by Kal Spriggs
“Thanks,” Mel told him dryly. If there was anything that she might find panic inducing, it was thinking of her crew as wayward children. She didn’t even want to take that kind of responsibility for Rawn, who she had practically raised. Brian was practically ancient. Yewell had a fully grown, if massively immature, adult son. And Johnny…
Despite herself, Mel smiled a little bit as she thought of Johnny Woodard. Alone of them all, he at least didn’t cause her more problems. She shook her head though. “I have family, thanks, and they aren’t my family.”
Rao gave her a slight nod, “I understand that. Family is hard. My brother and I…” His expression shifted slightly. “Well, there was no one who I would trust more.”
“That’s the second time you’ve mentioned your brother,” Mel noted.
For a moment, his expression became wary. “It is?”
“Yeah, you mentioned him back on Harmony,” Mel reminded him. Then she remembered that he’d been insinuating that she wasn’t who she said, so she changed the subject, “What happened to him?”
“My brother?” Admiral Rao turned and walked over to the kitchen area of the lounge. He pointed at the coffee pot, “May I?”
“Of course,” Mel gestured.
He poured himself a cup, not looking at her as he went through the exercise, his motions precise, controlled. “I went into the Fleet. My brother went into medicine, he wanted to use nano-tech to help people.” Something flashed across his face, some emotion there and gone too fast for Mel to recognize it. “Children, specifically. He wanted to help children. He spent years at it, and then senior members of the government realized that there were military implications for some of the technology he’d discovered.”
Mel frowned at that. “I thought militarized nano weapons were prohibited?”
Admiral Rao paused, glancing back at her over his shoulder, “Oh, they are. But President Mombara made a very good case, he had some compelling evidence of the importance of that weapon… that it would never be used, but that developing it’s capabilities in order to counter it was important. So my brother, seeing the opportunity to expand his research and get real funding for his goals, well, he took the job.”
“What happened?” Mel asked softly.
“He found out that his research was going to be used as a threat, a means for President Mombara and his family to retain power… that they planned to deploy it against one of the worlds in the Protectorate as a ‘demonstration.’ So my brother came to me.”
“That’s why you staged the coup?” Mel asked in surprise. “This weapon they were trying to make.”
“Oh, they made the weapon,” Rao said softly. “They even tested it, in secret. They tested it on my brother’s assistants and people, to keep their weapon secret. The coup happened too late to save any of them.”
“Your brother?” Mel asked in shock.
Admiral Rao turned to face her, taking a slight sip of coffee, his eyes closed, his expression detached. “Nikhil Rao is gone,” he answered. “He and his dreams died when they turned his life’s work into a weapon."
***
Mel had walked Admiral Rao back to his quarters after that, but neither of them had said anything. She was most of the way back to her own quarters when she ran into Johnny Woodard. “Oh,” she blinked up at him, “hey.”
“Hey Mel,” Johnny grinned at her. She tended to forget just how big he was. She was tall, nearly two meters in height, but Johnny Woodard towered over her. His nickname, Tank, always seemed apt. “Uh,” he flushed a bit, “got a second?”
Mel considered it. She really needed to run a tactical analysis of this whole thing with Fenris. She wasn’t sure she trusted Yewell yet, she needed to talk with Aldera Kynes and help the woman get over Bob’s sudden departure… but then again, she owed it to her crew to address their concerns.
“Yeah, sure,” Mel told him, “we can talk in my quarters.”
She led the way, pausing to toggle open the door and then into her quarters. As she moved to her desk, she realized that this was the first time she’d ever had anyone in her room aboard the ship. She felt a bit self-conscious as she noticed the stack of dirty laundry overflowing from the bin and the various paperwork scattered across her desk. The personnel quarters aboard Fenris weren’t what anyone would term “spacious.” The ship had never been designed for a long-term crew. There’d been six small rooms for a temporary crew when the ship was built in the Preserve and then moved to Triad for installation of the artificial intelligence. But those quarters had been tiny and spartan and very outdated. Mel had shelled out to have them somewhat enlarged, added some VIP quarters, and done some overall quality of life improvements elsewhere, but there was only so much she could do within Fenris’s hull, especially with all the other upgrades.
