by Mason, Jolie
They all sat around an oval table in the front chamber. “I called you all here to start the ship's reorganization.”
One of the senior officers bristled. “Ma'am, all due respect, but this ship is run religiously according to Imperial regs.”
She cut a look sharply in the officers direction. “Hardy, is it?” At his uncertain nod, she continued, stone faced. “Hardy, the last Imperial fleet I saw in battle had its ass handed to it in a sack, and it cost me my ship. Imperial regs are no longer good enough. Now, how much fighter capacity does the fleet have?”
A graying veteran with a bald spot leaned forward grinning. “We could hold about fifty more spread out amongst the fleet.”
She looked up and traded grins with him. “And you are?”
“Commander Tark. I run the fighter contingent.”
“Excellent, Tark. It is my understanding that all you need do is drop your fleet commander's name and the resources will magically become available. Does that suit you?”
Delighted, Tark said, “Suits me just fine.”
“Now, as to upgrades, who runs the maintenance department?” It went on and on like this for a good long while. By the time they finished, Luca anticipated that the Imperial fleet, or her section of it, would be faster, trimmer and healthier than it had ever been, and the crew would hate her forever. As long as they lived through this, she would get over it somehow.
She marched out to the bridge to check on the comm upgrades she'd ordered. Emery stood, in the Imperial commander's gray and black, staring at the navset console. He did look good in a uniform, she admitted. She approached without interrupting.
“We have a new objective. We'll rendezvous with thirty of the new fighters here, and then we head to this location to investigate a facility there.”
When he left the console, she was there behind him, an eyebrow quirked. “A facility? Already?”
He gestured to the Captain's quarters. Thanks to the scramblers, it was the safest place on the ship to talk, which meant he suspected someone still tracked their movements. She followed him into their quarters barely keeping up with his pace. He seemed overeager to have something to shoot. Luca could understand it. Might be nice to have something to show for all the heartache and running and fighting.
“I found something in the files that makes me think he's moved more kids to this planet right here.” As he spoke, he pulled up the holomap on the briefing table console.
“Acheron?”
He zoomed on that system to the smaller second planet. “Just reached the late stages of terraforming and reported too hazardous for settlement.”
“Let me guess, by Morgan”, she said.
“Exactly. Yet, he claims to have set up a research base in the mountainous region.”
“What's the plan? Do we offer them a chance to surrender?”
He shook his head. “We're sneaking in. I knew the man. He'd have a scorch and burn contingency in place. If they know we're here, they'll burn it.”
“My hope is that the defenses are mainly stealth. Perimeter weapons would draw attention and give lie to the research base. We'll know when we get scans. If they've got cannon, the place will burn before we get an incursion team in place.”
“Don't you think he'd have something in place just in case his rogue facility, dare I say it, turned rogue?” Emery chuckled, until his face sobered and a thought obviously crossed his mind.
“You're a genius.”
“Yes, how am I a genius?”
“Morgan was, at bottom, a spy, whatever else he could claim. Our training tells us to always have a kill switch. A quick painless way to shut an operation down. We're all trained we are expendable, but Morgan had a nova sized ego. He may have seen himself as unexpendable.”
“That doesn't completely track with flying a cruiser into an alien ship”, she said.
“It does if he developed a savior complex or something. Thinking he's the only hope to defeat the enemy. I don't know, but it tracks somehow, even if I don't know how yet.”
“You do realize how that sounds, don't you? What does all this profiling get us?”
He ruffled her hair. “Oh, ye of little faith”, he teased.
“He would take steps to preserve his own life. There's some way to shut down his kill switch. I just have to find it. I have an idea where to look. I'm gonna hit the codex, while you go collect your army.”
“It's a fighter contingent, not an army”, she said.
“It's the reason Tark wants to marry you now.”
She inclined her head his way. “I do have that effect on men.”
***#***
Emery still hadn't emerged from his research when they arrived at the planet Styx in the Acheron system, a seriously pretentious name considering. There wasn't even a Solar Relay in system. Just a few terraforming planets, and, apparently, a rogue research facility.
Luca ordered the navigator to begin the scans looking for defense and weapons systems, heat signatures and population concentrations. It didn't take long at all. Emery must have been watching a console for the scan results. He strolled out of his office looking tired almost before the last bytes of data scrolled across the screens.
She didn't think he'd slept last night.
The young nav officer saluted, and began her report. “Sir, there are no defense systems detected and only one small center of population in this area.” He nodded.
“Get Tark up here a minute, and start assembling the incursion teams.” He looked over the data again. There were perhaps a hundred people on the planet in one clump. “We'll be sending four incursion teams and an occupation company with drones. If we get this place intact, we're going to be seeing that it doesn't get used against us again.”
She followed him into their quarters once again. “You're not happy.”
“The kill switch probably exists, but I didn't find it. It's nowhere. Which means he could still burn this program”
“Does that change anything?”
He shrugged his shoulders and threw his datapad on the briefing table's shiny surface sending it sliding to come to rest nearly at the edge farthest from him. “Not really. I don't trust this to be straightforward. Nothing ever is.”
