by Robert Boren
Sondra smiled. “He’s right. Should I get with Andrea and see if she can man the bridge with Tim and Izzy?”
“Please do,” I said. “Any other pressing issues we need to discuss right this minute?”
“Not that I can think of,” Nolan said. “We’re ready.”
“Yes, I think we’re ready,” Vermillion said. “I’ll go back to my suite. Doubt I’ll be able to sleep, but I’m not critical to the mission.”
“Good, we’ll end this meeting for now. Be back on the bridge in five hours.”
“Aye, Captain,” Sondra said. “I heard back from Andrea. She and her crew are on the way.”
JJ and I got up and left the bridge.
{ 18 }
Deployment
T he five hours went quickly, JJ and I dozing in our stateroom, although I was too amped up to get much rest.
Nolan was just arriving at the bridge when JJ and I got there.
“Well, it’s almost time,” he said.
“Worried?” JJ asked.
“No, anxious for it to be over,” Nolan said. “You?”
JJ smiled. “I’m not as scared as I expected to be.”
We walked onto the bridge. Skip and Sondra were already there, checking the readings at their stations.
“Hi, Captain,” Sondra said. “We relieved Andrea and her crew about ten minutes ago.”
“No problems?” I asked.
“Nope.”
“No attacks anywhere, either,” Skip said. “I expected the Clan to do something.”
“AIs, on speaker please.”
“We’ll be fine,” JJ said. “Any new scan info?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry,” Nolan said. “I spent some time reading up on the rancor over the mandatory PA law. Hard to tell what they think at this point. There are other sophisticated groups who warned they’d shut it down.”
“It put the markets in a tailspin,” Skip said, “not that I care.”
“I care,” Sondra said. “You don’t have money in the markets?”
“Real Estate,” Skip said. “Emerging worlds.”
“Best be careful with that,” Nolan said. “Dicey way to grow your money, unless you do something like Tac has.”
I laughed. “There you go. Buy stock in Tac’s company. He’s the next Henry Ford.”
The banter helped relieve tension, which I was thankful for.
Vermillion came onto the bridge to check on us, looking tired and worried.
“You didn’t get any rest at all, did you?” JJ asked him.
“I knew that wasn’t gonna happen. I had a nice chat with Simone, bouncing through Tac’s holographic communicator. They’ve got the weak spots fixed on all of their Razors, and found bugs on all of them as well. Kaleb cooked up a way to stop transmissions on his own, which will help us.”
“That’s great news,” I said, “because I expect a reaction to what we’re about to do, and they may need to get involved.”
“How about Bryce’s guys?” Nolan asked.
“Couldn’t connect well enough to chat, unfortunately. I’ll get with him as soon as we’re out of the jump. The relay from Tac’s holographic communicator is a little dicey using the old standard comm units. It works better when Drake’s involved, for some reason.”
Commander Klemperer came onto the bridge. “It’s soon, isn’t it?”
“Thirty-five minutes, give or take,” Sondra said. “How are you, Commander?”
He smiled. “I’m great. We’re ready to go.”
Skip got a grin on his face, but a look from Sondra shut him up before he got started.
“Fighter bay, correct?” Sondra asked.
“It’s technically Bay Three, but I’ve been calling it the fighter bay,” Klemperer said. “Guess I’ll get back and make sure everybody is in their fighters and ready to go.”
“Are you going out with them?” JJ asked.
“I was planning on it, but was ordered to stay in the multi-theater room and direct, since we’ve got teams fighting in four different locations.”
“By who?” JJ asked.
“By me,” I said, “and the Chairman.”
“I don’t mind,” Klemperer said. “If it was just one team of fighters, I’d think differently, but this is a different kind of battle, and I can do more good directing all four.” He left the room.
Skip snickered, glancing at Sondra, who shook her head.
“Thank you, Captain,” she said.
“For what?”
“For keeping him where he’ll do the most good.”
“And keeping her boyfriend out of harm’s way,” Skip quipped.
“He doesn’t know I’m alive,” Sondra said.
I glanced at her. “Yeah he does.”
“Wait, what?”
“Forget it for now, Sondra. Let’s go over the sequence again.”
We worked through the launching of the fighters and the flight suits a final time, our AIs all assigned to the fight and connected to each other. Vermillion sat in one of the observer’s chairs, going over notes on his tablet, asking a question every so often. The activity made the remaining time fly by. Sondra’s station beeped at her.
