by Blaze Ward
“By order of the Republic of Aquitaine Senate, on this day signed in full session. Skip, skip, skip. Here. The entire planetary system of Ballard is hereby placed under martial law for the duration of said emergency, plenipotentiary powers vested in Command Centurion Jessica Keller or her designated agent. For now, me. Skip, skip, skip. All citizens of the Republic are ordered, ORDERED, mind you, you idiot bureaucrat, to render all aid and assistance possible to the naval forces of the Republic, under penalty of law.”
Kigali stared hard at the man, daring him. “Any questions?”
Anything. Right here. Right now. I’ve been a day and a half trying to get you to do your job. I almost just broadcast the damned thing on all available open channels, like we did at Ramsey.
Kigali smiled.
Try me. I’d like to see you frog–marched out of here in hand–cuffs. I can do that, as of right now.
Apparently, even Governors could learn. If you hit them on the nose with a rolled up newspaper enough times.
“What’s happened?” he asked in a much more friendly voice. “And who are you? You don’t look like a Jessica Keller.”
Kigali smiled, at least a little more polite this time. “I’m Mercury,” he said. “Messenger for the gods.”
“What?”
He stuck out his hand. “Command Centurion Tomas Kigali, Governor. Hopefully, I’m the cavalry.”
Governor Ezardyonic took his hand automatically.
“Why do we need martial law?”
“In a couple of days,” Kigali replied, “an Aquitaine squadron will arrive. Sometime, hopefully only after that, an Imperial battle fleet is coming to attack Alexandria Station.”
He watched the governor start to say something when a bell chirped on the desk.
The receptionist raced over and answered. The man listened silently, blood slowly draining out of his face, shock taking over instead.
“Thank you,” he said, setting the comm carefully back down in the cradle.
“What is it?” the governor asked.
It almost sounded like a broken record at this point, but Kigali already had a pretty low opinion of politicians to begin with.
“There’s been an explosion aboard Alexandria Station. They suspect sabotage.”
Damn it. I’m too late.
Chapter XXI
Date of the Republic June 12, 394 Alexandria Station, Ballard
Taking candy from children was probably still easier, but Sykes had to laugh anyway. Getting this far had proven to be laughably easy. But then, Ballard had never been part of any major war, even during the Concord Era.
It probably would have been a great deal more challenging if the Sentience was more wired into the station’s controls, but even Ballard followed Baudin’s prohibitions about letting the AI have complete control of any system.
Here, simple humans were in charge of security and maintenance. Humans who could be bribed. Or have their pockets picked in bars. Or simply bear a grudge over some employment slight that convinced them to become agents for former powers, and to one day lose their identity badge and then call in sick, en route to a sudden, unannounced, permanent vacation off–planet.
Call it a well–paid head start.
Creator knows, letting Sykes roam this station for nearly a week beforehand had been a suicidal mistake on their part.
After all, the man whose badge he was using would likely be traced eventually, unless all evidence was destroyed by, say, de–orbiting the station and letting the shattered carcass burn up in the atmosphere.
Still, better safe. The man had been a low–level station tech on the maintenance side of things, and a very good deep cover agent against future need. Better to provide him a new identity and a nice cash payment, letting him resettle someplace nice in the Fribourg Empire. Certainly Aquitaine was likely to execute the man if they ever caught up with him.
The door before him surrendered to an old–fashioned lock pick, a thin strip of metal inserted physically into a tumbler and moved carefully around until the mechanism surrendered to his kiss. Although, in an era where everything was usually electronically controlled, that was an extra layer of sophistication that would keep the average thief at bay.
Sykes stared intently at the wiring closet he found himself in. Certainly, the original engineers of this place had inscribed redundancy into the DNA of the facility. Still, that was a weakness that could be exploited by the properly motivated.
And he was.
He began tracing leads and cables against a helpful wiring diagram on one wall, pushing his hat back out of his eyes. He considered removing the cap, but would need it again when he departed and he didn’t want to forget it. There were still a number of security cameras scattered around, and someone was going to study the records.
Eventually.
The longer he could go, the better it would be.
Ninety minutes of sweat later, the room looked like it had been attacked by a giant spider.
Wires had been cross–spliced through a single switch, although it had been left open. He carefully set the timer and looked around one last time. Fuses were going to be overridden, alarms triggered, chaos unleashed.
Sykes smiled and put everything away. He took time to wipe everything down and pour a flammable cleaning substance on all available surfaces. It wouldn’t evaporate before something overheated and sparked. And the ensuing fire would annihilate all the evidence, doubly so when fire retardants got sprayed everywhere.
He pushed the button to trigger the timer and closed the door behind him, carefully walking away down the corridor with his head down and a toolbox in one hand.
Ξ
Suvi knew a moment of total panic.
All along the mall concourse and flight decks, atmosphere alarms were going off.
She could see people in all the public spaces begin to move quickly, although there was not as much panic as there could have been. Still, bulkheads were quickly closing and sealing off the area she thought of as the southern section.
