“Triton is mid-refit, but he makes a good base,” Oz added.
“I told you it was nothing but air!” Captain Eily Hogan said, throwing her hands up and stomping around in a tight circle behind her fellows. “Bugger’s just a dressed up mouthy braggart.”
Jake hurriedly searched for some kind of defence for his lack of progress. “You wouldn’t say that if you saw our last take.”
“So you’re doing some damage, making a difference with a broken carrier and one fighting ship?” asked Captain Mickey Cane cautiously.
“We’ve gathered intelligence, taken two cargos, and captured an important military leader,” Minh-Chu said without a hint of shame. “We had to make repairs and we’ve been short on crew. As for people signing up for this rebellion, you’re the first brave enough to show.” There was disappointment in how he spoke, and it got their attention. “We’ve been on the run, taking in refugees, trying to find a base to operate from. This ship, the Triton, was in good working order when Captain Valent captured her before the war started. Trying to save people caught in the middle of this mess cost us, though. Now we’re regrouping. Now we need you more than ever because we’re ready for the war, but they need to see they’re not alone.”
The group of captains were quieted by the statement that the Triton was one of Captain Jake Valent’s captures, and listened more intently.
Jake picked up right where Minh-Chu left off. “Ronin here is the Wing Commander of Samurai Squadron, a fighter group that launches from my ship, the Warlord. I put the Triton in the hands of Captain McPatrick – we call him Oz. He’s a trained carrier captain with a long record of combat experience.”
Captain Bell was the first to offer Minh-Chu her hand. He smiled and shook it. She shook Oz’s hand as well. The other captains followed in turn, except for Captain McFadden. “I see,” she said. “So how close are you to getting a real offensive going, Captain? The British have barely fired a shot in this war. In fact, they’ve signed a truce.”
“The Warlord will be ready to go in three days,” Jake replied. “And we have all the intelligence we need.”
“Samurai Squadon just needs a good night’s sleep,” Minh-Chu added.
“Can you find us a place to repair my ship?” asked Captain Kane. “The Hell Shrike has a few holes in her.”
“I don’t have anyone to spare,” Oz said. “But the Triton has a storage hangar you can use and some extra gear that’ll speed things up for your crew.”
“Thank you, Sir,” Captain Kane said. “You wouldn’t know where we can go scavenging for materials?”
“There’s more than you need down on Tamber for free if you can’t afford to pay per ton from Carthan orbital collections,” Minh-Chu replied. “Just stick to the empty wrecks.”
“You’re not what we expected,” Captain McFadden said, her expression softening a little. “But you’ll have to do.” Frost emerged from the lift doors and she walked towards him without a word.
His smile was visible from where Jake was standing over fifty metres away. He shouted, “That’s not my wee Moira, is it?”
The three captains in front of Jake and the crew behind were silent. Heads were lowered, eyes uneasily glancing towards Captain McFadden and Shamus Frost. Stephanie followed several steps behind Shamus. Jake could see that she recognized the mood coming from Moira and her captains.
Minh-Chu couldn’t let the moment unfold without inquiring. “They know each other?” he said to Captain Bell, who nodded sadly.
“Moira’s his cousin. Big family, McFaddens and Coys, hundreds, but those two are all that’s left now.” Captain Bell continued in a whisper, “The Order hit the Irish Union worlds hard, guess they didn’t like how we got through their virus without much harm. We fought until we only had a few scattered ships left, most looking like our Hell Shrike here. The Order’s ruling our land now, they made examples of the families who had a lot of fighters standing in the way. Our Moira’s a war hero, and Shamus McFadden there is wanted in nine sectors by the Order.”
“Ten,” Jake said as a reflex and immediately felt like he’d said the most inappropriate thing in the universe. He watched as Frost embraced Moira McFadden. She spoke to him for a moment. He shook his head in response to the news. Moira took his stubbly cheeks in her hands and nodded. Jake’s heart broke for Shamus as he sunk to his knees, his whole torso wracked by sobs. Moira held him in her arms, weeping. Stephanie knelt down and stroked Frost’s back.
“Good,” Captain Kane said. “Moira’s finally cryin’.”
As Minh-Chu and Jake were about to turn their attention back to the captains standing with them, Frost stood up straight and strode for the nearest exit, a narrow side passage for emergency shuttles. Stephanie turned in time to catch his arm but, to Minh-Chu’s surprise, Frost brushed her off.
Then he caught sight of Frost’s expression. A dangerous, determined scowl contorted Frost’s broad features. “Jake,” Minh-Chu said.
“Catch him!” Jake shouted.
Frost was through the emergency escape hatch and it was closed behind him before anyone could get near him. Minh-Chu, Jake, Stephanie, and Moira were the first to react. “Frost! What are you doing!” shouted Stephanie as she reached the outer hatch of the emergency launch corridor. Two of the heavy hinges were glowing red, and Jake could barely budge the emergency door with an attempt that bent the thick metal handle.
