“Some of my Marines have been with me since the Ansem Gulf Incident,” Edvard pointed out. “I’ve walked into six different kinds of hell with them. There’s no one on this ship that isn’t among the best we have—you may want to remind your people of that.”
#
Chapter 13
New Edmonton System
10:00 May 26, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Chameleon
Kyle sat in the command chair at the center of Chameleon’s bridge, watching the streams of data running through his implant with a practiced mental eye. He was surprised by how much he missed the physical backup screens that allowed old-fashioned situational awareness to kick in, but the neural feeds were almost as effective.
Seconds ticked away as the Q-ship’s icon approached the marker in his datafeed where she would exit Alcubierre drive, and Kyle did his best to look as relaxed and cheerful as always. Glass was still playing his cards close to his chest, and Chameleon’s Captain wasn’t certain what he’d meet in the New Edmonton System.
It was possible his people would be going into battle, and the last time he’d commanded a battle, a lot of people had died. Even in his own head, he couldn’t argue much with the general assessment of his peers and superiors that he hadn’t actively screwed up at Huī Xing, but he still felt there had to be something he could have done better.
“Alcubierre emergence ninety seconds,” Lau reported. “On target.”
“Taylor? Rokos? Ready?” Kyle asked.
“Active sensors are locked down to avoid drawing attention,” his tactical officer reported. “Lance source cells spun up; our one missile salvo is prepped and in the launchers. Deflectors are ready to come up at civilian radiation protection level. Chameleon is ready for whatever you need, sir.”
“Birds are locked and loaded,” Rokos reported once Taylor was done. “Five squadrons of glorified showboats ready to go on your order.”
“Thank you,” Kyle replied. “Taylor—who are we today, anyway?” he asked with a chuckle.
“We’re the Centauri-registry freighter Golden Moonlight, sir,” she replied swiftly. There was no point in flying a Q-ship if they were going to arrive in every system flashing their Federation ID codes, after all.
“Emergence ten seconds.”
Kyle waited.
Exiting the warp bubble created by the Alcubierre-Stetson drive was always sudden. One moment, all of reality around you was torn to incoherent shreds by the gravity wells that created your bubble of space-time. The next, reality snapped back into place with a suddenness the human mind couldn’t quite comprehend.
In the center of the screen was an immense gas giant, one of the largest Kyle had ever seen. A super-Jovian, on the edge of becoming a brown dwarf: McMurray, source of hydrogen and rare gasses for half of the Stellar League.
“What am I looking at?” Kyle asked, watching as Taylor’s team started dropping icons onto his screen.
“That’s…a lot of extraction infrastructure,” the tactical officer noted slowly. “I’m reading…at least fifteen hundred cloudscoops. Twenty-four central processing stations. Thousands of prospecting ships. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
That was almost five times the processing infrastructure around Gawain, which represented the largest hydrogen extraction facility in the Federation and one of the biggest in the Alliance.
“I’m not reading any defenses,” she said quietly.
“They’re there, Commander,” Glass said softly, the spy stepping onto the bridge with a confident stride. “The League makes a hobby of war in a way that makes no sense to most of us. While their internal wars are fought by specific rules, they don’t expect anyone else to fight by them.
“The McMurray production stations are guarded by mercenary pilots who’ve seen more battles than anyone else outside of a war,” he continued. “Their gear isn’t quite as good as ours, but it’s better than the Terrans’ current starfighters.”
Both the Commonwealth and the League were flying sixth-generation starfighters versus the seventh-generation spacecraft the Alliance now had deployed across their entire fleet. The Cataphract-type League starfighters Rokos’s people were flying were late fifth-generation birds, replaced in most League service by the Hoplite type.
Inferior to the Falcons or not, in the hands of the League’s mercenary condottieri pilots and crews, the Hoplite was a dangerous, dangerous starfighter.
“Where are we headed, Mister Glass?” Kyle asked the spy, managing to not sound utterly frustrated with the man.
“Chameleon wants to head to high orbit, near the Nexen Cloud in the third ring,” Glass told him. “The Cloud sticks out to scanners, so it’s a common waiting ground for ships negotiating refueling status. I’d suggest you do so from there, but I will be taking a shuttle into one of the processing stations to meet with my black-market contact.”
“I will accompany you,” Kyle decided. He’d been kept in the dark on the nature of this mission for too long.
“That would be…unwise,” the spy said slowly. “Shouldn’t you remain with your ship?”
“I need to be fully informed on our missions, Mister Glass,” Kyle replied. “Commander Chownyk is perfectly capable of negotiating our resupply.”
Glass looked like he was going to argue for a long moment, then sighed and shook his head.
“I’m not going to win this,” he acknowledged aloud. “I presume you have something other than a uniform to wear?”
#
Given Chameleon’s covert status, Kyle actually had multiple civilian outfits aboard. With modern computer technology for image substitution, there was no need for him to be out of uniform under normal circumstances, and the full-body shipsuit that resembled a turtleneck and slacks at a distance was a relatively standard garment galaxy-wide.