“We’re ready to come out of the jump, Captain.”
We felt the static as the New Jersey settled into open space.
“Stand by to launch fighters and flight suits,” Skip said.
“Commander Klemperer, are your pilots ready to go?” Sondra asked.
“They are,” his voice said over the speakers. “We’ll launch a drone in each area to take video, as usual. I’ll be using that and the onboard cameras in the fighters for command and control.”
“Bays two and three, all personnel evacuate the floor please,” Skip said. “De-pressurization in four minutes.”
We watched video of the bays, now devoid of people, the flight suits going from disk to full extension in a split second, fighters poised to launch as the bay doors opened.
“Launch,” I said.
“Aye, Captain,” Sondra said, sending the sequence to the fighters, the AIs working together to control the flight suits.
“There goes the flight suits,” Nolan said, watching them swarm out the door, cloaking as they went, invisible before they got more than a few meters.
“They’re all away,” Skip said.
“Fighters going out in sequence, just like clockwork,” Nolan said.
“Thank you, Butch. Arrival time?”
“Thank you. Scan all locations for Clan ships, please. Verify they’re still in place.”
“Are they full?” JJ asked.
“Negative,” Nolan said, looking at his screen. “Close to half full.”
“Crap, what’s small?” I asked.
“They’re protecting the troop transports, not the Razor ships, Captain,” Nolan said. “Interesting.”
“Were they there before?”
“Don’t know. We were much further away when we did the initial scans. Small craft are harder to see at that distance.”
“We’re sending a hundred of our fighters to each location,” Skip said.
“True, but we don’t know how many are gonna flood out of those Clan Razors,” Sondra replied.
“Since w
e have some time, I’m going to my stateroom to contact Bryce,” I said. “Be back soon. Butch will let me know if anything breaks.”
“Shall I tag along?” JJ asked.
“Sure.” We left the bridge, riding the tin can back to our stateroom.
“Don’t mention the battle is starting,” I said to JJ as we entered.
“I won’t.” JJ sat on the end of the bed as I sat in front of the comm device and paged Bryce. He responded after a few minutes.
“Trey. Sorry, wasn’t close to my stateroom. What’s up? Heard you neutralized the PA stun capability. Came in a message from Chairman Vermillion.”
“Yes, that was a successful mission. No losses.”
“Going to tell us how you did it?” Bryce asked.
“Eventually. Did you guys fix the weak spots on your Razors?”
“It’s in work. When’s the next meeting? Admiral Boeraton is anxious to meet with the Chairman and Simone. He’s been calling me about once an hour.”
“We just got out of a jump,” I said, “and we’ll be busy for a while. You didn’t tell Boeraton about the weak spots of the Razors, did you?”
Bryce laughed. “Here’s the dirty little secret. Nobody considers Boeraton to be in charge. I went directly to the Razor captains, and none of them support the Admiral. He blew it before. I think we ought to shove him out an airlock, to be honest, but he’s got stores of fuel and other supplies. We need him to get to those, so we’re humoring him for now.”
“Good. Have you had any contact with Simone?”
“Nope. She hasn’t tried contacting us, and I can’t contact her.”
“Oh. Well, probably just as well. She’s been working her Razor ships, and they found bugs, too.”
“We’ve been scanning the Razors for those. I haven’t heard if they’ve found anything yet, though. The Admiral is making communication difficult. He’s trying to keep me out of the loop, and we need him to think he’s still got power, so I can’t openly go around him. That old bastard might try to take command of everything.”
“We won’t agree to that,” I said, “but don’t mention it.”
“I won’t, don’t worry. He’s on my last nerve. Oh, and he made me promise to tell you not to provoke the Clan. No attacks unless he knows about it.”
I laughed. “We’ll take that under advisement.”
“Somehow I knew you’d say that.”
“Use what influence you have to make sure those weak spots get fixed. Also stay on them about the bugs. Tell them Simone’s team found them in all her Razor ships. I’d check the Centurion ships as well, just to be safe.”
“Wouldn’t they have come after us by now, Trey?”
“They hadn’t gone after Simone. They aren’t ready. We’ll use that. I gotta go. Talk to you soon.”
“Good luck with whatever you’re about to do.”
“We aren’t doing anything.”
Bryce chuckled. “Don’t worry, I’m not saying anything. Take care.”
He left the call.
“Geez,” JJ said. “I didn’t like the sound of that.”