A loud pop signalled the launch of the six-man Triton emergency shuttle, and Minh-Chu glanced through the transparent hangar doors just in time to see it accelerating towards Tamber. “The launch bay will have something ready to go,” Oz said, starting for the nearest lift.
“This is bad,” Minh-Chu said under his breath.
“You have no idea,” Stephanie said. “I know where he’s going.”
CHAPTER 24
Eavesdropping
Alice leaned against the wall of Haven Shore’s main port building. It was a temporary setup – eventually the main port would be a massive tower, and the one she was standing in would be an outbuilding – but she liked it. Still licking her wounds from her dismissal from the Rangers, procrastinating on meeting the Warlord crew and her father, she watched dozens of people coming and going. It was one of her favourite guilty pleasures: leaving her cloaking systems on for an afternoon, going to the busiest place in Haven Shore, picking someone and following them for a while. She’d already chosen her target for the day: Ayan.
The temporary port building was a circular structure put together with transparent panels from leftover emergency shelter assemblies that made a building a little over seventy metres across. Three gangways led out of one side to the horseshoe shaped landing platform. It took them a couple of days to put the port building together, but that platform outside, large enough for five to seven mid-sized ships, and the cleared land on the reinforced cliff top around it took six weeks to complete. The landing platform proper had the most expensive landing spots on that hemisphere of Tamber, and they were always full.
The ground surrounding it, with enough room to support twenty or more vessels in the thirty-metre sloop or planet hopper category, was less expensive, but the port was making money. That much was evident.
The other side of the port building was always busy too, with two main exits leading to hover vehicle paths that took people to the Everin Building and beyond.
Alice leisurely watched a few covered gangways that were meant to lead to other structures, but most were capped off at various lengths with temporary exit hatches or small portable outbuildings. She’d seen countless tearful hellos and farewells from a distance in those quieter corners, but on that day there seemed to be more arguments than anything. There was tension in the air. Alice heard more than a few people talk about the reformation of the Haven Shore government and the arrival of the Warlord. There were already rumours that the dark ship had captured incredible treasures, and that Haven Shore wouldn’t benefit because of Ayan’s sovereignty deal with the Carthans.
Every time she came back from long ranger patrols across the vast forests and wastes of Tamber, there was something new taking shape in Haven Shore. She couldn’t help but notice that they were out of prefabricated walls and domes, and it made her wonder what the next step in building was, and how much things would slow down. They had no large fabrication shops set up, though she heard two were being built, but it would be slow going unless the Rangers could lead salvage teams to good unclaimed wrecks. Her time as a Ranger was over, it was something she still caught herself forgetting. Alice couldn’t help but think it might be for the best, regardless of how much it stung.
When she started with the Rangers, she could still keep her eye on her father, but when he told her the Warlord would be going out of the system to gather information, she couldn’t help but remember Jason Everin’s message to her. Sometimes it was difficult to believe that he’d come to her in a manufactured memory and told her that she could improve the futures of her father and herself if she stayed close to him. She felt she might be his connection to humanity somehow, but her father told her to stay with the Rangers, that she’d see more, learn more there while the Warlord was away.
Alice stopped and leaned against a post, wondering what things would have been like if she just followed her first instinct and gone with the Warlord crew. They must have seen some interesting things while visiting strange ports.
She looked to the upper level of the port building and immediately noticed Ayan descending down the ramp curving into the circular main desk in the middle of the port building. Ayan was back in a dress shaped from vacsuit material. The light pastel blue suited her, contrasting with her curly red hair. Ayan might not have been more than a few centimetres taller than Alice, and she did want to be taller when she grew out of her teens, but if she didn’t grow much more, Alice hoped to look like Ayan more than anyone else. Before Ayan tried to reassure her after being ejected from the Rangers, Alice only saw her as her father’s former flame. The short reassurance Ayan gave her when she was in tears changed that. Alice took some kind of solace in seeing how intelligent, talented, and busy Ayan was. She was also beautiful by Alice’s standards, so much more than she was. Ayan had curves, whereas Alice felt boyish: short and muscly. Alice couldn’t imagine being as busy or stressed as Ayan, and didn’t understand how the woman could handle herself so calmly as she addressed one situation after another. She was a builder, a designer, a military officer, and a politician. Alice could understand why Ayan’s love life exploded in her face from time to time, considering.
The desk in the middle of the port building was large enough for a staff to attend to people coming in, and security gates stretched out to the sides, splitting the whole floor of the building into two halves. Haven Shore security in dark blue armoured vacsuits stood guard as people passed through the scanning gates.
Ayan met with Lieutenant Davi and Remmy at the bottom of the ramp, where they were waiting at the desk. Alice couldn’t help but feel deep envy as she watched Remmy from a distance. She heard he got to lead the soldiers who took the last Order of Eden garrison on Tamber, maybe in the entire Rega Gain Solar System, and wished it were her. She fought numerous frameworks on her own – what had he done? “Would have been nice to be there, at least,” she muttered under her breath. He was twenty-three years old, finished Freeground Fleet Academy early, and got himself recruited into Fleet Intelligence right away. After meeting him several times during Ranger training, she couldn’t see why. He was a brat, with a sense of humour that she found more annoying than funny. She watched him, Lieutenant Davi, and Ayan at the Port Control desk.