He’d switched out in this case for a slightly differently cut shipsuit in dark blue instead of military black, and strapped a shoulder holster under a black leather jacket.
Glass looked him over as they met in the shuttle bay and nodded approval. The spy wore the same plain civilian suit he’d always worn, though Kyle knew from the ship’s safety systems that he wore a thin shipsuit under the black suit.
Lieutenant Riley and the two black-ops troopers that were joining them were in a mix of shipsuit styles and jackets closer to Kyle’s array than Glass’s. All three carried slung stubby carbines, not a model Chameleon’s Captain was familiar with.
“They’re okay with us hauling that kind of hardware?” he asked, indicating the guns with a jerk of his head.
“Not in most places,” Riley said with a grin. “But the New Edmonton processing stations have a reputation. No one is going unarmed here.”
“Station Seven is not, despite what Riley implies, a lawless hellhole,” Glass pointed out. “It is, however, notably lacking in what even the League would regard as sensible gun laws. Riley’s guns will be fine.
“We have no enemies here,” he continued, “but there are people here who will try and rob us without personal rancor. Outside of my contact, no one here knows that we are Federation. Keep it that way.”
“We’re off the freighter Golden Moonlight,” Kyle reminded them as he stepped into the shuttle, his implants linking in to the small spacecraft’s computers and artificial intelligences. “Looking for cargo while my XO negotiates fuel and food?”
“Exactly,” Glass confirmed with a small smile. “We may make a useful spy out of you yet, Captain Roberts.”
Kyle settled into the control chair and flashed the older man a grin.
“If you’re going to insult me like that, I suggest everyone strap in,” he ordered.
#
Local space around McMurray was crowded by space standards, and there was no planetary-system-wide traffic control. All Kyle could do was keep a careful eye on the vectors of everything around him and make sure that his own course kept him well clear of those vectors.
The shuttle’s AI
s handled most of the straight number-crunching involved in that, however, and he had more enough attention to spare to take in the view.
McMurray was a gorgeous world, even by the breathtaking standards of super-Jovian gas giants, with whorls of blue and green cutting across a mostly red base. It lacked moons but had seven rings of varying consistency—the Nexen Cloud representing a portion of the fifth ring that was densely filled with rocks and debris, making it harder to detect anything in its shadow.
The rings added to both the navigation hazard and the lightshow, sunlight from New Edmonton glittering off the ice and metal that made them up.
The processing stations that orbited the planet in a carefully measured circles sat just inside the innermost ring. In a way, they and their cloudscoops formed an eighth, man-made ring around the planet. Each processing station consumed the gas from over a hundred cloudscoops and hundreds of prospecting ships diving through the outer atmosphere.
The stations were fragile-looking things, especially compared to the more military structures that Kyle was familiar with. Massive fuel storage tanks that looked like—and functionally were—glorified balloons hung from kilometer-long struts, with dozens of pipes dragging the unmixed gasses and fluids away to the refining plants that turned it into saleable product.
A single spherical Alcubierre-capable tanker nestled against one end of the station, and two cylindrical sublight ships were linked in along the way. As they grew closer, Kyle’s passive sensors finally picked up the defenders: a dozen Hoplite-type fighters maintained lazily varying orbits above the platform, watching for any kind of threat.
The system quietly pinged him to inform him that Processing Station Six’s space traffic control was requesting a data handshake. No one was verbally reaching out to him, but the data systems were talking to him.
He authorized the handshake and linked in to the STC. A new course flashed up on his systems and he dropped the shuttle into it, arcing the spacecraft toward the designated docking bay.
None of the Hoplites paid any attention to him, their condottieri pilots clearly having dismissed the unarmed ship as a non-threat—a piece of overconfidence that could have easily destroyed the station. Small or not, the shuttle was capable of over four hundred gravities and contained a zero-point cell producing a small but constant stream of pure antimatter when active. That antimatter fueled its engines, fed into a secondary power generation system—and filled capacitors to make sure those systems continued working.
Rammed into one of the gas balloons or the core of the station, the shuttle would turn Processing Station Six into a massive and expensive fireball.
Of course, Kyle had no intention of doing any such thing, but the lack of concern was disconcerting.
10:35 May 26, 2736 ESMDT
McMurray Processing Station Six
As Kyle settled the shuttle down on the floor of the docking bay, Glass gestured for Riley and her troopers to join them.
“We are meeting a man named Kamil Ostrowski,” he told them. “Despite being in the League, he was born on Old Earth, in Poland of all places.”
Kyle was relatively sure he wasn’t the only one drawing a blank on where that was.
“He’s very high up in one of the organized crime families that are woven throughout the Commonwealth and the League,” the spy continued. “I’m relatively sure his Bratva family have fingers into Alliance space as well, but Pakhan Ostrowski works in the League and has fingers all the way back to his homeworld.”
“If he knows who we are, are we sure he’s okay with selling out Terra?” Kyle asked.