What Mel had was exactly the same as the rest of the crew. A small room with a bunk, a half-sized “ship’s desk” that contained her computer terminal, a small closet for her uniforms and clothing, and a head with a toilet and shower.
“So,” Mel took a seat in her chair, feeling awkward, “What’s up?”
“Um,” Tank looked around, seeming not to know what to do. After a moment, he settled gingerly on the edge of her bunk, looking even bigger in the small room. “I just kind of wanted to talk with you about the decision for me to stay onboard.”
“Oh, that?” Mel waved it away, “it makes sense. I would have preferred it was brought up in a different fashion, but Samantha Yewell is hardly part of our crew.”
“She’s not,” Johnny nodded. “But I was going to suggest the same thing. Well, not the same but similar. I want to be here to back you up in case anything happens, like what happened at Harmony with the Guard Army Special Service team.”
“I hardly think—”
“It shouldn’t have happened before,” He interrupted, holding up one big hand, “but it did. That’s not on you, either. It’s just that Brian is the best we’ve got on the ground, so he should be where the risk is highest, but I think I’m probably the next best we have after him, and you need backup.”
“I can handle myself,” Mel crossed her arms, finding herself suddenly angry.
“I know,” he answered. “But can you fight off a boarding team and fight the ship if it comes to that? Can Fenris back you up and fight the ship and extract our ground team?”
Mel considered that, “You have a point.” She sighed, “Frankly, I’m just sick of people being overprotective of me.”
Johnny gave her a nod, “Like Marcus, right?”
She nodded, giving a tight sigh, “He’s the poster child for that, yeah. Or like my stupid brother, who kept Marcus’s secrets for him until they twisted him around and…” She trailed off as she realized that she’d probably said too much. “I’m sick of people trying to protect me and just making things worse.”
“I understand that,” he nodded. Then, he met her eyes, “But just so you know, Mel, I do want to protect you. But I also respect you. I know you’re capable, I just… I want to be there in case you need me.”
Mel stared at him, not really sure how to respond to that. “Uh, I’m not sure what you mean.”
Johnny flushed and he stood up. “What I mean, Mel, is I care about you. A lot. And I just wanted you to know.”
The normally calm and confident man seemed flustered. For that matter, Mel found her face heating. She opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again. She wasn’t sure what to say. I mean, I like him. He’s solid, he’s thoughtful, he’s nice… but…
The last time she’d cared for a man, he’d turned out to have been a sociopath. Johnny Woodard wasn’t Marcus Keller, but she wasn’t sure she trusted her own judgement.
As she stared at him, unable to really express that, she saw his expression turn hard. “Anyway, sorry. I should have known that you, that I…” Woodard swallowed, “I’ve got some prep work to do. Goodnight, Captain.”
He turned and moved through the hatch, toggling it closed behind
him, moving so quick that she hadn’t really had time to process his words and her emotions before he was gone.
“Goodnight, Tank,” she said softly.
***
Chapter 15
Time: 0400 24 February 292 G.D.
Location: Vagyr System
“Vagyr Traffic Control, this is the Hanet Chartered Mercenary Guild vessel, Tenacity, requesting permission to enter orbit,” Fenris announced. Mel listened with half an ear as she went over the sensor feed on her display. Things had gone smoothly since they entered the system. Captain Ortega’s Task Group had emerged from strategic warp just a few minutes earlier, about thirty minutes behind Fenris.
Mel looked over the sensor feeds. Everything seemed to be in order, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. There was a genuine Guard Task Force in orbit over Vagyr itself, but they hadn’t commed Fenris directly to ask the battlecruiser’s business here.
Vagyr Traffic Control hadn’t asked for specifics, either. They’d taken the “on official Mercenary Guild business” line at face value. Mel wasn’t sure if she should be pleased or not about that.
