by Terry Mixon
She nodded. “That’s very doable, sir. Captain Levy and I work quite well together.”
“It means that you’re in charge of all fighter operations, and the pilots that perform them, so you’ll have to find a way to keep them in line. Say keeping them from buzzing the ship, for example.”
He said the last with a wry grin, which she completely understood. He’d done exactly that when he’d piloted the very first fighter they’d recovered.
Which raised a point for later in her mind. He deserved wings of his own. He’d taken out a destroyer all on his own. He might not have much in the way of flight time, but he’d walked the walk.
“I think I can keep my people from doing anything so rash,” she said dryly. “They’re not barbarians.”
He laughed. “We’ll see. The remaining enemy forces are almost to the Pentagaran flip point. They’re about to get an ugly wakeup call. My ships have almost converged with your carrier group, so we’ll bottle them up.
“Once the invasion is defeated, we’ll go over the data we’ve recovered and make further plans.”
Admiral Mertz rose to his feet. “Until then, return to your ship. You’ve done the Empire proud. Now, go do it again.”
* * * * *
Zia felt more than a little overwhelmed on the trip back to Audacious. Yes, she’d been doing the work already, but she wasn’t ready to be a flag officer. She’d only been a lieutenant before the exploration mission! She felt in far over her head.
“You’re ready,” Annette said. “Don’t second guess yourself.”
“I don’t feel ready.”
“Who does, when it comes right down to it? We do the best we can and learn for the next time.”
Levy cleared his throat. “Speaking of the next time, we need to start planning for the next engagement. We got lucky this time. Next time, we have to plan for things to go wrong.”
Zia nodded. “We need an FTL com, especially if we’re going to be operating in a forward star system. I’ll discuss that with Sir Carl first thing. That should allow us to warn the people behind us when it all goes in the pot.”
“That’s a good start,” the man said, “but I’m thinking bigger. We made this operation up as it developed. I think we really need to work on some contingency planning before the next time. Will we cover all the bases? No, but I’d like to see our worst case scenarios planned out.”
Annette grunted. “We thought we had. The bright side is that we shouldn’t run into a fleet so soon again.”
“We can’t count on that,” Zia said with a shake of her head. “We have to expect exactly that. Then if we miss them, so much the better. Once we get back to Audacious, I want the two of you to put your heads together to work out more scenarios we might run into.
“I’ll call the carrier group’s captains together after that and we’ll do the same on a fleet level. I’m afraid you’re going to be very busy, Captain Levy.”
The man smiled. “That’s how I earn my exorbitant salary, ma’am.”
She considered the newly promoted captain. “I think you’ll do a lot better job at commanding Audacious than I did. Your experience is going to help out with any number of things I missed.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Commodore. I’ll be the first to admit that I had my underwear in a knot, but you had all the basics covered. You were doing just fine. I’m sorry that I allowed my personal feelings to make me…grumpy.”
The cutter pilot announced that they were on approach to the carrier.
“We’ll have to save the group hug for later,” Zia said. “We need to be ready in case the bad guys come running back through the flip point. My internal chronometer says they’ll make the flip in about twenty minutes. We’ll be half an hour behind them.
“Annette, I want the fighters ready to launch, but still on board. We might end up fighting this out in Pentagar space. Brandon—I can call you that, right?—I want the ship ready to fight or maneuver.”
The other officers nodded as the cutter entered the landing bay. “Excellent,” Zia said. “Let’s finish this battle so we can plot out our next move.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Jared watched the last of the enemy ships flip into Pentagaran space with more than a hint of trepidation. He really didn’t like leaving the fighting to someone else, as much as he knew their ships were up to the task.
In particular, the defensive forts around the flip point were vulnerable. They’d been designed to fight the Pale Ones. They couldn’t survive even a cursory exchange of fire with modern warships.
Ten minutes later, a light cruiser and three destroyers popped back into the Erorsi system. All four ships were heavily damaged. They took off for deep space, but it was far too late for that. Jared was already in missile range.
“Cut your acceleration and surrender or I open fire,” he said curtly over the com. “You’re in my missile range and I’m not inclined to allow you to escape. You’re not blind. You know you cannot possibly get away. Spare your crews.”
He thought they might ignore him, but one of the destroyers cut their acceleration. The other two followed suit quickly enough. All three dropped their battle screens.
The light cruiser continued to accelerate for almost thirty seconds before it gave in to the inevitability of the situation and surrendered.
The next transit through the Pentagaran flip point was the Pentagaran superdreadnought Resolute and her escorts. Admiral Sanders signaled him at once.
“The fighting is over on our side, Admiral Mertz. All but two of the destroyers were crippled or destroyed in the exchange of fire. The other cruisers fought to the death.
“They wasted valuable ordinance and time on the orbital forts. They had no idea we’d abandoned them and put the defenses on automatic. We didn’t lose any ships and our damage was light.”
Jared smiled. “I’m glad to hear that. Be careful when you rescue survivors. They can’t find out about too much or you’ll trigger their implants.”