“Ostrowski was caught by Commonwealth Internal Security twenty-three standard years ago and sentenced to a very long time in prison,” Glass said with a wicked smile. “He escaped, but his biometrics are on too many lists. Even with his resources, he can’t go into Commonwealth space for very long. He hates the Commonwealth and is perfectly happy to sell them out for money. Speaking of which, Riley?”
The black-ops Lieutenant hefted a briefcase.
“I’m guessing this is for him?”
“That’s a good chunk of the price of a starship in bearer bonds. Be a bit more careful with it, please,” Glass said plaintively.
Riley looked thoughtful.
“I’m not sure about that,” she pointed out. “Were I actually the mercenary thug I’m dressed like, you would not have told me that.”
“Fine,” Glass allowed. “Roberts—you’re the ship captain, but don’t use your first name. While no one is likely to recognize you by face, even here they’ve probably heard of the Stellar Fox.”
#
The interior of the station was almost reassuring to Kyle. From the lackadaisical attitude of the security fighters and the frail-looking exterior, he’d wondered if the inside would show a similar failure of concern or structure.
Instead, the hallways and corridors Glass led them through could have been on any modern space station anywhere in the Federation or its allies. Panels along the walls provided a diffuse-but-bright light. Doors had implant-authorized locks. Restaurants and stores hawked their wares.
Security was rarer—but noticeably more heavily armed where they were present—than it would have been on a Federation station, but otherwise, the crowd with its mind-boggling variety of people and clothes could have been right back in orbit of Castle.
Glass led them through the station with the confidence of someone who had either been there before or had a very up-to-date map in their implant. Dodging crowds and missing main commercial concourses for side corridors, he finally led them to a door that looked no different from any other they’d passed and paused.
“Watch your manners,” he said crisply. “Show Pakhan Ostrowski respect.”
The old man then rapped twice on the door, waited a moment, and then rapped three times. An old but simple identification trick, though one that Kyle presumed was followed by some kind of implant interrogation.
The door slid open and the spy led the way into a lushly decorated lobby. Thick carpet cushioned their shoes and gorgeously detailed massive couches laid out a square around a holographic fire in the middle of the room. Bookshelves covered every wall, though Kyle presumed at least some had to do double duty as concealed doors.
Two men in heavy combat vests, about as damage-resistant as unpowered armor got, stepped up to flank the Federation party, massive shotguns drifting gently to cover everyone.
“Weapons. Now,” the man on the right said in thickly accented English.
“Hand them over,” Kyle ordered before Glass could speak, removing his own sidearm and offering it to the bodyguard. He hadn’t really dealt with criminals in his life, but he doubted that insisting on hanging on to their guns counted as “respect.”
The one guard collected their weapons, gracelessly surrendered by the black-ops team, while the other ran a scanner over them. He looked…unenthused.
“Watching,” the speaker grunted at Riley. “Implants won’t save you.”
“Please, Ivan,” a new speaker said calmly. “Our guests did not fly the length and breadth of Terran space to start a fight. Come in, come in.”
The Federation party obeyed, Kyle surreptitiously studying the man in the couch on the other side of the holographic fire. Pakhan Kamil Ostrowski was a large man, only a little smaller than Kyle himself, his graying hair cropped short to his scalp. He looked to have been massively muscular once but now carried an immense gut.
Somehow, Kyle doubted that the extra weight would stop the crime boss moving as fast as he needed to if threatened. For now, Ostrowski was smiling as he gestured them to seats.
“It’s Glass this time, right?” he asked Glass genially. “I always forget with you spies.”
“You remember correctly,” the old spy replied calmly. “And I doubt you ever forget unintentionally.”
Ostrowski laughed and gestured to the couches again.
“Please, sit, you’re stretching my neck,” he told them.
“We had a deal, Ostrowski,” Glass reminded him. “I have the money. Do you have what I asked for?”
“I do,” the crime lord replied. “But so fast to business! We should drink, have some scones—Maria!”
A young blonde woman materialized through one of the bookshelves, one Kyle now realized was an extremely high-fidelity hologram, carrying a tray of small cakes and shot glasses of clear liquid.
“Drink, eat,” Ostrowski commanded, grabbing a scone and a shot himself. “It is all safe—what kind of man would poison his guests?!”
Glass sighed and obeyed, and Kyle followed suit.
“I found what you wanted,” the crime boss finally noted. “There’s a depot in the Aurelius System, used to support patrols along the border with the League. They’ll have munitions, fuel, food, everything you can need. I even, kind soul that I am, have their patrol schedule for the next two months so you can strike when they are undefended.”
“Thank you,” the spy replied, gesturing for Riley to pass over the briefcase. The crime boss gestured for the girl to check it. Despite appearing to be the server, Maria had the case opened and the bonds flipped through in a second.
“Exactly as agreed,” she said calmly, then disappeared back through the bookshelf with the case.
“I believe that concludes our arrangement,” Glass said. “The data?”
Ostrowski removed a small disk from his pocket and tossed it to Riley.
“If you have more of that money,” he said lazily, “I may have found something else of interest to you. Two things, in fact. Each worth what you paid for the depot,” he finished, his voice suddenly sharp.
Q-Ship Chameleon Page 8
