.”
“Hold position,” Torres said again, feeling like a submarine commander from the old films where they sat in the depths in total silence, hoping that the vessels above passed them by. He tapped at the console beside him to open a channel directly to Brandt’s comm.
“Go ahead,” she said in short, efficient syllables that rolled into a single sound.
“Sitrep: we may have been detected by four enemy ships. Two others appear to be towing a non-combat vessel and I want to know where and why. Get your ground team ready,” he told her in a quiet voice, “prepare to slip out if this goes noisy and follow the anomaly.”
“Understood,” she replied, cutting the link.
“Sir, permission to join the mission?” Rogers asked the captain.
“Lieutenant, you’ve been at the helm for what? Six hours already?” Torres replied.
“Almost, Sir,” the pilot answered, “but with respect, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, then the Tanto needs the best wheelman available, whereas this tub,” he lovingly ran a single finger along the edge of the helm console in a manner that was almost creepy, “just needs to turn her nose and jump away.”
Torres paused, considering the words of his cocky chief pilot and knowing it to be entirely truthful.
“Granted,” he said, waiting for the young man to be relieved by the standby crewmember and walk past his chair. “Nathan?” he said quietly, getting his full attention.
“Sir?”
“Armor, weapon, and be careful,” he told him. “Do whatever Brandt tells you, when she tells you. You got that, kid?” Rogers nodded seriously and left the bridge at a jog.
Brandt, already in the team’s overly-warm crash deck, slipped down her sleeves and zipped up her flight suit before attaching the pistol and comm device to her armor. She smiled as it opened up ready to accept her form, liking the modifications she had managed to have done without official authorization – just another one of the perks of being temporarily outside of the big UN machine. She stepped inside, feeling the cool air begin to circulate around her as the suit’s systems instantly recognized her body heat as being above optimum efficiency and cooled her down. Her HUD came online, rapidly running the startup diagnostics and giving her the all-clear before she had even stepped down from the charging plate she stood on.
With her hands, the tiny servo motors working as fast as she could move her own limbs, she ran through the holographic projection of the suit’s menu subsystems with her eyes and opened the comm channel. She tapped on the names of the people she needed by blinking as she focused on them, hand-picking Zero and Specter before taking the first four names off the deployment list of her few available soldiers. When all the names were added to the active comm channel, she hailed them all.
“Report to shuttle bay in full deployment gear,” she ordered, excitement and confidence in every word, “prepare for immediate dust-off.”
Protocol dictated no need for verbal acknowledgement in a rapid deployment scenario as they simply had to signal ready, which would highlight their names on the commander’s display, but a storm of very gung-ho aye ayes came back to her. She came off the channel, opening another to the hangar where the Tanto was powering up.
“Shuttle bay from Commander Brandt,” she said and waited. She was about to repeat herself when the channel came back with a lot of background noise.
“Yeah, Burrows here, go on…”
“Load up two mechs into the Tanto, RFN,” she ordered before cutting the channel as the door to the crash deck hissed open. She bumped a very careful fist with Zero, conscious not to shatter the man’s shooting hand with her own armored gauntlet. She walked out without a word, striding the short distance to the armory, where she took extra ammunition for her weapons and mag-locked her newly-uprated submachine gun to her main chest plate. She shot a look at the single battle rifle on a rack by itself, glad that she would be accompanied by the modified weapon and the weaponized human that wielded it.
Torres had told her to be ready for a ground mission, as their intention was to conduct more thorough reconnaissance of the Earth-like planet, but the unexpected discovery of the alien activity promised work for her in some form. In her mind it never hurt to be prepared, so taking the loadout she had planned on for a ground mission stayed on the docket.
If we stay in space and trail them, so be it, she told herself.
Her attention was drawn to the door hissing open and an excited Lieutenant Rogers
jogging in to scramble into one of the ready-suits – the lightweight armor not designated and customized to one specific user – to move his limbs about awkwardly until he found the HUD controls to retract the gauntlets and helmet. He caught Brandt’s eye, her own helmet retracted after she had finished with the comm channel, and he smiled.
“Better fine motor control,” he explained, waggling jazz hands at her comically.
