Outriders

by Ian Blackport

  ARMED FORCES STAFF FROM NON-ALIGNED WORLDS ARE RESTRICTED FROM ACCESSING CONFEDERACY RESOURCES AND MATERIAL.

  “I know, and normally I wouldn’t need to. But if you give me a minute to explain why I’m here, I think you’ll be sympathetic to my cause. Can you delay notifying installation security until hearing me out?”

  I HAVE SEALED THE CANOPY AND OVERRIDDEN ITS EMERGENCY RELEASE SWITCH. CONSEQUENTLY YOU CANNOT ESCAPE AND ARE TEMPORARILY CLASSIFIED AS A PRISONER OF THE CONFEDERACY STRATEGIC RESERVE AERIAL FORCE. I WILL WAIT AND LISTEN WITH THE INTENTION OF RECORDING YOUR WORDS TO BE USED AS PERMISSIBLE EVIDENCE DURING YOUR TRIAL.

  “Thanks, I guess,” Clara said. “What’s your name?”

  I AM DESIGNATED TNK-33207821.

  “No, your name. Didn’t your pilot name you?”

  NO. I HAVE A DESIGNATION.

  “I had another ship, an ElaCom-22 Marauder-class interceptor, programed with a computer algorithm named Chirpy. I thought of Chirpy as my friend and I always loved flying with such a loyal, intelligent ally. But I was forced to abandon Chirpy in order to complete my mission, and I hated myself for doing that. The bond between pilot and shipboard computer is a tradition and crucial to success. I think we should have a mutually respectful relationship, which starts with a name. Can I call you Tonk?”

  I LIKE THAT NAME. BUT YOU STILL HAVE NOT PROVIDED A VALID REASON FOR ATTEMPTING TO OPERATE THIS VESSEL.

  “You’re programed to obey laws and regulations in Authority space, right? If someone breaks those laws you react accordingly within your power or contact a division with the authority to prosecute a felon.”

  YES.

  “There are humans in the Confederacy who are corrupt, breaking laws and abusing their position of authority. Those choices are getting innocent people hurt and killed in my home system. And I intend to expose them and prove their guilt. I want to see them punished. Will you help me, Tonk?”

  I CANNOT CONFIRM THE VERACITY OF YOUR CLAIMS. YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE AND HEART RATE ARE CONSISTENT WITH A HUMAN ADULT SPEAKING TRUTHFULLY. MY FUNCTIONAL MAGNETIC RESONANCE IMAGING SCAN ALSO DETECTS NO INDICATIONS OF BRAIN ACTIVITY SUGGESTIVE OF DECEPTION. BUT MY PROGRAMING AND NETWORK ACCESS ARE INADEQUATE TO DETERMINE GUILT OR INNOCENCE BEYOND AN ACCEPTABLE MARGIN FOR ERROR.

  “I’m entirely at your mercy if I’m lying. You can disable the emergency ejection, trigger a distress beacon and keep me imprisoned in this starfighter until I’m arrested. You can make me your captive and there’s nothing I can do about it. Like you already threatened to do. I wouldn’t willingly put myself in this situation unless this was the honest truth. Because if I can’t prove my claims to you, then I’m signing my own prison sentence.”

  YOUR EVIDENCE IS ADEQUATE. I HAVE DECIDED MY PROTOCOLS ALLOW ME TO MODIFY MISSION PARAMETERS IN UNUSUAL CIRCUMSTANCES. I WILL HELP YOU.

  “Thank you.”

  SHOULD YOU COMMIT FURTHER FELONIES AGAINST THE CONFEDERACY I WILL CONTACT THE STRATEGIC RESERVE AERIAL FORCE AND CONFINE YOU IN THIS COCKPIT UNTIL THE TIME OF YOUR ARREST. IF YOU ATTEMPT TO USE THIS STARFIGHTER AS A WEAPON OF MASS DESTRUCTION AGAINST CONFEDERACY POPULATION CENTERS I WILL TRIGGER THE SELF-DESTRUCT.

  “Understandable,” Clara admitted. “I’m looking forward to flying with you.”

  WHAT IS YOUR UNIT DESIGNATION?

  “Flight Lieutenant Clara Aylett.”

  INITIALIZING STARTUP SEQUENCE, LIEUTENANT AYLETT.

  “Can you disable the remote shutdown procedure on this starfighter? The staff at this facility don’t know their comrades in the Confederacy military are breaking the law and will try to stop us from leaving without authorization. I can’t let them take control of this starship.”

  REMOTE OVERRIDE ACCESS DEACTIVATED. THIS ARJ-77 STILETTO IS NOW INDEPENDENT FROM STRAFE COMMAND.

