Spinward Fringe Broadcasts 1 and 2

by Randolph Lalonde

“So you go back and pick it up when things calm down.”

  “Yes, and when we're not using it to fry another ship's systems it serves as a source of reserve power. It stays charged by leeching less than a percent of the ship's energy and it's wired two way, so if we need a bit more juice we can tap in.”

  “Smart.”

  “The rumour is that the Captain hatched this idea and a couple of his engineers got together and built it. They're not aboard any longer, I think one is working on board one of his haulers.”

  “So they built it here right under the port power systems so sensors wouldn't see it as a weapon.”

  “Again, exactly right. Both times I've seen this used it came as a complete surprise. It's non-lethal at optimum range, but most ship systems are neutralized, especially weapons, sensors and engines since they're always built into the outer hulls.”

  “It's genius, most of these parts are ready for the scrap pile, so it must have cost nothing to build.”

  “The crew used to add a part to it, normally a small capacitor and sign it after they had been aboard a month or served in some kind of combat. We stopped doing it about a year ago, I don't know why. Here's my signature,” he said, pointing.

  “On that old reserve battery?” Finn said, looking at the tiny component welded to another capacitor.

  “Yes, as they say, every little bit helps.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Well, I have to go and check the emitters.”

  “Mind if I go with? I haven't seen all those systems yet.”

  “Certainly.”

  The pair left the Big Surprise behind and began their inspection. Finn was full of questions and once he realized that Agameg enjoyed answering them they never stopped coming.

  Longennes Station

  The Samson lazily followed one of the outer holding patterns around the cluster of drifting station segments. The primary section of the station was originally designed to have a more streamlined look. With round segmented view ports in all directions and spirals extending out from the oval center pieces leading to entertainment centers and housing.

  Over time expansions had been built and they didn't match the original design. Long, angular spokes extended from one side of the main complex, joining it to several dry dock areas and dozens of mooring pylons. It made the whole thing look lopsided but that didn't matter so much to the travellers who relied on the outpost for fuel, supplies and general transportation. It was a critical transfer point for commercial travel, tens of thousands of passengers disembarked and met with connecting space transports.

  “How far ahead of the Vesuvius are we?” Asked Frost.

  “Says they should be here any minute, just like I said five minutes ago,” Answered Silver.

  “Boys, boys, they'll get here when they get here,” Ashley chided.

  “Unless they're not coming here at all,” Silver muttered.

  “Only place to refuel along their course for at least fifteen light years,” Frost replied. “Wait, I might have something.” He checked the tactical display and focused in on a large cargo ship. “There she is, marked the Vesuvius,” he highlighted it on the main display and started activating other systems.

  “I see it, thanks Frost. I'll follow our registered holding pattern until they start getting closer,” Ashley said as she watched the other ship's position on the display.

  “Remember, anything we do has to happen outside of the station's regulated space, otherwise we'll have the Port Authority launching fighters on us,” Silver put in.

  “Yup, that would be bad.”

  Everyone on the bridge watched for several minutes as the Vesuvius slowly turned and started to gain momentum towards one of the outer pylons. She was still a couple thousand kilometres away from any significant traffic.

  “Okay, report thruster problems to the station,” Ashley said as she deactivated her starboard thrusters. The ship started drifting in the general direction of the Vesuvius.

  “Is that maybe a little early?” Silver asked.

  “We can't wait forever. Besides, there are already a few ships headed that way,” Ashley said as she carefully faked a struggle for control while she used only partial thrusters to guide the ship in the right direction.

  “She's right, and the station has dropped the ball,” Cynthia, the replacement communications officer, said with a snicker. She wasn't nearly as qualified as Burke but she did know all the basics and had some minor code cracking experience. Her previous position was near the bottom of the pile in the maintenance team, so sitting in communications was a much better job than scraping around the outside of the hull pumping divots flat, doing cleanup, welding or running cable.

  She replayed the station's reply over the speakers. “Samson, if you're in trouble, start transmitting a cautionary warning to anyone near by and fix it. We're not liable for any damage that happens outside of our space. If you want a repair team the wait time is six and a half hours.”

  “Well, Captain predicted that right,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “These ports don't care about being Samaritans.”

  “Here's a ship we can shadow,” Silver said, marking a small cargo hauler on the display. “They're going to pass within five kilometres.”

  “Looks good,” Ashley said as she spun the ship and hit the thrusters. “Hopefully it looks like I'm piggybacking their course so we can make repairs without hitting anything.”

  Finn looked at the passive scans from the Vesuvius and shook his head. “There's something wrong here. The Vesuvius' cargo train is too massive for what it's supposed to be. This math just doesn't work unless it's mostly empty.”

  Frost looked over and nodded. “You've got that right, that ship should be just under a kilometre long, not four.

  “Think we should take a chance and radio Captain?”

  “Nope. He sees it, if it were a problem we'd know it. Stay the course and watch those power systems.”

  “Getting close, ready with the maxjack Frost?” Silver asked.

  “Aye.”

  “Okay, coming up on the mark, we'll only have one shot at this,” Ashley said as she brought the starboard thrusters back online. “Starting in now.”