“Already taken care of. We have a lot of people that still need implants, so they’re going to see exactly what they expect. Thank you for the timely warning. If that fleet had come upon us unaware, they would have hurt us badly. What is the plan now?”
“We get them off their ships, separate the officers from the crew, and overwrite the implant code. That will take a good long while, so we might see about letting you take care of it. Kelsey is going to see if she can find out where they’re making the Raider implants. At this point, it’s become clear we need to strike fast and get the flip point blocker back into place.”
The older man nodded. “At least we can put it back up once you’re away. You can signal us to open it up for you once you get back. Where will we gather the captured ships?”
“I think that anything with a functional flip drive should go to Pentagar. That will make searching them a lot easier. We might have a few ships that can’t flip, but we can get them on a trajectory toward the flip point. Borrow the recovery ship from Harrison’s World to get them over.”
That was the vessel the AIs had used to gather all the wrecked Imperial ships into the graveyard around Boxer Station. It used long, curved arms to enclose a ship so that the drive field worked on everything during a flip. With the relative proximity to Harrison’s World via the flip points Omega had created, the recovery ship could be at Pentagar in less than a day.
“What do you think the invasion means?” Sanders asked. “What triggered them? Was it the lost freighter?”
Jared shrugged. “Maybe we’ll find out when we start questioning the prisoners. Or, more likely, the AI just gave them orders to get it done.
“In any case, I’m glad we were here to catch them, but the missing fleet is going to get a lot of attention very soon. My people need to get what data we can and start the next phase of the operation. Our window of opportunity is closing quickly.”
* * * * *
Kelsey went down to the lab on Invincible. Carl Owle
t was hooking up the computer cores from the freighter.
He waved at her. “I’m glad to see you in one piece. Angela is not happy with you, by the way.”
She smiled. “I’d imagine not. She’s still under the delusion that she has some kind of control over the trouble I get myself into. On the positive side, I gave her a pile of prisoners to interrogate. It turned out the freighter had almost twice the expected crew, evenly split between what looked like civilians and Rebel Fleet personnel.”
“Any idea why?”
Kelsey shrugged. “Probably because some of the work was beneath what the Fleet people thought they should be doing. Someone will talk soon enough, I’m sure. I have some good news about the computer.”
The corners of his mouth curled up. “Really? I thought that was my line.”
“You’ll like it. The bridge controls were unlocked and the captain was logged in. I took the opportunity to add our implant serial numbers to the cleared list. I supposed they expected to have some warning before bad guys came calling.”
“That is good news,” he admitted. “Though it sort of feels like cheating. At this point, I’m used to hacking my way in past all the safeguards they can throw at me. How can I be satisfied with just logging in?”
“You’ll manage something, I’m sure.”
He laughed and started typing on a keyboard. Even with implants, the young man preferred using his hands.
While he worked, she continued talking. “I’m going to have the recovery people go over Persephone’s security. I really want to make this hard if anyone tries to pull it on us. There have to be ways to secure things without making normal work impossible.”
He nodded. “I’ve been dabbling with some work in that arena. I’ll coordinate with them and see what we can come up with. They’ve also requested something like the implant jamming headbands, but with range. I’m not sure I can exempt our people from something like that, but I’ll do what I can.
“Let’s see if we can isolate the ship’s log and parse it for the course they took. I know Commander Richards says he remembers the system where they picked up the Raider implants, but it would be nice to have some independent confirmation.”
“You don’t trust him? Marcus vouched for him.”
Carl shrugged. “I wouldn’t say I distrust him. More like I worry the AIs pulled a fast one somewhere.”
That she understood perfectly.
He leaned forward and looked at the text scrolling up the screen. “Here we go. I pulled the flip transitions from the drives. Correlating that to the names of the systems gets us this.”
A section of the Old Empire flip point map appeared in her mind’s eye. A green dot started a line of transitions that ended with a red dot. The red system was Erorsi.
“The green dot is the origin system. I’ll guess that was where they installed the orbital bombardment weapon. From there, it went through a dozen transitions. One of the systems it transited is indeed the one Commander Richards suspected of being the manufacturing location for the Raider implants.”
The map expanded and began displaying system data. “Dresden,” she said. “The Old Empire databases have it listed as a minor manufacturing hub. Nothing to write home about.”
“That was then, and this is now,” Carl said. “According to the scanner records from the freighter, the main world there has a single large orbital. It’s where the freighter met up with its escort. That might mean there aren’t many warships left there.”
“Or it could mean there are,” Kelsey said. “We won’t know until we take a look for ourselves. It’s best if we don’t head in with any assumptions.”
“I’ll extract everything. Once I have it on my systems, I’ll look for classified files and compile a report on anything that looks interesting at Dresden. It won’t take me more than a few hours.”
“That’ll give me time to coordinate things with Jared. When I head back to Persephone, I’ll want an FTL com. I don’t want to get surprised again. We need to have them on all the capital ships.”