She laughed. “You’re not on rotation,” she observed, guessing the pilot would have somehow convinced their captain to allow him out to play past his bedtime.
“Who needs sleep?” he responded playfully.
“Pilots do, Lieutenant,” Brandt said sternly.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Rogers answered, standing a little straighter and pulling a face that he hoped appeared appropriately chastised and sensible. Brandt sighed and gave up, stepping towards the drop tubes leading to the shuttle bay. Rogers stepped onto the aperture beside her and shot her a look as he tapped at the comm device on his left forearm.
“Superhero landing?” he asked hopefully. Brandt gave him a withering look and turned her face away as the helmet reactivated to cover her head. Rogers did the same, his head and hands covering in the lightweight metal as the deck beneath them literally opened up.
They landed in the shuttle bay, Rogers dropping to one knee with his right hand planted flat on the deck in a mimic of some old show he had watched repeated as a kid. A few chuckles ran around the crew getting the Tanto ready to fly out if ordered, which Rogers decided to take as complimentary and not mocking.
One face stared straight at them, registering no mirth. It registered nothing, in fact, simply stared at Brandt as her face was exposed once more. His matt-black armor was unique among them despite the modifications they had made. He had two large pistols, one on each leg, of a design and caliber not made available to the UN or the CP troops on the recon team of the Ninth Fleet.
“Specter,” she greeted him, “good to have you here.” Specter, glowing green optical implants and scarred face looking down at her sharp features implacably, responded flatly without any trace of their former squad mate with all his Latino charisma.
“Commander,” he said in acknowledgment.
“And you brought your dogs!” Brandt exclaimed sarcastically, firing a dismissive glance at the Hyper private military contractors beside him.
Horne, no first name apparently, sneered back at her and just about resisted the urge to give a full commander the finger. The two had first met long ago when she was still a lowly petty officer class 1 and the cyborg beside the PMC was the remains of her friend in a box being kept alive until they could rebuild him. Brandt had used the situation and exacted the cost of her silence about the details of that incident and enrolled for life on the fast track promotion program. Being a track, especially a female track with absolutely no political or family connections, usually meant that Brandt would have made commander and been sent to the worst, most boring postings in the solar system that no real soldier would be forced to take unless they were being punished.
“Still lettin’ your mouth do the fightin’, chief?” Horne asked her goadingly. He had fallen out with her after their return from the first foray into the Centauri system when she had refused to allow him on her ground teams, instead consigning him to turret defense duty.
“Who said that?” Brandt said comically as she looked around at her own eye height in mock confusion. She looked down at Horne and gave a start like she hadn’t seen him down there. “Still getting paid to guard a real warrior who’d eat you for a light snack?” she shot back. He sneered harder at her and turned away. Specter, who Brandt still thought of as Jake Santana, was guarded by a member of Hyper’s private army around the clock. It galled her how they saw him as property; a deployable resource representing a significant investment and not a person. “Just one of you,” she ordered. “I don’t have room for two tourists.” Horne shifted uneasily but didn’t respond other than to nod to the other PMC who he must have outranked, sending him sloping off and trying to hide his relief.
“Load up,” Brandt said to her small group, watching as they hefted gear and weapons to shuffle onto the Tanto. She noticed another person working on an exposed circuit panel beneath the stubby delta wing on the right side of the little ship and challenged him.
“Paterson, what the hell are you tinkering with?” she asked. Jamie Paterson, unnaturally tall and naturally strong with it, gave her a dusty and stained look of annoyance.
“The hell does it look like I’m doing?” he grumbled. “Goddamned shield emitter’s wobbling like jello on a spin dryer. Those Va’alen would have to be blind to miss it.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” she asked incredulously, “We’ve got probably a half-dozen of those cockroaches out there right now, we’re preparing to launch and now you’re telling me the shield emitter is on the goddamn fritz?”
“Hey,” he said as he plugged something back in and slapped shut the access panel before sealing it, “I just work here, okay?” Brandt opened her mouth to berate him, to berate the shuttle bay crew, to cancel the mission and report the technical failure to the bridge when all hell broke loose. Two huge explosions shook the entire ship, sounding to those in the shuttle bay like they were on the inside of a bass drum.