  The Samson flipped over and turned so the maxjack was pointed directly at the dorsal aft side of the Galleon, right above the linkage to their long cargo train. Ashley watched as all the Samson's engines rotated into the exact positions she needed and fired as soon as they were in line.

  As Finn watched through the precision scanners the Vesuvius grew until it filled the screen in the space of three seconds.

  “Too fast! Way too fast!” Silver screamed.

  Ashley decelerated the rest of the way, first with manoeuvring thrusters then with everything else. “Don't get your undercarriage in a twist, contact in three, two-”

  No one heard her say 'one'. Instead the sounds of a collision filled the ship and Finn watched his integrity screen turn red for the entire bottom half of the hull. A second later most of the warnings disappeared, leaving only three flashing yellow sections.

  The structure of the ship vibrated hard for a second as Frost worked the controls for the maxjack then clapped his hands together. “We're locked right down onto their hull! Nice job Ash!”

  “Holding on repair teams until we're clear or critical,” Finn said aloud.

  “Message coming in from Vesuvius.” Cynthia declared before airing it over the bridge audio system. “-or we'll scrape you off ourselves! Again, we are transporting prisoners, nothing of value, detach or we'll scrape you off!”

  “I have a reply for ye, slaver,” Frost said as he activated the plasma cutters on the maxjack and locked a second pair of crusher arms onto the ship. “Oh, this is gonna hurt.”

  The main display showed beams of light from the Vesuvius's turrets miss the Samson by less than five meters. “Looks like I hit their blind spot dead on,” Ashley said with a grin.

  “Yup, no way they can hit us until we detach.”

/>   “The Vesuvius isn't broadcasting a distress signal, they obviously don't want to risk anyone seeing what they're hauling,” Cynthia reported.

  “We're through their outer hull and two main supports have been cut. Time to shake 'em up,” Frost said, gesturing to Ashley.

  She nodded and rotated the main engine pods so they would redirect the path of the hauler into dead space instead of station territory. “Finn, watch hull stress. This ship was made to haul cargo, so this should be fine, but no one hauls cargo with a maxjack.”

  “There's reasons for that,” Frost added.

  She increased the main engine thrust slowly and the hull stress didn't show any shear or abnormal strain.

  “They're firing their engines, trying to overpower us.”

  “Time to start digging, tell me when the power levels on that ship start dropping,” Frost said to Finn as he refocused the cutters on the maxjack and turned the power and plasma flow all the way up. He was trying to dig for critical power systems.

  “Running a scan cycle on the Vesuvius.” Finn reported, he was so nervous his palms were sweating, but he focused on his job, monitoring his station and listening carefully, making sure he was aware of what was going on second by second. The ship groaned as the strain on the engine pylons increased. He checked the stress on the hull and was surprised as it was well within tolerances. The maxjack mounts were holding as well.

  “We're at full power, I don't know if we can change their course.” Ashley reported. “You'd better hit something important before we cross into the station's territory.”

  “Working on it,” Frost replied. The density scan in front of him, meant to show hard points and structural information on the other ship, showed him where he'd want to cut if he were looking for supports and soft parts of the hull. There wasn't much information on systems or critical components so it wasn't very helpful in that respect. “Hey Finn, best guess? I'm drillin' blind here.”

  Finn leaned over to see Frost's station more clearly and looked at the diagram. It was really a picture of overlapping shadows the darker spots and lines representing more dense metals. He pondered for a moment and pointed to a very light section with several small dots. “There, you might hit some control circuitry.”

  Frost aimed the plasma cutters again and turned the power levels up to full. His eyes went wide. “Well kid, you were wrong I think, but I did manage to cut straight through a compartment and decompress the section. Time to wedge it open and see what I can do.” He extended the pry arms into the large open space he had broken into and turned them on.

  The ship jostled for a second.

  “Are our inertial dampeners okay?” Silver asked.

  “They're fine, the hull was vibrating.”

  “That's because I just exposed another rear compartment, big decompression.”

  “No signs of life there, before or after,” Finn confirmed.

  “Good, because I'm about to light it up.” Frost said as he turned the plasma torches onto the open wound.

  “We're starting to pull them off course. Whatever you did reduced their engine power,” Ashley reported.

  The results of Finn's scans came up on his tertiary holodisplay and he started looking through the schematic, reading dozens of marked sections. “Okay, aim the cutter up seven degrees and fire for a focus on two point three meters.”

  “I can only give you five point nine degrees, plating's in the way.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Frost turned the cutters and refocused the jet of cutting plasma. “What am I diggin' for here?”

  “Just readjust to focus on three point five meters when I say,” Finn replied.

  “Yessir,” Frost retorted with a smile.

  “Do it now.”

  Frost worked the controls and a moment later the stress on the Samson's hull dropped, he could see the differences on Finn's station out of the corner of his eye. “What did I hit lad?”

  “A main power conduit, we have at least an hour before anyone can repair that, and they'll have to do it in a vacsuit while you're messing around in their faces with that maxjack.”

