A wedge of new icons appeared. There were almost no details for these, though their speed and vector suggested starfighters. The defending fighters assumed a standard Commonwealth defensive perimeter, stretching out to intercept the inbound ships a million kilometers away from their mothership—far enough out that they would be unable to engage with fighter missiles or positron lances.
Instead, the new starfighters flashed at just over three million kilometers, firing missiles from well outside normal starfighter missile range, and then turned their vectors ninety degrees away from the defenders.
The entire exercise was running in accelerated time. Kyle could judge even without the system telling him that the attackers would evade interception. The defending starfighters went after the incoming missiles instead, but those disappeared in a wall of jamming far more capable than a starfighter missile should carry.
Fifty starfighters launched one hundred missiles and over half survived to reach the carrier. Despite the massive defenses the mothership carried, half a dozen of the weapons made it through and obliterated the carrier.
“That was the centerpiece of the data Ostrowski had on the Commonwealth’s new fighter program,” Glass said quietly. “That wasn’t a simulation. The missiles were practice warheads, but the flight time, the maneuvers, the ECM…all of that was done in real space.”
“I see,” Kyle said slowly. “I’m not sure…”
“How this relates to Cavendish?” Glass asked. “It doesn’t. It does relate to our mission. Target selection was always up to me. If the data on this starfighter and its weaponry is at Tau Ceti, however, I don’t see a choice. Do you?”
“No,” the Captain admitted. “We need this data.”
“This mission is more critical now than I thought,” Glass replied. “We still need to deliver a critical blow to the Commonwealth’s infrastructure, but we also need to steal this research.
“We’ll need to hit Aurelius to acquire Commonwealth munitions,” he continued. “We also need to meet up with the contact Cavendish was supposed to meet, as he was supposed to provide us with upgrade kits to bring our Cataphracts up to their Delta standard. Some of that work is done already, but we don’t have the lance upgrades.”
Kyle nodded slowly. Glass was giving him the briefing he should have provided when they left Castle.
“We can still reach out to them?”
“We should be able to, yes,” the spy allowed. “There’s a giant wrench thrown in now, but I’ll accept that’s at least mostly my fault.” He sighed. “That contact won’t deal with anyone he hasn’t met, which meant it had to be me or Cavendish.
“If you’re going to blame someone for not telling you what was going on, blame me,” Glass said. “And let Laura out of the damned brig.”
The spy seemed to have made a major effort to actually bring Kyle into the loop, so he nodded slowly.
“She’s still grounded,” he said firmly. “That’s Rokos’s call, and he needs to trust whoever he’s taking into battle. After everything she’s pulled, orders or not, he can’t. I wouldn’t in his place.”
“Fine,” Glass agreed. “I’ll reach out to my contact as well. I’ll let you know what the next step for getting those upgrade kits is.”
#
Chapter 16
New Edmonton System
23:00 May 26, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Chameleon
Kyle was eyeing the scanners as the sublight “clipper” freighter detached the tube they’d delivered food and other supplies to from Chameleon and drifted away under careful gas thrusters. If the interstellar equivalent of a bumboat saw anything unusual in the quantity of foodstuff the Q-ship had bought, her crew was wise enough not to say anything.
They might later, but that was fine. Part of the point of this operation was for the attack to be traced back here, after all.
Technically, Commander Taylor had the watch, but this was the first watch the young woman had ever held in a potentially hostile environment. So, Kyle had brought a datapad out into the bridge with him and was pointedly doing paperwork—recording the physical, League-minted coinage he’d just handed over for another month’s worth of food, as a matter of fact.
All that was really important was that the Captain, despite being on the bridge, did not have the watch. Fleet Commander Jenny Taylor did, and the blonde officer was doing a fine job.
And if she needed backup, her Captain was right there.
When Glass came rushing onto the bridge, Kyle was glad he’d made that choice. The old spy disconcerted him; he wasn’t leaving his junior officers to deal with the man.
“Ah, Captain, good,” Glass said when he spotted him. “Can we speak in private?”
“My office is right here,” Kyle agreed genially. He glanced over at Taylor and gave her a quick thumbs-up. If she needed him, she could still buzz him, after all.
She somewhat hesitantly returned the gesture, but she’d been doing fine so far, which gave Kyle a level of confidence as he led Glass into his office.
“What is it?” he asked, taking a seat behind his desk and gesturing the spy to sit.
“I finally made contact with Trickster,” Glass said calmly. “They’ve agreed to meet us, but only on their terms.”
“I thought that was basically how things were going to work with your contact,” Kyle observed.
“They’re being very specific and I don’t like it,” the spy replied. “Before, we were meeting someone in the Nexen Cloud to negotiate a delivery that would have come by one of the clippers in the business of servicing starships.
“Now they want me to physically meet them on his station and, I quote, ‘bring the big captain, no one else,’” Glass concluded. “Trickster had people watching us. I don’t trust Trickster and I don’t want to take Chameleon all the way to their station.”
“Where’s their station?” Kyle asked.
