Spinward Fringe Broadcast 5: Fracture

by Randolph Lalonde

  “How long did they say it would take?”

  “At least two days to rebuild the engines, the rest is mostly minor structural stuff so it'll be done before the rebuild.”

  “Damn, they really knew where to hit us. I saw the damage they did to the engines, they're a write off. If we didn't have our own manufacturing systems we'd be down to two engines indefinitely.”

  “You've got that right. Triton used to be Wheeler's ship so he knew exactly where his shots would count. He manned her with about a hundred people and a ton of automation.”

  “I believe it. Sprocket was saying that they're still finding looped circuits and control taps. She couldn't be happier to be out of maintenance.”

  “She earned it. Mia's a steady stick.”

  “Her name is Mia? I always have trouble getting to know people by their civie names.”

  “To know a thing's name is to have power over it,” Minh muttered as he scrolled through his threat assessment interface. The overlay on his vacsuit faceplate found no identifiable threat so he paid more attention to the formation of his fighter squad. Everyone was in place, doing a broad scan and gathering a fantastic amount of data, most of which would be reviewed in the Triton flight control Centre.

  “I thought that's what rank was for?”

  “When someone's starting to panic they might not answer to a call sign, so it's important to know their real name. They didn't cover this when you trained with the military?”

  “Well, they did in basis psyche, but that was a long time ago. That, and I'm an infantry field analyst. I'm still learning to apply that to being a Sensor Intercept Officer.”

  “Funny thing, I was in the infantry before I discovered the wonders of being a pilot. How goes the scanning?”

  “A few terabytes of data. I'm seeing a lot of heavy metals, there really should be some kind of defence systems down there but there's nothing bleeding power or registering on thermal.”

  “Check your silhouette recognition,” Minh advised, bringing a small display up and starting the software up for himself.

  “Here? I mean, there's got to be a few thousand objects per square klick.”

  “I bet we'll find something before the barrier,” Minh said as he brought up a shape and cross referenced it, manipulating the interface with nothing more than his eye movements and nerve impulse sensors in his vacsuit's headgear. “There, an armed hauler. It's right behind us, got twisted up in the asteroids.”

  “Scanning. You're right, and it was badly damaged by energy weapons fire.”

  “This is Luckshot, my SIO just found two disabled perimeter cannon emplacements. The blast profile she picked up on one of them matches Eden Fleet. The damage is dead cold though, so it happened at least a week ago.”

  “Good work. This is Ronin to Flight Operations.” Minh addressed. “We have evidence of Eden Fleet here. Looks like they've been and gone though.”

  “I show you just about to breach the obscuring field. Proceed with caution. I want to know exactly what's in there. Remember, our resident astrophysicists said there could be a class two giant planet in there, so you could run out of space real fast,” Oz replied.

  Minh momentarily cleared all the secondary displays from his viewpoint and looked at the field ahead with his naked eye. The vista was blurred severely, but he was certain that there was a lot of empty space ahead. “I'm eyeballing the field and I'll bet my oversized officer's quarters that we'll just find a really thick rock in the middle of this.”

  “He says refraction could be to blame for black space. Just be careful,” Oz retorted neutrally. “It'd be pretty embarrassing to nose into a big rock on your first mission.”

  “You speak the naked truth, my friend.” Minh checked the weapon systems and powered down the three particle accelerator cannons he'd loaded onto the fighter, leaving two missile pods, a pair of 21mm rail guns for him and another pair on a turret for Slick. “All right everyone, passing through the barrier. Redirect everything you can to your shields. We don't know what's waiting for us.”

  He watched the small flight status display at the bottom of his visor as the other six fighter crews followed orders. One of them had loaded themselves with energy based weapons and he shook his head. “You're no longer allowed to determine your own loadout Finger. Looks like you need babysitting.”

  “What? What'd I do?”

  “You need to load at least two hull piercing weapons that can fire on reserve power alone. You knew it, you ignored it and now you'll be leaving yourself unarmed every time you shunt all power to shields.”

  “I can take a few shots on what's left in the-”

  “One more word and you're on your way back to Triton,” Minh said firmly.

  “Yes sir.”

  “Man, meeting you in the sims I'd never think you could be so serious,” Slick mentioned off the squad channel as he ensured the ship's shields and power generation were set as high as possible.

  “It's the price of doing it for real.” Minh watched as the space blurred by the obscuring field loomed so largely that he couldn't see around it. His ship punched through, the energy shields around his fighter protected them from any electromagnetic interference. His eyes went wide.

  Around a grey, brown and white dwarf planet were arranged a massive latticework of docking platforms, factories, refineries, living sections, defensive systems, solar collectors, factories and other less notable subsections. Spaced evenly out across the dwarf planet's equator were five large installations with pylons extending out like fine silver thorns. They were moving before their eyes, slowly shifting in waves around the top of the station's circular bases.

  As Minh looked closer and checked his threat scanner he noticed that there were very few power readings coming from the station. The defence systems were all marked as inoperable. The remnants of hundreds of other ships, most of them long range haulers, were adrift, dead in space.