  “Confirmed, they have no engine power. We're in control of their course,” Ashley very nearly cheered. “Towing them away from the station.”

  “Well, that's all our hard work. Now it's up to the Captain,” Silver said as he checked the navigational data for the area.

  A Dark Spirit

  Moments after the Samson made contact with the Vesuvius Jake pushed off from the aft airlock. His cloaksuit was active and if his pet project was worth the time he had spent on it over the past two years no one would be able to pick him up on sensors, hear, see, or so much as smell him. The sound dampeners were something he designed into all his vacsuits, that was easy. The rest was hard to design, had to be built component by component from scratch. The suit used a lot of power, generated different kinds of radiation and in order for it to work all that by-product energy had to be stored somewhere. There was no time for an elegant solution, so the radiation was kept within.

  He made contact with the upper aft hull of the Vesuvius and started crawling towards the nearest airlock. Instead of using magnets to cling to the hull, he moved with the aid of an adherent that would wear off after a few minutes. A magnetic field would make him easy to pick out in a scan.

  He made it to the airlock hatch and took a small tool kit from a thigh pocket then affixed it to the hull right beside the entry keypad. The lock had to appear to have shorted out during the maxjack's drilling and prying.

  He took a small cutter from the tool kit and started to work at the control panel and as though on queue the maxjack started working twenty meters above his head. He could feel the vibrations of the hull damage as he carefully started to remove the face plate.

  When he cut the control panel's face plate loose he tossed it over his shoulder. He pulled the button pad out of the way and cut several wires. Putting back the cutter, he pulled several powered bridge wires out of his tool kit and affixed them to the freshly cut lines inside the small control box. He clamped a remote circuit onto the bridge wires and pressed a button on his arm command unit. The outer airlock door opened.

  He retrieved his tool kit and pulled himself inside, closing the door behind him by remote. He waited a moment after the door closed, looked inside and didn't see anyone. Without further hesitation he busted open the inner control panel and cross wired it so the door would open and stepped through, leaving a remote circuit there as well. Looking around, he closed the door behind him and inspected it. There was no way to tell it had been tampered with unless you were to step inside the airlock.

  The overlay display in his vacsuit showed an outline of where people were based on motion detection, infra red, shifting air pressure and sound. He made his way down the main hallway towards the aft lift. The map on his visor display told him the main engineering level was two decks down. Stepping in behind a tall female crew member he followed her to the lift where she pressed the call button and waited for it to arrive. She was responding to something in her earpiece. “They're in our blind spot! We have to board them by force or wait for them to take boarding actions and fight our way onto their ship.”

  She shook her head at whatever the response was and stepped through the opening shaft doors. Jake walked in with her and turned the sound amplification up so he could hear both sides of the conversation.

  “...no communications with them so far, they're not replying, not demanding anything. For all we know they just want to destroy us section by section!”

  “Okay, so unless you can magically mount a gun pointing right at our blind spot, we'll have to board them. That's the only solution I have for you,” she replied.

  “Fine, get a party together. If we can't make the station's protected area, you're clear to mount a boarding action.”

  “Yes sir,” she acknowledged, sounding pleased with herself. The lift car slowed down, the doors opened and she got off.

&nbs
p; Jake waited for the doors to close and pressed the button for the engineering level. While he waited he pulled up one corner of the control panel's cover and slipped a wireless control mole inside. It was nothing more than a tiny transmitter, receiver chip and if it worked it would patch in to the lift controls and wait for instructions from him. The lift stopped and he stepped out as soon as the doors opened, two crew members working near by stopped what they were doing for a moment and looked into the empty elevator car, then shrugged. They were busy working through a problem.

  He headed straight for main engineering. Before long a few important facts started becoming painfully evident. They were following a military structure. In the space he had travelled just in engineering he had also seen over a dozen people and he hadn't gotten to the reactor yet. When he arrived in the center of the engineering section a sense of dread came over him. There were over twenty people working in the various levels of that section. The antimatter reactor core was five decks tall and grated metal decking encircled it. The only way there were fifty people working that ship was if over half were in engineering, and that just couldn't be. The Vesuvius had changed, and he had to find out how.

  He walked over to an unused console and looked around. No one was nearby or looking in his direction so he attached a high yield sensory overload grenade to the console and ran around to the other side to stand beside another computer console. Just as he stepped in front of it the grenade went off, he barely noticed. His vacsuit blocked out most of the sound and shielded his vision from the light. The same wasn't true of the engineering crew who were absolutely disabled.

  He quickly called up the ship's registration information. He was aboard the TSS Vesuvius, high priority armed cargo transport. He dug a little deeper and discovered their current assignment. It wasn't secure, the entire crew knew what they were doing there. They were to transport captured scientific research stock to an asteroid work camp.

  He had heard of companies using people for scientific research, knew that it was possible that he was subjected to it himself. These people were most likely spared that only to be sent to a massive work camp. There was also a labour force in tow with an acceptable death rate of fifty percent during transit. He checked the security level of the orders again just to be sure and shook his head. Anyone aboard had access to them, he didn't even need to hack in to see them.