But something just wasn’t right.
According to her own passive sensors, there was no failure, no leak. At no point outside, and she could see just about everything on the outside of the big station, could she see the telltale cloud of vapor that a leak of this magnitude would demand.
For about the millionth time, she wished they had trusted her enough to let her into the systems over there. She had the classrooms and the lecture halls, plus the Library itself. Down on the planet, there were a number of schools and kiosks where she had eyes, but nothing useful in the mall.
No hands at all.
Oh, double fudge. Now the automated systems were indicating a station breakup and ordering everyone into emergency escape pods.
Hey! Guys. Nothing there. My systems are fine. This is a computer fault in the processors you won’t let me talk to.
Obviously, when this was all done, she was going to count a whole bunch of coup on some people who had told her she was over–protective.
I told you so.
Trust us, right?
Yeah, no. Not when you have panicked civilians pouring into mini pods and blasting clear of a station they thought was about to come apart underneath their feet.
From the north pole camera, it kinda looked like a fireworks display, except every one of the smaller sparks was a one–person drop pod aimed at land on the planet below and the larger ones were ten and twenty–seat models.
At least it was a Thursday, and part of the summer break in classes. Way fewer tourists than a weekend, and only about a tenth of the overall student body.
Total station population this morning, twenty–five thousand, one hundred thirty–three, rather than the fifty–five to sixty thousand it might have been at fall quarter peak.
Given the emergency blowout protocols and bodies piling into pods, she would have to have someone start a hard physical census of the station tomorrow. Creator only knows who might have gotten lost on the stati
on, or separated from their family.
Bloody hell, it was an absolute worst case accident. And it could have been avoided.
Stupid, dumb–system computers. You want to complain? I wouldn’t have ruined so many vacations and lunches.
Suvi was thinking extremely uncharitable thoughts, watching things unfold, when she felt a jar. She would have called it an earthquake, had she been standing on a planet, something she hadn’t done in twelve standard centuries.
Most of her sensor net went suddenly dead. The backup systems came on line, almost three quarters of a second later, but something was off.
Talk about an eternity of being blind.
And even then, there was something horribly wrong. Her main sensor feed wasn’t even a hundredth of what it had been five minutes ago.
Quickly, she cycled through outside cameras, surprised at how many weren’t working. It was like she had suffered a stroke and gone half blind. It was almost worse than living on Kel–Sdala those last few centuries. That had at least had the advantage of being boring.
Finally, she found the view she needed.
That was a plume. Atmosphere mixed with smoke, turning to ice crystals as they rocketed away from a hole in the side of the station.
An explosion had just blown out her primary communications relay antenna array. She was effectively cut off from the planet below. Oh, sure, she could still talk, but the full backups that she constantly transmitted to her various secured sites were going to be cut off until the equipment could be repaired. The secondary antenna simply lacked the necessary bandwidth.
Hell, the entire planetary entertainment grid below her normally used less bandwidth than she did, except during major sporting events.
Suvi reviewed the timing. The alarms that she was positive would be shown to be false alarms triggered by some sort of cascading systems fault. The sudden pressurization evacuation alarms. The explosion.
There was no way in hell that this was an accident.
Someone was out to get her, to destroy the station that had been her home for so long.
Had the piper finally come to collect his payment?
After all, nobody had promised her that she would live forever.
Chapter XXII
Date of the Republic June 12, 394 Orbital space, Ballard
CR–264 was on maximum alert. They already pretty much had been, but this meant that he had his A–crew on duty and loaded up with caffeine. Not that they could do much of anything against an Imperial battleship and her gang, but the Red Admiral was going to have to catch Br’er Rabbit first, and Tomas Kigali had no intention of making that easy.
Engineering had already overcharged the engines in dangerous ways. Every gun was unlocked and had the IFF lockouts turned off, just in case this was all a giant trap he was about to walk into.
You never knew with the Red Admiral.
Kigali had warned Ariojhutti not to scramble any of his wing for the next hour or two. CR–264 had better sensors and could get closer to the station, sitting perfectly still. And they were likely to shoot any idiot that got too close to them, just on twitchy principle.
Kigali could do that. He was the law right now. At least until Jessica got here. Then it wasn’t his problem. Win win.
By the time Kigali and the local centurion had gotten to orbit in the shuttle, that idiot governor had finally gotten around to listening. The planetary militia had been activated, along with every emergency crew, cop, fire department, forest ranger, and pizza delivery woman that could be reached.
There were estimates that as many as seven thousand people had bailed when the flag went up on the station. Each one of them would need to be found and brought home safely. Some would have landed in banjo country and need help getting to a place with acceptable room service.
CR–264 sat overhead, relative to the station, keeping her position less than a kilometer away. From that distance, he had scanners that could see scratch marks on screws from lazy assembly engineers.
Not that there was much doubt as to what had happened. Station crews had already found a fire in a secondary wiring closet. After they cleaned it out, the fire marshal took one look and called it arson. So now station security was involved.