“Here in New Edmonton,” the spy replied. “The system has an outer ice belt, much like Sol’s Kuiper Belt. The station is hidden out there, far away from prying eyes. Trickster is…one of the more notorious League pirates, and for reasons I haven’t managed to discover, Dictator Periklos wants them dead.”
“They personally pissed off the man who took over the League? I’m almost impressed.”
“Don’t be. Trickster is murderous scum, but they’ve got the tech we need.” Glass shook his head. “The Cataphract-D has better acceleration, better ECM, a more powerful positron lance… You know better than I whether we need those upgrade kits, Captain.”
“I’m guessing that Ostrowski’s intel says we’re running up against Katanas at least in Tau Ceti, if not in Aurelius?” Kyle asked.
“Probably not Aurelius, but one of the production lines is in Tau Ceti,” Glass admitted.
“If we send out people up against Katanas in the half-upgraded Cataphracts we have now, when we have a better option, we’re killing them ourselves,” Chameleon’s Captain said grimly.
“Tell Trickster we’ll make their meeting, then forward the coordinates to Lau’s people. And I’ll make sure our teeth are sharp when we walk into the spider’s den.”
07:00 May 27, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
New Edmonton Ice Belt
Even more than inner-system asteroid belts, ice belts were far less dense than media liked to portray them. As Chameleon approached the coordinates they’d been given, there were no swarms of ice asteroids attempting to chew them up.
There was a level of ice “dust” that was actively dangerous to the ship at any significant velocity, but that was why even civilian ships had electromagnetic deflectors and armor. Kyle carefully checked the readouts he was receiving to be sure that their current speed, several thousand kilometers a second, was sustainable without increasing the deflectors to less-civilian levels.
“Where exactly is this station?” he wondered aloud. Eight hours of flight had carried them over twenty-two light-minutes farther out from
McMurray, far into the uninhabited outskirts of the system.
They were rapidly approaching the coordinates Glass had been given, but there was nothing in the ten light-seconds around them except for half a dozen chunks of ice of various sizes.
“Should be exactly at the coordinates,” Glass told him. “Unless Trickster is being a complete bastard, anyway.”
“Taylor?” Kyle asked. “What are you reading?”
“One of our local ice chunks is right at those coordinates,” she reported. “Might be denser than the rest, too. Hard to tell on passives—want me to ping them?”
“No,” he said slowly. “Lau, take us in as if we’re expecting a docking port on that chunk of rock. Taylor—keep the hatches closed, but spin up the lances and charge the missiles.”
“Yes, sir,” she replied. Lau kept their attention silently on guiding the big Q-ship in toward the presumed station.
“Two of the other chunks of ice share an orbit with our target,” the tactical officer reported as they decelerated toward our destination. “Both are about a hundred thousand klicks away, not on top of them, but…”
“Close enough to mount defensive weapons or starfighters,” Kyle finished for her. “Keep an eye on them. For that matter, keep a lance targeted on them.”
Her grin in reply was predatory.
“Two light-seconds from target, on course for zero-zero,” Lau reported shortly.
“Mister Glass, if you’d like to reach out to our friend and see how they feel about guests?”
The spy nodded and closed his eyes, focusing on his implants. Kyle’s access to the systems showed him logging into the communications systems and sending a directional radio message forward.
“Response incoming from the target coordinates,” Taylor announced.
This was a tightbeam radio signal, one focused directly on Chameleon and flagged for Glass. While Kyle could view it, he left it to the spy. Their working relationship required some trust to go both ways, after all.
Finally, Glass opened his eyes.
“We should be seeing a beacon on Judecca Station shortly,” he told them. “That should guide us to a docking port for cargo transfer. Captain Roberts and I are to board the station and meet with Trickster directly; we’ll make payment then and they’ll begin transfer immediately.”
“If they’ve got decent cargo-handling equipment, we should be to load the upgrade kits in an hour or less,” Kyle noted. “Seems like your friend is playing straight so far.”
“Would you object, my dear Captain, if I asked you to keep Commander Rokos’s people in their fighters a while longer regardless?”
“I wasn’t planning on doing anything else.”
#
Chapter 17
New Edmonton System
07:35 May 27, 2736 Earth Standard Meridian Date/Time
Judecca Station, Ice Belt
The cargo transfer tunnel was almost twenty meters across, clearly designed to not only allow movement of any size cargo pod anyone cared to be using but also complete starfighters. Most fascinating of all, it was carved out of the ice of the asteroid Trickster had buried his space station in. There were supporting beams running through the ice, but those were the only sign of human interference.
Kyle suspected that those “beams” were also heating elements and tracks for cutting lasers. Most likely, any access to Judecca Station was temporary, filled with new ice once it was no longer needed. Keeping the station completely encased in ice would protect it from almost any detection.
He and Glass followed a guide line down the “bottom” of the tunnel toward a tiny-seeming human-sized airlock on the metal hull at the far end. Impressively, the spy was almost as comfortable in zero gravity as Kyle was.