Ayan was all smiles at first, shaking Lieutenant Davi’s hand then Remmy’s. Her expression became serious within seconds, however, as Remmy took his time awkwardly telling her something.
“Ayan!” Shouted a gravelly voice so suddenly and loudly that, judging from the reaction of the crowd, you’d think a bomb went off. Frost marched into the main port building straight for Ayan, who was flanked by two security officers in an instant. She stayed them with a gesture.
Alice had never seen Frost so furious. Even in moments when machines refused to cooperate, he didn’t look like that. He didn’t look murderous. “Time for you to wake up and take notice: there’s a war on, and you’re keeping the crew we need from signing up. We can’t fight with a crew of seven.”
“Easy, Shamus,” Ayan replied. “That’s up to the Council and the people of Haven Shore.”
“You’re at the head of that table, this overgrown sand-castle was your idea, and you’re actin’ like we’ve already won when there’s a war just starting.”
“I’ll be happy to talk about-“
Frost drew his sidearm and rapid fired several shots over everyone’s heads. His pulse shots burned through the metal effortlessly and he dropped his weapon back into its holster. By the time he’d finished, every guard and soldier had their weapons drawn on him. “Your plastic walls can’t stop a round from my smallest shooter. Your little city would be slagged in a real attack. You need to face reality, girl: all our enemies know exactly where to find us, and when the Order comes for this system, the Brits will turn tail, and this city will be a mass grave with your name on the stone.”
“Frost!” shouted Jake as he stormed into the port. “Stand down!”
“They’re all dead, Jake. Not just my kin, but Stephanie’s, maybe Ashley’s,” Frost raged, tears dripping from reddened eyes. “Someone’s got to make them pay for it. More of them need to step up before trouble comes here.”
“I know,” Jake said. “Trust me, I know.”
Stephanie closed the distance between her and Frost before anyone else reached him, and she turned towards two security guards that were creeping up behind him. “Leave him alone. Goddamned children looking to pin him now that the moment’s over. Fine army you’ve got here,” Stephanie spat at Ayan as she took Frost in her arms. “Could use some seasoning, yeah?”
“It’s over,” Ayan said to the guards standing at the ready. “Jake, can we talk?” She didn’t wait for him to respond, but started walking towards a side passage.
Alice followed them, unseen, into a covered walkway that led to an incomplete shuttle pad. No one would bother Ayan and Jake there, and Alice made sure her suit wasn’t pinging her position to the security network, so they wouldn’t know she was there.
Ayan listened silently as Jake told her about Frost’s family and the fate of their home. The Order made an example of the entire family and the city around them, razing it to the ground then making sure everyone was dead by sending soldiers down to search the place and execute survivors on foot.
The Irish Union worlds were ravaged by the Order of Eden when they decided to expand their territory, and the Hell Shrike was one of the last ships from their defence fleet. All the nearby systems had fallen, and it was possible that Stephanie’s family as well as Ashley’s friends were all captured or killed. The Order of Eden destroyed the military presence in those systems, dismantled governments, and executed the families of resistors. The surviving populace was reduced to refugees and prisoners, ordered to repair the damage to their world after the Order
was sure they’d won.
The scope of loss and unstoppable nature of the Order made Alice feel as though everything she’d done with the Rangers over the previous months was meaningless. What were a few rescues and victories over wandering frameworks compared to the fight the Hell Shrike crew just escaped? It felt as though she had been wasting her time on a moon tucked safely behind larger planets. She should have stayed on the Warlord, even though her father encouraged her to join the Rangers for the experience, where she might help people like Frost’s family, or at least fire a shot at Order soldiers in the field.
“I couldn’t be sorrier,” Ayan said, nearly in tears. “I feel for them, I truly do.”
“What’s happening down here, Ayan?” Jake asked, his tone non-confrontational.
“The Council is pushing a colonist’s agenda. Victor Davis and I are the only ones in support of a more military approach.”
“Victor? Your bodyguard from the Pandem refugees?” Jake asked.
“Former bodyguard. He and Iloona are both pushing with me to get out from under our contract with the Carthans and to quicken progress. It’s been hard, and we’re mid-reformation so I won’t have a seat again for a day or two.”
“It’s too soon for that kind of democracy,” Jake said. “The details of this government don’t matter, you have to see that. Give the people representatives, fine, but take control and get the people willing to fight for the support they need.”
Ayan looked at him, looking a little surprised. She didn’t reply right away. “Maybe. Probably, but it’s too late now.”
“Yours is still the only name on the Sovereignty agreement – that gives you all the power here if you want it. Just overrule the Council and militarise. So what if a bunch of ungrateful colonists get pissed and leave. They shouldn’t be here anyway; chances are the war is coming here next. The rest will see things your way, they’ll have to.”
Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades Page 17