  As two of his squadron moved through the barrier behind him he noticed what was keeping everything within the obscuring barrier that surrounded the dwarf planet. “I have at least nine cruisers, all different profiles. There are other active ships as well,” Minh announced.

  “Confirmed. Nine ships varying in mass, all armed. A couple are modified galleons, the others are cruisers. I see one carrier, looks like the command ship. There are about thirty other ships, between twenty five and ninety meters in length. Looks like one of the cruisers is launching fighters. Half of them don't match anything on record. Wait-” Slick worked his comm controls for a moment, fine tuning and trying to filter out a layer of wavering static. “I have an emergency transmission here, looks like it was from a boosted personal comm. It's a digital stream of text that says the miners are holed up in the central complex. They were attacked and disarmed by Eden Fleet and a group of raiders just rushed the station. They don't think the two groups are connected, but they've been fighting a losing battle. The text is recent, seems to back up our intelligence.”

  “Eden Fleet and then raiders. That's epic bad luck. Are we getting a ping from Triton?”

  “No. No two way comm through the barrier and I can't raise the installation.”

  “All right. Finger, take your scan results along with the text from the installation and head back through the barrier just far enough to get a message to Triton.”

  “Aye!” he replied as his starfighter spun and accelerated in the opposite direction.

  “This is RAD comm. We have laid claim to this salvage. If you do not leave immediately we will interpret your actions as a challenge and will force you out of our space,” came the communication from the largest vessel, the Palamo.

  “First, what's a RAD comm?”

  “We are Royal Acquisition and Distribution, a licensed salvaging operation.”

  “You've laid claim to this entire space?”

  “Yes. You read as Triton intercept forces. Please confirm.”

  “We're only here for safe harbour and trade. We could use
some raw materials and would love a visit to the gift shop.”

  “This is a salvage operation. We will fire upon you if you proceed.”

  “All right, don't get testy. Before I go, I'm wondering if you have a claim ticket or license number I can pass along to my carrier's command deck. I need something to go back to Captain Valance with and if this is a legitimate claim, well, you should have some kind of fifty digit number or something, I can try to remember it. If not, well, I can't speak for myself, but the Captain might have an issue with you claiming all this for yourselves while there are still people aboard the station. I mean, look at it all! Using the ships you have it's at least a hundred trips back and forth between here and wherever you auction your crap off,” Minh grinned.

  “We-” the RAD officer started before unceremoniously closing his end of the channel.

  “Are you seriously taunting this guy? They've got forty three ships out there right now,” Slick said from behind him in an alarmed whisper.

  “Shhh, daddy's picking a fight,” Minh whispered back. “If these are claim agents I'm the Bad Luck Bear. I might not have much time out here on the raggedy edge, but I know Captain Valance wouldn't want to trade with raiders while there are station workers ready to be saved. There's nothing like a gratitude discount when you're trading.”

  “Please power down and prepare to be boarded,” retorted the RAD communications officer.

  “So you're raiders!” Minh laughed. “Should have said so. I'll be right back.” He cut communications and flipped his starfighter end over end, angling all engines to fire in the opposite direction, towards the barrier. “Okay, order everyone to head outside the barrier. Tell them to be ready for pursuit,” Minh instructed Slick.

  They passed through the barrier and Minh immediately heard Oz's voice. “-thirty five percent diamond.”

  “Say again?” Minh asked.

  “That planetoid in the centre of the mining facility, it's over thirty five percent diamond according to the readings Finger relayed to us.”

  “I've spoken to a representative of the small fleet hiding inside the barrier. They call themselves RAD, Royal Acquisition and Distribution. Asked them for some kind of formal documentation and they choked.”

  “That confirms it, raiders. That organization doesn't have a listing in Triton’s computer, and the only references we see on the Stellarnet update point to a bunch of commercial Starliner and warehouse robberies.”

  “I think we can scare 'em off.”

  “Hold position outside the barrier. Fire only if fired upon, we've got to play this right,” Oz replied.

  Oz turned from the main Flight deck console and looked to where Captain Valance was coming down the bridge ramp, he could see Ayan in the command chair above. Something was wrong, he could tell, but it wasn't the time to bring it up. “What do you think? I'm sure if we released all the information we had Minh would make the right decisions.”

  “No. We run this like they're raiders, nothing more. I'll tell you when we can change tactics."

  “Excuse me,” interjected an older fellow with grey-blond hair. His brow was deeply furrowed. “That planetoid in the centre has twelve earth masses in less than a tenth of the space,”

  “We know, you already interpreted Finger's scans and forwarded them to my station, thank you Edward.” Oz replied.

  The older gentleman waved him off and went on; “Listen. Just from these crude scans I can see this was a dwarf star that burned out leaving the diamond core behind. If you were to look at the station surrounding it you'd see that there's a gravity mill built around the main installation and right in the middle of that there's a firefight going on.” He selected a small portion of a large circular segment in the middle of the station and enhanced the image. “They could be the station's proper owners defending their installation and these raiders as you call them are probably still fighting to take the station.”