“Captain,” Fenris spoke up, “I’ve just picked up the arrival of thirteen vessels, matching the emissions of the third group of Admiral Mizra’s forces. But they’re all running transponders now matching ships of the Harmony Protectorate Defense Forces.”
“Interesting,” Mel noted. She would have figured that the Admiral would send a different group. This one had been the element that Fenris had eluded, after all. Their maneuvers and formation had been sloppy, their ship-handling inferior. “Did we identify those vessels?”
“Not all of them,” Fenris answered. “Four of them do match up to Harmony Protectorate Defense Force vessels that went missing after the coup.” He populated the display with a list of ships and captains. Mel considered that list. There were marks next to those officers showing the “trust” rankings that the commanders held as rated by the Guard. Though their ranking would probably be predjudiced, many of those officers were at the far end of the spectrum, officers who were suspected of buying their commissions under the corrupt Harmony government. That meant they were probably little more than pirates or the worst type of mercenaries.
Several more of the ships weren’t listed with names or commanding officers. But what Fenris did have was Guard notices and alerts, marking those vessels as pirates or in a few cases, mutineers.
“Auxiliary force, you think?” Mel asked as she considered the list.
“Possibly,” Fenris noted. “We should ask Admiral Rao if Admiral Mizra or the Harmony Protectorate utilized ‘auxiliaries.’ The other possibility is that these are Admiral Mizra’s allies rather than one of his detachments. It would explain why the emissions of these other ships don’t match the transponders listed.”
Mel didn’t have to ask who he meant by “allies.” There weren’t really a lot of candidates and we knew one party that was probably involved. Guard Free Now. Colonel Frost and possibly Mel’s brother Rawn. He knew ships, knew engineering and basic piloting. Was it possible he was aboard those ships even now?
Mel discarded the thought. While she wanted to find her brother, she couldn’t let that paralyze her, especially not now that there were not one, but two hostile forces in the system. She had to out-think both of them and without any solid evidence, she wasn’t going to waste time thinking about possibilities.
“Keep an eye on them,” Mel noted. “Let me know if the Guard Fleet in the system or our ‘friends’ under Captain Ortega respond to their arrival.”
“Will do,” Fenris growled.
Mel went back to monitoring the sensors and hoped that she could pull this all off… and tried not to think what that might mean for her brother if he was on one of those ships.
***
Rawn Armstrong wasn’t aboard one of the ships that had just arrived at the Vagyr system. He was aboard an entirely different vessel that had arrived three hours prior to the mercenary battlecruiser and he watched it as it drew closer to the planet.
“Our contact in Traffic Control says they’re putting it in high orbit,” Rawn’s comms officer reported. “Right where we planned.” For this mission, Colonel Frost had given him the corvette Canopus, one of Guard Free Now’s modified vessels. It had started out as a Tiger-class corvette, but the old ship had been extensively modified, originally it had started out as a Guard Fleet interdiction corvette, after it had been replaced it had gone on as a Hanet Mercenary Guild chartered ship. At some point it had been captured or sold to a smuggling operation, who had retrofitted it with serious upgrades to its warp drive, tweaking the power output to the drive coils in a process knowing as “pulsing.” The smuggler had probably done it to get a bit of edge on his competition, but he’d run afoul of Colonel Frost at one point or another, and Guard Free Now had found the ship useful as a courier ship and transport for action teams.
Those “pulsed” coils had allowed the Canopus to arrive hours ahead of the Tenacity. Which had given them time to link up with the Guard Free Now contact at Traffic Control and then to take up position where they could make their preparations in high orbit over Vagyr. A bit of money transferring and Traffic Control had arranged for the mercenary ship to go into the orbit parking position next to the Tenacity.
Rawn toggled his intercom, “Action teams, suit up. Prep for launch in three zero minutes, I repeat, three zero minutes.” He took a tense breath, his gaze going to the sensor feed of the incoming battlecruiser. It seemed like an ill omen to him, that he’d be boarding the mercenary vessel here at Vagyr. Vagyr was where his sister had died, aboard the automated warship Fenris. Vagyr was where Rawn had decided to take a more active role in Guard Free Now, going from a supporter and informant to deciding to make weapons and modify ships for them. That decision had meant that he’d helped them to kill hundreds of people. The Guard killed Mel, Rawn told himself.