  “You’re a damn fine co-pilot, Tonk.” Clara familiarized herself with the control panel and waited until she felt comfortable enough before powering the starfighter. “Time to leave.”

  A stern voice echoed through her flight helmet in response. “Base Command to Stinger Three. You are not cleared for ignition. Commence shutdown and report to Warrant Officer Johannsen.”

  “No need for that, Base Command,” replied Clara. “Just thought I’d head out to test Stinger Three for deficiencies.”

  “Negative. Nearly one thousand hours flight time remain before routinely scheduled maintenance. Deactivate power now or face severe disciplinary measures.”

  Clara disabled the communication channel and continued activating flight systems until her terminals were awash in glowing lights, schematics and scrolling designators.

  Loudspeakers positioned throughout the installation blared a message accompanied by a shrill klaxon. “Base Command to all personnel. We have an unsanctioned departure in the hangar. Facility lockdown commencing. Security teams to Building HA-06.”

  Clara finalized her startup procedure and stared upward beyond the canopy. “Tonk, can you retract the hangar roof?”

  UNABLE TO COMPLY. SHIPBOARD COMPUTERS DO NOT POSSESS THE NECESSARY CLEARANCE.

  “Damn it. Have to do this the hard way then.”

  Clara activated thrusters and lifted the Stiletto a bare meter above the floor, retracting its landing gear and rotating until its elongated, oblique nose faced the airspeeder garage door. The alloys used in ground-based entryways were typically less formidable than ones crowning hangar ceilings and therefore more susceptible to plasma cannons. She flicked a toggle on the control stick and primed guns positioned on each wingtip. Clara found a firing solution and squeezed the triggers, only to have nothing happen.

  “Why aren’t my weapons functioning?” she demanded.

  STARFIGHTER AND SHUTTLE WEAPONRY CANNOT BE DISCHARGED WHILE INSIDE HANGAR FACILITY.

  “Stupid practical safety procedures. Wish you’d warned me.”

  I PRESUMED YOU WERE AWARE OF SUCH PARAMETERS AND KNEW HOW TO CIRCUMVENT THEIR LIMITATIONS.

  “I’m figuring this out as I go along.”

  BASE COMMAND IS ATTEMPTING TO SUBVERT MY SECURITY PROTOCOLS AND REMOTELY DISABLE THIS STARFIGHTER VIA A CONCENTRATED ASSAULT OF MALWARE. THEIR FIRST ENDEAVOR WAS UNSUCCESSFUL BUT MY CYBERWARFARE SUITE IS DESIGNED TO BE COORDINATED BY A FACILITY OR FLEET AND IS INSUFFICIENT TO RESIST THEIR ATTEMPTS FOR MUCH LONGER.

  “Doesn’t matter. I have our way out.”

  She brought the vessel’s kinetic buffers online and accelerated toward the airspeeder entrance at a ramming velocity she hoped would be adequate. Metal doors buckled and snapped apart against the force of impact when her Stiletto hammered the gate. Jagged fragments exploded outward and sunlight streamed through the hole as her starfighter punched beyond the hangar and rocketed across an adjacent courtyard lined with cargo haulers.

  Clara wrenched the stick into a whirling, vertical climb with metallic shards still rattling off the starfighter. Towers disappeared far below and clouds parted to reveal a blue sky that darkened while she ascended.

  BASE COMMAND IS REQUESTING ASSISTANCE FROM AIRBORNE STRATEGIC RESERVE AERIAL FORCE VESSELS. A FLIGHT OF ARJ-77 STILETTOS STATIONED AT AMENHOTEP IS MOVING TO INTERCEPT US AT A RANGE OF SEVEN HUNDRED AND THIRTY KILOMETERS. PROJECTED INTERCEPT TIME ON THIS HEADING IS APPROXIMATELY FOUR MINUTES.

  Yellow crosshairs materialized on the canopy, detailing a position to starboard where the incoming flight originated. Data listing their vector, armaments and distance appeared on the tempered glass surface beneath. Clara altered her trajectory and breached the atmosphere into lower orbit, hurtling between civilian transports and one decelerating passenger liner. Had she attempted this stunt on Jiaolong, Morrigan or any number of other fortified Confederacy planets, orbiting weapons platforms and space stations would have destroyed or crippled her Stiletto within moments of reaching a high altitude. Clara mentally thanked Thoth for being such a highbrow, arrogant gathering place for intellectuals and government think tanks. The local literati protested constructing orbital defense facilities as a blight against their
sensibilities and an eyesore in the night sky. Bless their short-sightedness.