  “All right, that's all I need to know,” Captain Valance started, turning back towards the semi-transparent bridge ramp.

  Edward caught his arm. “That's not all you need to know Captain. If we could save the people in there they could give us all kinds of information about this station and they might even trade with us. Furthermore, you might be able to convince them to give us enough raw diamond material to say, enhance our manufacturing processes for two months. It would only take half a ton and with the process I see them using that's nothing to them if their cultivation systems are still operational. It's important that your people don't do any more damage to the main installation than-”

  Jake brushed the man's hand off. “I heard you. Return to your station. Forward completed analysis and situation data up the chain of command.”

  “What? I'm providing vital information here! I have to make sure you give my contributions the attention they deserve, that you don't just go blasting in and render the whole operation useless! As the only trained astrophysicist here I'm uniquely qualified-”

  Jake gripped his shoulder, looked him in the eye and spoke firmly, quietly; “No one has time to inflate your ego or consider your pride. Work within the chain of command from now on or I'll have you removed from the command deck permanently.”

  Edward turned red and stormed off the flight control deck, pulling his command and control unit off his arm and throwing it against the wall.

  “Thank you,” Oz said as he watched the changing status of the fighters holding position outside of the obscuring barrier. Their reinforcements were almost finished launching and about to start towards the energy field.

  “Do we have any contact from either side of the fighting on the station itself?”

  “Just the old text alert and the message from the Palamo. I'm thinking they lost access to whatever they jury rigged to send that distress message shortly after it was sent.”

  Jake stared at the holographic representation of the tactical area. His eye was drawn to the pair of fighters that wove in and out of the obscuring energy barrier. They were marked Ronin and Finger. Why doesn't it surprise me? We're getting enough sensor data from Finger and his SIO, Minh doesn't need to risk himself to supplement. Two scans are better than one though, I have to admit the picture is clearer thanks to the pair of them. He thought as he shook his head. Good to have Minh back. He looked over Oz's shoulder where he was reviewing a more detailed scan of the station's central processing centre.

  Many of the hallways to either sides of the main structure had been decompressed and from the visible heat silhouettes he could tell there was an active fire fight taking place. The computer had already marked the combatants by obvious sides but he watched to make sure it had gotten it right. There were twenty five hold outs, most likely station workers or stake holders versus forty two attackers.

  “What's the word Jake?”

  “Let's get in there,” he read the damage report on the station at a glance and recognized that most of the damage to the structure's defences had been done by weapons with Eden Fleet characteristics and nodded to himself. “Recognize the energy signatures?”

  “They come up as Eden Fleet. Looks like these raiders didn't take the station, they came in after the bots did a number on it.”

  “I've seen it happen before, they jump in, disable engines, weapons, power sources then get out. Regent Galactic forces showed up in Enreega a few hours after it happened there. I say we get in, rescue whoever's holding out in there and trade or salvage.”

  “Better us than them. Ronin and Finger have started taking fire, it's small and they're not taking major hits. Looks like we got their attention,” Oz smiled, setting the orders for the gunships and sending them out. “Alaka's going to like this.”

  “He's leading one of the teams?”

  Oz nodded with a grin. “He volunteered before I had a chance to offer it to him. Anything to get some time away from his eleven kids.”

  “I could imagine,” Jake laughed as he started back up the ramp.

  “What do you want to
do about the raiders?”

  “Seek and destroy until they power down and surrender. We have no choice. The more expensive we make things for whoever's running the show the faster he'll stand down."

  "But if he starts blowing his people in our faces as a last resort..." Oz whispered.

  "I know, this is only going to get more complicated. We don't have a choice. We're in hiding, nothing can leave the area and if we want to save the station so we can trade with whoever's left we're going to have to risk our people. If they get control of the station or get clear and make it into hyperspace we'll have to find another place to hide and we can't repair our engines while we're on the move.”

  “Aye. I'll tell Chief Vega to get boarding crews ready. We're in it now.”

  Oz couldn't help but crack a smile as he overheard Jake order; “Take us to point three by twelve, best speed. Load torpedo bays and restrict the gunnery deck to seeker rounds. We're playing a supporting role, let the fighters do the heavy lifting.” His Captain was more assertive and confident than he'd been on the First Light, but he was without a doubt his Captain. Being back on his bridge was like returning home after a long absence. It didn't matter which ship, which bridge, it still felt like home.

  He looked up just in time to catch Ayan's reaction to Jake sitting down beside her in the Captain's seat. She was making a point of ignoring him, and he was trying not to look at her.

  Oz returned his attention to the larger tactical display and scrolling general status message. Alaka and the flight crew of the Clever Dream marked themselves as loaded and ready while the Cold Reaver was still taking on soldiers. Fighters were launching from the punter hatches alongside the keel of the ship, their pilots reporting ready as they got clear and took up position just in front of the broad carrier.

  He almost wished he was going along with the Clever Dream or Cold Reaver boarding crews, but Jake had assigned him exclusively to Flight control. He knew where he was most needed; in command of the entire effort, coordinating with one of his fondest friends; Minh-Chu Buu, the crazy pilot.