“Bridge to shuttle bay,” came Torres’ voice urgently from the loudspeakers on every suit of armor and every speaker on the entire deck as the emergency ship wide channel activated, “launch the Tanto immediately. Go now!”
No time for argument, Brandt stepped aboard the tail ramp and watched as the deck workers ran for the far hangar doors. As two massive percussive impacts rattled the entire ship, she locked eyes with Paterson and saw them reflected back at her like main beams on a ground transport just as the klaxon sounded for the shuttle bay to decompress, ready for launch. Unthinkingly, she grabbed the material at the chest of his flight suit and practically threw him bodily up the open ramp into the ship with her augmented strength, courtesy of the powered armor.
“Go!” she roared, her suit automatically sealing up as the atmosphere began to rush out into empty space.
Chapter Three – Deep Space Near the Twin Suns
All was quiet on the bridge of the Bōken sha Ichi as the crew waited with bated breath for the searching pairs of Va’alen fighters to inch closer to their position. Thoughts ran riot through their minds, wondering how they could have been so invisible to the enemy on their last excursion this deep into the system, when now they had somehow caused a ripple that was worthy of investigation.
“Sir,” the comm officer announced, “incoming from the Admiral on subspace. He says,” she hesitated and cleared her throat, “he says you’re to put your little dick away and answer the goddamn call…”
“I’ll take it in m…” Torres began before the near-squeal from the tactical officer cut the air.
“Incoming weapons fire…” He hardly needed to speak, as the twin impacts hit them before he had even finished speaking. Torres, remembering Rogers’ last words about the pilot of the Ichi only needing to be able to turn the ship and jump away, hit the ship-wide intercom and yelled for the Tanto to launch. He hoped their jump would mask the launch of the little shuttle, but also hoped that the smaller ship would be invisible to the Va’alen in the chaos. He told himself he’d be able to fill Brandt and Rogers in on the sudden and unwelcome developments just as soon as they got clear, but his logic assaulted him as it linked the incoming subspace communication with their detection and connected the dots.
“Helm,” he yelled as he righted himself in his chair, “one half light-year back towards the fleet. Go as soon as the Tanto is away. Gun positions, buy them enough time to launch – weapons free!”
A thudding chatter filled the ship as the bulkheads and decks vibrated from the upgraded weapons pods’ immediate firing. Outside, not that any of them but the gunners could see it and where none of them could hear it, thanks to the soundless vacuum they occ
upied, two Va’alen fighters shone in pulsating brilliance as their shields absorbed as much punishment as they could take before overloading and degrading to nothing. Almost simultaneously, in testimony to the gunners being switched on enough to have their fingers on the triggers and the enemy ships in their crosshairs, the two alien fighters erupted into furious sparks as they disintegrated.
The Tanto, already shrouded before Rogers piloted her expertly out into the void, rippled the space around its big sister as the Ichi spun on the spot to turn her nose about, and slipped away undetected.
~
“Admiral, incoming hail from the Ichi,” the comm officer said, “Captain Torres sounds pissed, Sir…”
“In my office,” Dassiova said as he rose and stomped away. Sitting down at the terminal in private he opened the channel icon blinking on his screen and started in.
“When I call, Captain,” he said acidly, “you answer!” Torres ignored the start of his ass-chewing and changed the subject.
“Subspace communications were detected,” he said. The admiral was taken aback until he gathered himself.
“I know, that’s why I was calling you,” he said.
“What? You knew the Va’alen could detect our subspace comms and… and you called us anyway?” Torres snarled.
“No, goddammit, we detected a subspace call back to Earth originating from the Ichi, which is why I called you! What are you talking about?”
“We were shrouded and sitting in the dark with a squad of Va’alen ships looking for us,” Torres snapped. “Only when the subspace comm was received from you, they somehow pinpointed our location. We’ve suffered no real damage to speak of, but I’ve jettisoned an away team in the Tanto to follow anomalous enemy behavior.”
“Do they know they can’t use subspace comms?” Dassiova asked after the briefest of pauses.
Conflict: The Expansion Series Book 3 Page 5