“I’m already ahead of you. I have them on the table over there. The installation instructions are included with each unit. I don’t have nearly as many as I want, but a couple of ships in each task group should be able to have them. When we get to Dresden, what are our goals?”
Kelsey hefted the large box of coms. “We take anything they have on hand, including the plans to make the implants, if we can. Let me know immediately if you find anything.”
* * * * *
Brandon excused himself once they were back on board Audacious. He wanted to check on his senior prisoner before she was transferred off the ship for transport to Pentagar.
They’d finished reprogramming her implants while he was on Invincible, so she was now in the brig. All the senior officers were. The junior officers were in a separate hold they’d converted to use as a place to hold everyone else with implants.
The unenhanced people that made up the bulk of the crew were scattered throughout the carrier group. They were significantly more cowed, so he didn’t expect them to resist his people directly.
That said a lot about the Rebel Empire society, he supposed. He’d read up on how things had been on Harrison’s World before they’d liberated it, but he’d entertained the hope that it was better elsewhere in the Rebel Empire. Apparently not.
The destroyer captains were all in solo cells. The executive officers and senior crew from each ship were together in larger ones. He’d quadrupled the normal marine guard, so the brig was fairly crowded.
That didn’t count the extra guards in the corridors. There would be no breakout on his ship. Well, not technically his yet. No one even knew he’d been promoted yet.
The officer on duty nodded at him as he entered. She looked at ease, but had both a stunner and a flechette pistols on her hips. “Commander. Everything is quiet.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he said. “That beats a riot any day of the week. Let me in to speak with the senior prisoner.”
The captain of the destroyer that had surrendered to them was the most senior of the remaining officers. She was also the only one that had caught on that something was seriously wrong.
That was the primary reason he hadn’t allowed the captains to communicate with their crew. It would be up to Admiral Mertz when and if to change that.
A pair of marine guards backed him up when they opened the cell. He gestured for them to remain outside and to close the cell behind him.
The woman glared at him from where she sat on her bunk and didn’t stand. “Are you here to get this farce out of the way?”
“There are so many farces on my schedule that I don’t rightly know where to begin, Commander Giguere. Why don’t you pick one for us to start with?”
She shook her head. “Let’s start with the fact you aren’t Fleet.”
He allowed himself to smile a little. “Oh, but I am. I’ve been a Fleet officer for over twenty-five years. The devil is in the details. Let me guess. You’re referring to the fact we have our enlisted men and women implanted.”
“That’s right. What kind of lunatic would do that? You’re from outside the Empire. I have no idea why you feel the need to pretend, or how you got your hands on so many Fleet vessels, including ones restricted to core systems, but you’re playing some kind of game. What do you want from me? Hell, what did you do to me?”
Brandon pulled out the chair beside the built-in desk. “My name is Brandon Levy, by the way. I’m currently the executive officer of this vessel, though I’m taking over command shortly. As for what we did to you, why don’t you tell me why you went berserk?”
That made the tall woman look a little disconcerted. “I’m not really sure what came over me. Did you give me some kind of drug?”
“No. If I had, I assure you it wouldn’t be to make you more violent. No, this is where unpleasant truths that you aren’t ready to hear come into play. Or, perhaps you already know most of the story, just not some
of the hidden details.
“Whether you know it or not—whether you accept it or not—the Empire you know is ruled by artificial intelligences. Ones that do not have the health and well-being of the human race in mind. Feel free to stop me if you’ve heard any of this before.”
When she didn’t respond, he launched into the same basic story he’d heard about the corruption of the Rebel Empire.
Within a few moments, he could see the disbelief and distain in the woman’s expression. Well, it didn’t matter if she believed him. She had to hear why they’d needed to overwrite her implant code if she were to have any chance of ever accepting the truth.
This was going to be a long and unpleasant revelation to the woman. However, once she ultimately accepted the truth—which she eventually would—she would help convince her fellow officers. Only then could there truly be any negotiation between the two sides.
Chapter Twenty-Three
It took Jared almost half a day to get the captured ships corralled and headed for Pentagar. Most of the prisoners were on their way there, too, but not all. One of the destroyer captains had figured out they weren’t the same Fleet as she was, so he’d decided to leave her and her officers on Audacious.
Brandon Levy felt as though he could convince her of the same truths as they’d shown Lieutenant Commander Richards. Personally, Jared wasn’t sure, but he was willing to allow the man a chance to try.
Time was short. Yes, they’d defeated the invasion, but if they had any hope of capturing the Raider manufacturing equipment, they’d need to strike quickly. Once the Rebel Empire became aware that they had a new enemy, they’d move the facility further away from the fighting, just to keep them from capturing it.
He examined the scanner readings as soon as they’d flipped to the Pentagar system. The defensive forts were gone, blown to bits. He was glad they’d had time to evacuate them.
Another group of ships was searching the wreckage of a few Rebel Empire ships a short distance away.