“Wonder why Boeraton is afraid of us provoking the Clan?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s still with the Clan, and Bryce isn’t close enough to know about it. If that’s the case, the Clan might know about the Razor weak spots now. Only one captain has to slip up.”
“Our current mission doesn’t rely on their weak spots,” I said. “We’ll find out if Boeraton is dirty soon enough. If he is, he’ll be killed. I have a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to that.”
“You’re sounding like you’re in command. Good.”
“The Chairman put me in command of all Samson Corporation forces, so I’m not under the Central Authority’s fleet in any way, shape, or form. May pay a little lip service to the Admiral at first, if it will help us, but he’s not in control. I’ll be sharing command with Simone, more than likely.”
“We’d better get back to the bridge,” JJ said.
We left the stateroom, arriving back to the bridge in a few minutes.
“Anything happen?” I asked.
“Those flight suits will be in place early,” Nolan said. “Incredible technology. How’s things with Bryce?”
“They’re working the Razor weak spots and the bugs,” I said. “Hope we don’t need them during this action. They won’t be ready.”
“No activity at the other locations?” I asked.
“Just over an hour,” JJ said. “This is killing me. I’m gonna go down to the Zephyrus and check on the refinery.”
“Go ahead,” I said, “but I’m gonna stick around here, just in case.”
JJ nodded and left the bridge.
“I don’t blame her, I’m on pins and needles too,” Sondra said.
We all settled into the wait. I pulled up the monitor on the Captain’s chair and went over each area again. Vermillion came in once to check on us, but went back to his suite quickly, probably so he could pace and not bother anybody. The minutes ticked by too slowly.
“What kind of movement?” I asked.
“I see it,” Nolan said. “Not as many as we saw on Oollanders.”
“We’ll be in place in fifteen minutes,” Skip said. “We’re going to catch them with a lot of people on those transports.”
“Hope they don’t jump away and ruin our fun,” Nolan said.
“Anything on the last location?” I asked, my heart racing.
JJ came back on the bridge, freezing when she saw our expressions. “Something’s wrong.”
“Not necessarily,” I said. “More troop movements to the transports over the last few minutes, but we’re only fifteen minutes from the attack.”
“That means the flight suits are already in place,” JJ said.
“Well, at least we know they can’t see them,” Skip said.
“The fighters aren’t right next to the enemy ships, remember,” Nolan said. “They’re within a twenty-second jump, and they have the drive modules. If somebody was close enough they might get visual contact. Mark Vs don’t have cloaking capability.”
“Oh,” Skip said. “I knew that. Sorry.”
Vermillion came on the bridge. “Almost there?”
“Almost there,” I said. “We’ve seen some movement of troops up to the transports.”
“They’ll jump away if we aren’t quick,” he said, starting to pace.
“Good, you’re here,” I said.
“Any more activity on Devonia Axxiom?” Vermillion asked.
“What action? JJ asked.
“They were trying to get the PA stun capability working again,” Vermillion said. “Had quite a few people working it.”
“Will they be able to tell what we did?” Skip asked.
“Klemperer here. We’re ready to commence the atta
cks.”
“Everybody’s in place in all locations?” Vermillion asked.
“Proceed,” I said.
“All fighters, jump into position,” Klemperer said.
We waited, dead silence on the bridge. After twenty seconds the video lit up four screens, the fighters heading right towards the massive transport ships.
“The Clan fighters have seen us,” Klemperer said. “Torpedoes fired at all of the transports.”
“And here it begins,” Vermillion said, watching as fighters continued towards the transports, firing plasma guns and more torpedoes.
“Yes!” Skip said. “Just breached the hull on that transport over Oollanders.”
“Look, fighters flooding out of the Clan battleships over Oollanders,” Nolan said. “This is gonna work.”
“Scratch the first transport in orbit over Oollanders,” Klemperer said. “Nice shooting, team. Now get the other one.”
“Can you put up video?”
“Okay, scratch that, Butch.”
“Look, the transports at the other three locations are all hit,” Sondra said, eyes glued to the screen. “Wow.”
“Get ready,” Klemperer said. “Fighters leaving the Razor bays over Aviaotron, Fggergia, and Spatzer. Let’s kill the remaining transports and get the heck out of there.”
“The last transport is toast, get the hell out of there. Don’t engage any more Clan fighters.”
“Get away, dammit,” Klemperer shouted.
“You’re right about that, Emerald,” Klemperer said. “All fighters on their way home.”