They glided to a careful stop at the personnel airlock, orienting themselves with the safety arrows as the door opened, and then made the inevitably graceless transition into Judecca Station’s artificial gravity.
The airlock filled with air and the clear plastic bubbles that had extended from their shipsuits retracted as the clothing’s sensors confirmed a breathable atmosphere.
Safe, the inner door slid open to reveal the form of an absolutely immense human being. It looked like he’d been easily two meters tall, taller even than Kyle, and then someone had gone to town with cybernetics. Both of the man’s legs had been replaced with immense monstrosities of steel and artificial muscles, and armor plating had been attached across his bare chest and upper arms.
He grunted at them and gestured for them to follow him as he turned back into the station.
Unlike the processing stations in McMurray orbit, Judecca Station’s corridors did not look like they could have been in any other station in the galaxy. Only the floor and inner wall here were metal; the roof and outer wall were uncovered ice.
The lights were dim, only the extra processing included in Kyle’s neural implant allowing him to pick up enough light to see clearly. Glass, he suspected, had something closer to the black-ops implants and could probably see in the dark.
Their silent guide led them deeper into the station, into corridors that looked like they should have been full of people. The more populated the areas looked like they should be, the dirtier they became. The pristine ice walls of the entrance gave way to steel smeared with rust and dirt—but Kyle noted that all of the mechanical equipment was perfectly maintained.
Air intakes, lights, the security systems. Everything that was related to safety or the functioning of the station was in perfect working order, if occasionally smeared with dirt to make sure it didn’t stand out.
“We’re getting a show,” he sent Glass silently through their implants. “Why would Trickster want us to think this place is run down?”
“Because they’re completely averse to anyone knowing anything about them,” the spy replied. “I’m surprised they want to meet us in person. They don’t meet anyone in person.”
That was not encouraging.
Finally, their guide led them to a large security door and turned back to face them.
“Weapons,” he grunted.
Kyle shrugged and surrendered his pistol. He doubted that the gun would make that much of a difference. If they were making it out of here, it was on Glass.
“Enter,” the giant ordered.
#
Russell sat in the command seat of his starfighter and watched the sensor reports being fed to him by Chameleon as if his stony gaze would somehow conjure answers. Judecca Station was a well-concealed facility and they could pick out only a handful of details even while docked to her.
Her two trailing sisters were surrendering even fewer secrets, and the CAG itched to order an active sweep of them. He doubted Chownyk, the man who had that authority right now, felt any differently—but unless their new friends decided to open the ball, Chameleon’s crew didn’t want to dance.
“Are you seeing any starfighters?” he asked his gunner quietly. That worthy, in addition to running the Cataphract’s missile armament and ECM, was also charged with reviewing sensor data in the command starfighter.
“Nothing, which I don’t trust for a second,” Flight Lieutenant Rauol Alvarado, a gaunt man with wispy hair and pale skin, replied. “Judecca is armed and those other two ice balls have at least missile launchers, or I’ll eat my uniform.”
“Agreed,” he muttered. He brought up the map of the area and overlaid the launch vectors for his squadrons. Alpha was in the launchers right now, with himself and an extra from Echo’s black-ops starfighters. Now that they were in place and his shoulder blades were itching, he wished he’d thought to drop those stealthier birds into space somewhere along the way. He wasn’t used to having starfighters that had a half-decent chance of going unnoticed.
“Listen,” he said over the implant network, pulling in his squadron leaders. “While I don’t see any reason why our new friends might betray us, I don’t trust them as far as we can throw them.
“So, if they decide to open t
he party, this is what we’ll do…”
#
Edvard watched carefully through the pickups on Chameleon’s hull as the cargo hatch on the other end of the tunnel slowly slid open. A handful of men and women in closed shipsuits came out, guiding and directing the mostly automated jet-equipped harnesses that moved the ten-meter cubes of standard cargo pods.
All were visibly armed, but it was sidearms and slung submachine guns. Nothing that would be a threat to people in powered battle armor, and yet… He knew that Glass and the Captain were both uncomfortable about this meeting, and those cargo pods could hide an entire platoon in full battle armor apiece.
“Riley,” he pinged the black-ops platoon commander. “Have your platoon go out and be friendly security,” he ordered. “I’m going to have everyone else strap on battle armor, just in case these guys decide not to be friendly.”
“Wilco,” she replied. “Can I throw one of my squads in armor? Might help make the point, while keeping our numbers down to what they’re expecting for a pirate ship.”
He hesitated for a moment, but…
“Agreed,” he said. “Keep your eyes open; this whole thing is making me twitchy.”
“Can’t we just jump clear if there’s a problem?” she asked. “I thought we’d be far enough out for that?”
Edvard chuckled.
“I have no idea,” he admitted. “Let me check.”
Flipping channels, he raised the bridge.
“Commander Chownyk, how’s it looking outside?”
“Quiet enough to make me wonder if this might actually go off without a hitch,” the XO admitted. “Though I swear there’s a bull’s-eye painted on my back. Does their cargo look right to you, El-Maj?”
Q-Ship Chameleon Page 10