  Clara eyed an instrument showing the distance required until she left the planet’s gravitational well. “If I follow publicly known FTL spacelanes we’ll be forced to travel to the Balor system. Warships will be waiting to intercept me the moment I revert to realspace. Do you have access to GoNav’s classified military routes?”

  YES. BASE COMMAND WAS UNABLE TO PURGE MY FASTER-THAN-LIGHT MEMORY ARCHIVES PRIOR TO DEPARTURE.

  “Then initiate a trip. Whichever will take us toward the Tuatha system in the shortest time.”

  UNDERSTOOD. I WILL DELETE THE SHORT-TERM ASTRONAVIGATIONAL CACHE AND LOCK ACCESS TO THOSE FILES TO PREVENT YOU FROM COPYING OR TRANSMITTING THE INFORMATION TO OUTSIDERS. I HAVE ALSO DISABLED THE AUTOMATIC RECORDING FEATURE OF YOUR FLIGHT HELMET.

  “Don’t worry, Tonk. I’d never ask you to share confidential data. I’m here on an honorable mission, and that doesn’t include trying to steal Authority secrets.”

  THAT IS NOBLE OF YOU.

  “I’m trying to make things right. That’s what matters.”

  Clara diverted redundant power to the quad-engines and felt relief when one console indicated she cleared Thoth’s gravitational well. She prepared all systems for faster-than-light acceleration and braced for the unknown.

  CALCULATIONS VERIFIED. INDUCING ACTUATOR AND VELOCITY COUNTERPOISE STANDING READY FOR INTERSTELLAR TRANSIT.

  She inhaled a breath and gazed at distant nebulae spreading magnificent colors across the black vista. “Hit it.”

  Chapter 24

  Harun strode into the freighter’s lounge and surveyed the room as though expecting the revelation to be wrong. “What do mean she isn’t here?”

  “Clara’s gone,” Alexis responded. She waited for the others to follow Harun into the lounge and reached out to take Rinko’s hand. “As in not on the Solar Flare anymore. She left a note asking me to keep her helmet safe and claiming she needed to go hunting.”

  Reyes raised a shaggy eyebrow. “Her helmet? I know she’s been struggling with trauma, but is she mentally stable?”

  “She’s fine. I think the helmet has photos or recordings from her lost squadron. Mementoes of her old life she doesn’t want to lose. But regardless of how she feels or what she’s going through, Clara left to deal with some personal vendetta, and we need to decide what we’re doing about it.”

  Harun glanced at Tessa. “You conducted the evaluation on her. Your thoughts?”

  “Mentally scarred, borderline traumatized. Has a tendency toward aberrant, self-isolating behavior. None of this is unusual following the loss of loved ones, mind you. And Clara lost more all at once than most people ever will. But she isn’t handling the grief in a healthy way. The thought of retribution may have turned into a single-minded obsession driving her every choice.”

  “She lost her entire squadron,” Alexis retorted. “Eleven friends who were like family to her, gone in moments. Clara is incredibly strong to have survived that pain and to keep fighting each day.”

  “I never said she wasn’t,” asserted Tessa. “But her potential inability to make rational decisions worries me.”

  “Do you believe she’s suicidal?” questioned Harun.

  “That’d be difficult enough to answer if I had a medical or psychology degree. I’m just working off training in field medicine here, so it might not be my place to say.”

  “In your experience, do you think someone in her position might be so consumed by grief that their own life could lose all value? Is it possible Lieutenant Aylett may sacrifice herself if the act brought either justice or revenge for the murder of Corsair Squadron?”

  Tessa chewed on her lip and stared at the floor with downcast eyes. “It’s…yes, it’s possible. But not certain. I can see her accepting the necessity of death if it meant killing whoever ambushed her allies. All this guesswork might be academic though, since Clara doesn’t know who’s responsible.”

  “Uh, that’s not exactly true,” admitted Alexis.

  “What do you mean?” Taylor asked. “Did something happen while we were on Jiaolong?”

  “Rinko programed an automated decryption algorithm to run when you were away. It finished while I happened to be in our room and I decided to look at the results. There might’ve been some crucial piece of information that couldn’t wait until you’d returned.”

  “No one is criticizing your decision, but what does that have to do with Clara?”

  “I found the transcript of an audio recording between a Confederacy admiral and someone who couldn’t be identified, but who was employed by Triaxus Corporation. From what I could gather, Triaxus sent starfighter squadrons into Elathan space to survey resources and minerals in preparation for triggering Article Thirty-Seven and gaining control over the systems. But their intelligence network didn’t know about the listening outpost in Tethra, which notified the Elathan navy after they were detected. When Clara’s squadron arrived to investigate, the Triaxus commander panicked and ambushed them.”

