by M. D. Cooper
Ames was silent for a moment before he replied.
Katrina glanced at Malorie, who was staring down at Persia again. It was hard to believe that just yesterday morning, she’d awoken in her cell. Now she held a space station and was one step closer to achieving her coup.
Malorie had noticed Katrina’s change in posture and sat forward as well. “What is it?”
“Lara’s here,” Katrina replied. “She’ll be docked in five minutes.”
“Shit,” Malorie swore. “I guess I’m on.”
“We’re on,” Katrina corrected.
“Oh, do I need a babysitter?”
Katrina barked a laugh. “Absolutely. I’m a new guard you’ve hired.”
“For some definition of ‘hired’,” Malorie muttered.
Katrina rose and walked up the steps to the door where she waited for Malorie to catch up.
The Lady of Revenence Castle still wore the white dress and towering heels Juasa had selected for her that morning. Katrina had considered allowing her a change of clothing, but a vindictive streak in her hoped that the shoes were killing Malorie’s feet by now.
Korin and Norm, one of the new members of the Alpha Guard, waited in the hallway.
“Gentlemen,” Katrina said by way of greeting, and Korin laughed.
“Stars, can’t remember the last time anyone called me that,” he said.
Katrina clasped him on the shoulder. “Probably around the same time you were last called Major.”
Korin snorted. “Hell no, it was long before that. The outfit I was in never called anyone anything like ‘gentleman’. Usually something more like, ‘Asswipe’.”
“What do we call you…Katrina?” Norm asked, apparently uncomfortable using her name.
“You call me Katrina,” she replied. “Nothing else.”
“Oh,” Norm said with a slow nod. “I heard you wanted to be called ‘Warlord’.”
Malorie chuckled softly. “A bit presumptuous…and premature.”
“It’s aspirational,” Katrina said coolly. “But none of that, for now. I’m just another one of Malorie’s guards. A new hire that she’s brought on.”
“Of course,” Norm said, and Korin nodded.
“Not really my type,” Malorie added.
They reached the landing pad at the same time as the Midditerra inspection shuttle. They waited with Freya as the ship’s doors opened, and four soldiers walked out, flanking the exit.
Katrina noted that their medium-class armor was not powered, but did appear to be well made and uniform between each soldier.
A pity; powered armor was easier to hack and lock up.
The next person out of the shuttle was Admiral Lara herself. Unlike her guards, she wore no armor to speak of, though Katrina would be surprised if her uniform did not have at least one layer of protection built in. Even now, in this backward time, such things were common.
Malorie’s dress could even stop a bullet, in a pinch.
The admiral was a tall woman; her dark hair pulled back in a long clasp from which it cascaded down her back. Her sharply angled eyebrows sat over jet black eyes. The woman’s skin was pale, and her lips red.
Katrina wondered if she was a sucker.
Malorie stepped forward and offered her hand. “Admiral Lara, imagine meeting you twice in as many days.”
“Indeed,” Lara said with a raised eyebrow. “I know it’s your station and all, but I find myself curious as to what brings you up here.”
No elongated canine teeth. Good, I can’t stand suckers.
Malorie shrugged. “Jace should be returning soon with our new prize ship. I figured that it would be nice to meet him up here.”
“Not because you want to intimidate my inspection crew in any way?” Lara asked with her angled brows raised.
“Are they susceptible to that?” Malorie asked. “If so, I should have done it more often in the past.”
Lara looked back at the inspection team, and the other soldiers who were disembarking. “They’d better not be.”
“We can take a skiff over to the ship,” Malorie said. “Though I suppose it may take two.”
“Lead on,” Lara said with a wave of her hand.
Freya directed the group to two separate skiffs, and soon they were crossing the two kilometers of open space toward the Havermere.
“I must say,” Lara said with a sigh as they approached. “I was expecting something a bit more impressive.”
Malorie nodded. “As was I. Bollam’s World can be a crapshoot. Sometimes you get a real gem, sometimes you get a workhorse like this.”
Sam sent an affirmation.
Katrina stifled a laugh. Something about the AI’s dry sense of humor put her at ease. Perhaps it was how similar he was to Troy.
Where are you, Troy? Why haven’t you arrived yet?
Of course, it was entirely possible that Troy had arrived and that he was laying low on the outskirts of the system, trying to get a bead on the situation.
A minute later, the skiffs entered the bay and settled down beyond the cradles.
Katrina was surprised to see workers swarming the bay. Panels were off, molecular welders were hard at work, repairing the ship’s ribbing, and spools of cabling hung from the overhead as more workers stood on high gantries, arguing over the best way to repair damaged systems.
It was a completely different scene from earlier in the day.
“Your people sure get to work fast,” Lara observed.
“A lot to do,” Freya offered. “The crew had some sort of fight when we showed up, and then our teams had to put a lot of them down. Made a mess of things.”