Luca ran a hand over his arm “We will shut this down.”
He looked her way, unhappiness resting like a veil on his face. His hand covered hers on his arm. “We have to. This has to be worth it.”
She stepped into his hard shoulder. Her voice dropped to a tense hush as she told him, “For the last time, I'm not fragile. This thing was part of my life before you were, and it isn't your fault!”
He said nothing as the comm beeped at the door. “ID?”, he asked the computer.
“Commander Tark, Thaddeus”.
“Thaddeus, huh?” Luca smiled.
Emery signaled he could enter. Tark strolled in with a young man's gait and a glint in his eye. He clearly enjoyed the new fighters, Luca thought. In fact, the smile on his face was akin to a child with a toy. “Fleet Commander Charles. Captain Brine.”
Luca crossed her arms across her chest. “Commander, you can stop calling me Captain.”
“No, I can't, Captain. You surrendered your ship for the good of the empire and to destroy an enemy. Some titles are honorary.” She pursed her lips at his gruff, somewhat dismissive words.
Tark began his planning meeting with the real Commander of the P40 fleet, and Luca excused herself. What an unoriginal bunch these Imperials were? Letters and numbers for ship names. Luca continued to be superstitious like most pilots, and her suspicion is that the old girl she rode on now most definitely had a soul, possibly a sense of humor. Ships had a feel to them. She didn't know if they were built in like a personality, or if it came from years of interacting with a crew.
The AI in every ship she'd ever heard of had a way about it that was unique. This one appeared to like jokes. Maintenance drones had a tendency to pop out of air vents stealthily, but only when someone was unawares.
It got the blood pumping, but she figured it was harmless. She'd served on the Carry Bell enough to know it's quirks. The Bell had been maternal in her way; giving them tea when they wanted too much coffee, fixing the room temperature individually, or locating lost things.
Luca walked out onto the bridge to stare into the white light streak of FTL, stuffing her hands into her pockets. The Bell was gone, space dust. She hadn't had word from their contacts in months. She hadn't tried to contact Ari at all.
Loneliness, homesickness set in and settled on Luca's chest like an anvil as she watched space roll by. It must be hitting me, she thought, as the sadness and regret made her shoulders droop. The Carry Bell, her home, had been destroyed, exploded by her own choice. It was almost too much to think about.
She thought about the kids on Havoc Station, and her family on Taarken. She stood there a moment letting the consequences of her trip to Sensor sink in. All those thousands dead because she'd been made into a weapon, just as surely as she'd turned her ship into one. She thought about the battle for Ra'dan Sevarus' planet, and the bomb she'd detonated destroying the spaceport. All those lives.
Her stomach twisted, then she looked toward the door she'd just exited. Was this what went on in Emery's mind when he couldn't sleep? She'd lay odds that her body count made his look like a picnic back on the ranch. He'd been a targeted assassin and spy. Luca was, apparently, a weapon of mass destruction. Or did he still blame himself, undeservedly, for her involvement?
The pattern of streaks changed in a soothing staccato on the screen, a pattern she found relaxing, soothing normally. It didn't quiet her thoughts today. The bridge crew operated in a low hum of professional conversation and electronic scans being completed behind her.
The sound of a clearing throat brought her out of her unhappy thoughts. Tark gave a half smile at her start. “Didn't mean to sneak”, he said gruffly.
She shrugged. “A gyro mech could sneak up on me today. Don't worry about it.” He held files in one hand. The balding center of his forehead shone in the bridge's glaring light. “You have your plan organized?”
“Certainly.” Tark turned to stare out of the viewscreen beside her. “Beautiful sight, isn't it? Space in an FTL spin. It's almost magical, if you didn't know the science of it.”
“I take it you aren't one to believe in magic, Commander.”
“Nah”, he growled. “Everything can be explained, even the things we wish couldn't. I like to look hard, cold reality in the face, then I decide whether I embrace it or aim a weapon at it. Simple.”
“Simple”, she whispered. The commander looked like someone's grandfather and talked like a hardened soldier used to the burden of command. “You'll be handling the fighters from here?”
“Yes, I'm sending one of my best men down with your boy there, since he's insisting that protocol is worthless 'on his ship'.” Tark tossed a thumb over his shoulder toward the Captain's quarters. She raised an eyebrow at the old man. “Don't look at me like that. We both know who the wears the pants.”
She erupted in laughter, drawing the eye of the overly quiet bridge crew. “He is in command, you know?”
Tark shrugged in acknowledgment. “When you've been alive as long as I have, you learn that no man is ever in charge where a woman is concerned.”
“I bet you've never had that problem”, she scoffed.
His rough, joking manner fell away like a crumbling cliff face into a sea. “Where do you think I learned it? Experience, woman. Experience.”
He walked away, indicating he was headed for the below decks to check on the incursion preparations. Luca went back to watching the screen. She knew the plan, and it's risks. She also knew Emery would be going, and no one would be stopping him, not even her.
She glanced at the forward area to see a few of the command staff watching her speculatively before looking quickly away. She understood their confusion. She shared it. Civilian and intelligence agent in charge of a fleet. Nothing made sense these days.