But he had got Mel involved in the first place. He had sabotaged their parent’s freighter. He had used his contacts in GFN to get the Guard Intelligence Agents, to recruit Mel and him into their operation. It’s my fault… and now I’m going to help Guard Free Now to capture a battlecruiser.
Project Tsnuami was bad enough. Those were just civilian ships. And Colonel Frost’s full force was dangerous, but still limited. It couldn’t take on well-trained planetary militia, much less a Guard Task Force… With a battlecruiser, especially one as well-armed as the Tenacity seemed to be…
Colonel Frost won’t try to take on the Guard directly. He’ll go for maximum impact. Attack runs on civilian stations, shipping syndicates, passenger liners. Colonel Frost’s message was one of hate: wake up, the Guard aren’t protecting you. He would kill millions in order to shake up the system and made the Guard look bad.
But Rawn didn’t see a way out. He was implicated, now. The Guard had to have his fingerprints. He was already on several “detain” lists for Guard Intelligence and Guard Fleet. There was nowhere he could run, short of trying to go back to Century and he didn’t want to bring his troubles there.
That wasn’t even considering what Colonel Frost would do to him.
Besides, he told himself, none of this would be happening if the Star Guard and their corrupt masters didn’t need to be brought down. They had grown too powerful, too corrupt. Rawn might not agree with Colonel Frost’s techniques, but he still believed in the cause.
He would take the Tenacity. Maybe if he proved himself to Colonel Frost, he could get some chance at being in a position of authority aboard the ship, possibly even the commanding officer. That way, he could at least minimize the damage… or when it came down to it, be in a position where he could stop some atrocity. Knowing Colonel Frost, the GFN leader would have someone prepped to remove him, but Rawn would take his chances. Surely not everyone would be good with blowing up thousands or even millions of innocent civilians. It was worth a shot, anyway.
He stood up from his command chair and gave the sm
all bridge crew a solemn nod. “I’m going below to prep for the mission. Lieutenant Sardone has the conn.”
***
“We have established our parking orbit, Captain,” Fenris reported. “We’ve received landing authorization for our shuttle, with a landing window starting in a few seconds. When should I launch?”
Mel brought up her comms with Brian, who she’d put in charge of the ground team. “Status of your team?”
“Ready to go,” Brian answered cheerfully. Then again, any time it looked like he’d get to kill someone, he always got more cheerful.
“Prep for launch,” she told him. Mel took a deep breath. Once they did this, there was no going back. “Fenris, drop our drive and launch the shuttle.”
***
Drifting in space, only a dozen kilometers from where the Tenacity had made orbit, Rawn watched as the rippling area of distortion vanished. “Action team, move!” he snapped, even as he triggered the maneuvering jets on his bulky exosuit.
A shuttle launched from within a drive field required a brief window of time to get clear of the ship, normally. If the shuttle had a warp drive, it wasn’t entirely necessary to drop the ship’s drive field, but it was safer that way. Two ships could synchronize their drive fields and merge, combine, and separate their drive fields. However, even when both ships synched their drives, there was always a chance that there could be a problem. When two warp fields collided, the release of energy was often enough to burn out a smaller vessel’s drive. If there was enough energy in the collision, it could vaporize the smaller vessel. The energy transfer between something the size of a battlecruiser and something the size of a shuttle’s warp drive wasn’t going to leave much of the shuttle, even if they were (mostly) synched.
Generally no one wanted to take the risk. As expected, the mercenary ship had dropped their field and Rawn and his people turned up their exosuits’ attached maneuvering packs and fell towards the now undefended ship. The exosuits were the civilian equivalent of powered armor, but far more fragile and designed more for working in hazardous environments than taking enemy fire. The plan was to use them to jet down and latch onto the hull. Once they were that close, they’d shed the bulky exosuits and either breach the hull or go in through an airlock in their ships suits.