Lara glanced down at the bloodstains on the deck. “I can see that.”
Katrina said as she considered Freya’s actions.
Katrina shook her head as Freya led them across the bay.
“Some of my inspectors will go aft, while the rest will come with us to the bridge,” Lara said when they reached the ship’s central corridor.
“Works for me,” Malorie said with a shrug. She motioned for a pair of guards standing at the bay entrance to escort the inspection team while the remainder of the group turned forward.
The corridor was in even worse shape than the bay. Deck plate was lifted up in a dozen places, the overhead was pulled open every few meters, cabling impeding their progress as they moved to the front of the ship. It took nearly ten minutes to reach the bridge—which looked like a bomb had gone off in it.
Katrina had to admit that she was impressed by the speed of the Blackadder teams. They had managed to make it look like the ship was barely functional and in need of massive repair in only a few hours. She’d rarely seen that level of efficiency.
The inspectors set to their disparate tasks while Lara tapped a finger on her chin. “I can see how the ship has potential. Sure it needs some work, but it’s rugged; has a lot of supplies, too.”
Freya laughed. “A lot of those crates you saw in the bay are full of used parts. These people were packrats. They kept everything they pulled out on repair jobs.”
The remainder of the inspection was uneventful. It consisted of Lara making comments about how valuable the Havermere could be, which were countered by Freya or Malorie describing how it would take a lot of effort to make repairs, and how the parts would need to be fabricated from scratch for such an unconventional ship.
“Ah, but that’s this vessel’s specialty, isn’t it?” Lara had asked at that point. “Fabricating obscure components would be something it needs to do with great frequency—it’s part of the draw.”
Katrina gave a mental laugh.
Juasa sounded happier than she had in days—excepting a few intimate moments. Katrina was glad to hear the joy in her mental tone. Working on starships really was what Juasa longed to do.
Katrina sighed.
A few minutes later, Lara and her inspectors pronounced themselves satisfied, and they made their way back through the ship to the forward docking bay.
When they arrived, Lara turned to the group. “Now, let’s go check out that big mass of crap you’re shifting around in the back of this floating garbage dump.”
“What?” Malorie asked with a frown. “Which mass of crap? This whole station’s a boneyard.”
“Don’t pull that innocent act with me,” Lara snarled at Malorie. “You’re not smart enough to get free of Jace, and you’re certainly not smart enough to pull one over on me. Let’s go see what you’re up to back there. Seems like just the sort of place you might hide a Streamer ship.”
“A Streamer ship?” Malorie’s voice was filled with disdain. “How would we have gotten it in here?”
“Not sure,” Lara said. “Maybe it wasn’t as big as you said. Maybe the Havermere was just your transport vessel. It doesn’t look worth the effort to bring it, otherwise.”
Shit…did they make this thing look like too much of a hunk of junk? Katrina wondered.
“Fine,” Malorie said. “Let’s go take a look.”
The group reboarded the skiffs, but this time two more of Lara’s guards piled onto the same skiff as the Admiral.
The skiffs pulled out of the bay and flew toward the back of Rockhall’s interior cavern. Katrina tried to get close to Lara, but each time, her guards blocked her. She was tempted to try and drop nano on the guards as a preemptive strike, but worried they would have countermeasures that would detect it.
Getting into a pitched battle with six soldiers on the small skiff was not her idea of a good time.
Malorie shook her head and glanced back at Katrina.
Malorie didn’t respond, but her shoulders slumped. Katrina shared Malorie’s assessment of her true value to Jace.
The skiffs approached the racks of hull and skirted around their edge into the open space beyond.
“Well now, what is this?” Lara asked. “This is no raider.”
“Not all our ships are raiders,” Malorie replied, her tone not as haughty as normal. “Jace’s Verisimilitude is a cruiser, as well.”
“True, but why are you hiding this ship from me?”
“Lara, seriously. It’s inside our station; it’s our business. This is just a ship we got in a raid years ago. If you check your logs, you’ll see that.”
Lara snorted. “You just tucked a ship like this in the back of Rockhall for years? Doubtful.”
Malorie and Freya both responded to Lara, trying to convince the woman that there was no way the Castigation was a Streamer vessel, but Lara wasn’t having any of it. Every time they presented a piece of evidence, Lara countered with the fact that they’d had the ship for weeks and could easily have disguised it.
A second later, Sam’s wry tones came across the Link.
Juasa laughed.
Katrina pulled Korin, Freya, and Malorie into the conversation.
Katrina’s response was sheathed in ice.
Katrina wished she had Troy to help manage this, but for now, she’d have to trust Ames and Hana to get the job done.
As she had been speaking to her command team, Katrina sent a message to all Blackadder ships and stations using Malorie’s tokens.