How in the hell had she and Emery gotten stuck in this strange predicament? Yesterday, they were on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and today, they were running about the galaxies looking for missing children while trying to simultaneously shut down a rogue covert operation. She rubbed her brow, and thought she might miss the ranch more than she expected.
Walking over to the console, she reached for a datapad to interface with a few ship's systems. She'd fill the hours between now and the planet Acheron with some busy work.
9
Emery checked his gear one more time in the shuttle. Trooper shuttles usually consisted of little more than two long parallel benches between the hulls. This one was no exception.
His first impression of Tark's force had been brief, but they looked like an able group of men and women, disciplined and serious about the work. He went over the scan one more time, before waving over the young lieutenant commander of the incursion teams. They would be with Alpha during the mission, which would hopefully be uncomplicated and easy to accomplish. He almost snorted at that stray thought. When was his life ever uncomplicated.
“Commander, the facility roof is unguarded according to scans.”
He nodded once. “Take her down then.”
The flat top roof had once had a shuttle pad on it, though the primordial vegetation looked to be trying to grow even there when he looked through the pilot's viewscreen to his left. “Looks like the vegetation may be fast growing, Commander.”
“Is there a possibility it could actually grow over the shuttle?”
“Looks like we'll be okay if we park in the middle, farthest away from the vines, but let's not stay too long.”
Emery tapped the man's shoulder. “We'll give it our best, Manning.”
The metallic thump of the shuttle settling into place on the roof reverberated through the hull. The hiss crack of the shuttle decompressing and releasing followed that. A wave of humidity rushed in the hatch thick as soup. “My god,” breathed LT. “What the hell kind of planet have you brought us to?”
Emery chuckled. “Let's just hope it's the right one. We need to shut this operation down if it's here.” Speaking then into comms and looking at the line of men behind him ready to deploy, he said, “There is a good chance that there are children in this facility. They should be recovered alive, if at all possible. Read me?”
Expressions grew first surprised down the line and then solemn, as each muttered shocked assents. LT wasn't that quiet. “Kids? Down here?”, he said looking out into the wet, verdant death trap of a planet. It couldn't even be called jungle accurately. It was far more intimidating than a mere jungle. Very large, vicious sounding creatures could be heard crying out in the distance.
“Not for long, LT.” Emery started out the hatchway leading a line of soldiers who carefully moved into perimeter positions. Directly in Emery's line of sight stood an extremely young soldier, had to be just out of camp. He touched the broad leaf of a vine with the barrel of his weapon. The thing snapped to life reaching for the boy, who, thanks to youth and fitness alone, managed to avoid the vine wrapping around him. It receded back to the jungle when it no longer detected whatever it wanted.
“Name, soldier?” Emery asked with a hand pressing the boy back.
“Lanna, sir.”
“What was our takeaway from that little incident?”
“Don't touch anything, sir.”
He clapped his arm. “Good man. Now, let's get this door open, and the alarms disabled.” He watched as his field tech plugged himself into the now opened control panel on the thick doors. He jacked into the system with an implant designed to integrate his brain with the base software. Being a tech was one of the riskier jobs in any military or paramilitary unit. It wasn't just bullets that could kill you.
This tech appeared, however, to extricate himself from the system with ease. “Doors open, commander.”
“Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Are you in position?”
Each unit checked in
that their base entrance was open, and they were ready to go.
“We are go”, he said, sending each of the teams into the base. He filed in behind the LT, ceding control to the man who understood combat tactics best. He heard the lieutenant's soft, almost calming updates and orders in his comm. The men followed his orders almost by instinct as they moved lower into the dimmed and darker areas. The section they were in now looked unused for the most part, excluding storage.
Holding a pulse rifle in the ready position, he checked his readings. “Approaching perimeter guards, Alpha. Ahead right.” Emery never heard a struggle or a sound, but, by the time, he approached the guarded door, the only thing to see was two guards in white uniforms turning starkly red. He tried to step around the blood, but it wasn't easy. The tech pried the door's control panel off with a special tool and plugged in for a quick peek.
He met Emery's eyes with the jack still in place. “Hack is holding, sir. Bravo team appears to be stuck at the remote pad behind a tunnel hatchway.”
“Can you open that hatch?”
The boy didn't answer because he'd probably begun his hack already. The facility consisted of four structures, Northeast landing pad for cargo craft and three identical buildings in formation around it. Bravo team had the drones and mechs, so that team had the job of clearing defenses at the landing facility and getting their drones into the base.
The drones were small to medium robotic spheres that fired low impact munitions perfect for close quarters combat in an urban setting, though he'd hardly call this urban. The tactics were the same. Bravo team would bust that door using their drones primarily for defense and recon, to find the children before they got caught in a crossfire.
The lieutenant commander sent a few of his men through the door to clear the next area. They reported back clear, just as the young tech came out of the glazed trance they used when jacked in. “They are through, sir, Enemy system is detecting engagement.”
“Well, they know we're here. Let's make it count.”
Alpha team skirted quickly through more unused corridors to finally come to another secured door. Movement on the other side was frantic. Like there was an evacuation order, he thought, or a burn.