Kigali let the cops do their thing. He had already figured that the Red Admiral had sent a bomber ahead to block the back door. It was what he had done at Qui–Ping. This time it had worked. But then, Jessica wasn’t here yet. Of course, the man was going to look good.
He was the Red Admiral, after all.
And the level of damage didn’t help. Kigali had been convinced that they were all dead men three hours previously. After all, you schedule major sabotage like that for a time when the other guy can’t recover. However, the locals were going to be at least two weeks repairing the systems that just been cooked, best estimate.
That just bookended the bogey–man’s arrival window with certainty.
“Boss, important message coming in,” his First Officer, Centurion Lam, called from the fighting deck below him.
“Governor?” he called back.
That man needed more hand–holding than anybody Kigali had ever known. Tomas thought maybe he should move here someday so he could run for office. It couldn’t be that hard, given the current occupant.
“I said important, Tom,” came the call back. “Lady wants to talk to you. Very persuasive.”
He glanced automatically at the boards but they were blank.
The only important woman in his life right now was still at least two days out from saving his ass.
Oh, what the hell.
“Put her through.”
If Lam thought it was important, and didn’t want to spoil the surprise, he could at least play along for a bit.
The screen lit up.
The woman/girl had blond hair with bangs.
She was young. That was his first impression.
Not quite young enough to be his daughter, but she had that air of young womanhood that they didn’t generally lose until after college. Academy girls never had it in the first place, but they didn’t count.
The eyes weren’t young.
Bright blue. Rich in color, and absolutely stunning. Intelligent. Perceptive. Ancient.
Not his type.
She was in a uniform of some sort, but not one he knew.
“Command Centurion Tomas Kigali,” he said merrily, by way of introduction. “And you are?”
“My name is Suvi, Command Centurion Kigali,” she said simply.
Even the voice couldn’t decide if it was a young woman or an old one.
His brain finally caught up with the rest of him.
Oh.
Yeah. That made sense. She was, as far as he knew, the Last of the Immortals.
“Oh. What can I do for you, madam?”
“Please initiate a secured channel using Fleet encryption set number eight, Centurion,” she said.
The words sounded like they weighed a ton each, so she had to have been a fleet officer at some point in her eternity. That would help.
Kigali keyed the system live, rotated through sets to find the one he wanted, and locked it in. Right now, even the people on the gun deck couldn’t read this conversation, to say nothing of the rest of the system.
Of course, Lam could always climb a deck to listen. It wasn’t like Kigali was a pissy little shit about that sort of thing, like First Fleet Lord Loncar, when it came to that kind of crap.
The screen acquired a red border.
“Go ahead, Suvi,” he said.
“I have a saboteur inside my station, Kigali,” she began, her tones weighed down with the seriousness that Jessica Keller also got when she was in the zone. “Governor Ezardyonic’s office has been singularly unresponsive to my requests for more information. However, with the declaration of martial law, he is no longer in charge right now. You are, Command Centurion. What has happened?”
Kigali looked at the screen, trying to imagine what it would be lik
e to live forever. To remember The Times Before. To know you were going to outlive every single person you knew.
Correction, assuming the Red Admiral didn’t get to her before Jessica could stop him.
Oh, what the hell. She was going to find out shortly anyway. Best that she have time to plan.
“The Fribourg Empire is going to attack you in the very near future. It will be the Imperial battleship Amsel, the Blackbird, commanded by Admiral Emmerich Wachturm, the best they have. I don’t know when he’ll get here. Jessica Keller is scheduled to be here in about two days with a Republic squadron. We’re going to try to stop him.”
“Jessica Keller commands the Republic Strike Carrier Auberon,” Suvi replied. “What else is she bringing?”
“The battlecruiser Stralsund, destroyer leader Brightoak, heavy destroyer Rajput, and me. Oh, and Moirrey Kermode.”
“I’m not familiar with that person.”
“She’s the reason we beat the Red Admiral at 2218 Svati Prime and Qui–Ping. She’s the reason we beat the pirates at Petron. Hopefully, she’ll have enough Mischief left in the tank to save our butts at Ballard.”
“Mischief, Centurion Kigali?
Apparently, Suvi had picked up his emphasis on the word. But, hey, he was in charge. He could deputize her. After all, she was the reason this was all happening in the first place. How many people got to have the Red Admiral gunning for them?
Two. Well, three counting Suvi, but he was betting his life these women would survive.
“She’s Keller’s genius Weapons Tech, Suvi,” he replied. “Better bombs, bigger tricks, shifty surprises. Jessica calls her the evil engineering gnome.”
“This station is entirely unarmed, Kigali.”
She sounded like she was lecturing him now. Probably not far from the truth. He didn’t do serious very often, or for very long. Not unless there were planetary governors involved.
That was a different story.
“Maybe Moirrey can cook something up,” he said. “Won’t know until she gets here.”
“Also, with the loss of my primary communications antenna array, I am trapped here.”