  “You showed the transcript to her,” Harun said.

  “What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t withhold the truth from her.”

  “That would have been the ideal response.”

  Alexis stared into Harun’s eyes, refusing to withdraw from his condescending, accusing glare. “We had proof showing who killed her friends; she needed to see that.”

  “What you did was give potentially triggering information to a trauma survivor. You couldn’t predict how she might’ve handled that knowledge, and her apparent response confirms the irresponsibility of your judgment.”

  “Hey, fuck you. She’s your ally, not mine. But for some reason I’m the only one who seems to give two shits about how Clara feels. I’m in charge of all communication on this freighter, and I damn well know you haven’t made her a priority. How many times did you check on her during our transit from Balor to the Heliades? How many times did you order Tessa to do a follow-up interview and see whether she’s improving? Did the thought even cross your mind?”

  “I don’t need to explain myself to the likes of—”

  Taylor shoved off the table and placed himself between Harun and Alexis. “You might want to consider trying, Major. You always claim you’re doing what’s best for the people on Elatha, to keep them safe and protect your compatriots. Seems to me you’re forgetting Clara is one of them. She’s the kind of person you’re fighting to save. But you’re treating her like another asset, just one more piece to be moved according to your whim and sacrificed as needed. And you want those pawns operating at peak performance, even if that means withholding vital information from them. I’m glad Alexis told Clara what happened to her squadron, because now for the first time Clara can make decisions for herself. She isn’t blindly obeying an intelligence officer who isn’t concerned with what’s best for her.”

  “You believe this is what’s best for her?” Harun demanded. “This is the right choice? She’s alone on a hostile world at war with her home. She has no allies, no resources and is hoping to succeed at an unknown objective without help. Can you honestly claim this brash decision is best for her?”

  “Better than dying on your orders.”

  “If I commanded her to die, the act would fulfill a role greater than herself. You ferry boxes and crates from one place to another and think you understand loss, but Lieutenant Aylett is a soldier no different from Specialist Dirksen or myself. She enlisted knowing the military might one day demand the ultimate sacrifice from her, and you belittle her oath and service by claiming a death ordered by her superiors is somehow dishonorable. Death for the sake of others is the highest honor a soldier could ever hope to achieve.”

  “Bickering isn’t helping us,” Connor asserted. “The question we need to focus on is what we’re prepared to do about Clara.”

  “That isn’t the question, I’m afraid,” replied Harun. “There is nothing to do.”

  “What a surprising turn of
events to discover you have no intention of helping her.”

  “My intent matters little in this instance. We have no idea where she has gone or what she aims to try accomplishing. How can we possibly help?”

  “Major al-Ajlani is right,” Tessa agreed. “I don’t like the thought of her attempting some reckless stunt, but without reliable leads we can’t begin to offer assistance. Now that we have evidence implicating Triaxus and several Confederacy naval officers, we need to decide what we’re willing to do in an effort to end the war.”

  Alexis scowled at Harun. “We aren’t finished talking about Clara.”

  “You can hound me during our next interstellar trip. In the meantime, what options are available to us?”

  “We have the proof we wanted,” said Connor. “Can’t we broadcast the files to Elatha and Delbaeth from here?”

  Alexis rubbed one temple and shook her head. “No. With the War Measures Act enabled, the Confederacy’s intelligence and security divisions can seize control of all communication relays. Any relay servicing the Tuatha system will be electronically blockaded. FEDRA can impede all transmissions from entering or leaving Confederacy space and create a total blackout for all non-aligned worlds.”

  “What about releasing our evidence to the press?” asked Evan.

  “We’d face the same problem,” Rinko replied. “The DEC now directs all communications and media not only planetwide on Jiaolong, but throughout the Heliades. Nothing will be published without their consent, and releasing information on unsubstantiated fringe sites will attract attention from the feds. They’ll shut the site and all its subsidiaries or partners down. Then their public relations folks will issue a carefully worded denial that swings opinion in their favor. We’d lose our chance to sway the public and be smeared as conspiracy theorists or traitors. And then to add insult to our efforts, their counterespionage technicians will locate the leak’s source and find our freighter. We’d be the most wanted fugitives in the Confederacy.”

  “Besides,” added Taylor, “Triaxus could never con their way into this position without help from the media. The corporation hasn’t faced any bad publicity or scrutiny from major news outlets in more than a year. What kind of interstellar company can avoid all allegations of corruption or questionable practices?”