by Jacen Aster
“This is quite the view, little sister. I admit I didn't expect anything quite so lovely aboard a ship. Even one so large as this.”
Areina laughed and suddenly sprung up onto the rail, sitting on it and swinging her legs out over the drop. “It's hardly a new idea, though I admit I brought in some experts to make it as classy as I could. This is to be my flagship after all.”
Tegan eyed her position. “Is that safe? I suppose there are safety systems installed?”
Areina shrugged. “There are, gravity arrest and a small tractor, all tied into the security net so they don't miss anything, but none of it is functional yet. That's why this area is closed for the time being, actually. Teva would probably be spitting fire if she were up here.”
Tegan looked reproachful. “As she should be. You are the heir apparent now, little sister. You cannot continue to act so recklessly.”
Areina grimaced, then sighed, but made no move to dismount. “I suppose so, but let me enjoy my flagship for a little longer. It's not as if I'm truly going to get to use it.”
As they continued to chat, Henry grimaced a bit himself. Tegan wasn't taking the bait. He tapped a command, signaling for Areina to prod him a bit. A flash of irritation crossed her face. That wasn't what they had wanted, for him to be able to claim it was just an argument gone out of control. Nevertheless, she began needling him about her political stance. Tegan quickly got stiff and tried to redirect the conversation. When she pressed he...left? Well...shit. Three months of planning for nothing.
A moment later, he had an earful of raging princess. “DAMN IT, Henry! I shouldn't have pressed him.”
He cringed. He knew she wasn't really angry at him. He was just convenient. “It wouldn't have made a difference. He wasn't going for it. The question is, why? Was the bit about the security net too subtle?”
Areina looked like she wanted to shout some more but managed to master herself. “No. I would have mentioned some more if that was the case. I saw it in his eyes when he realized it. I don't know why he didn't take it. He's not the type to avoid getting his own hands dirty. He doesn't usually have that much control over his temper either.”
Henry mulled that over as Teva joined up with her boss again. “So he's still planning something maybe? He's one of the nobles staying overnight, isn't he?”
It was Teva who answered. “Yeah, we made sure to push him in that direction, just in case. I can't see how he could have anything planned though. He doesn’t know the timetable. Sure we have a backup option planned, but he can't know that.”
Both of the others were silent. They didn't have any answers either.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Henry jerked awake and immediately rolled off his bed, landing on his feet in a defensive crouch as Tim's silent alarm buzzed strongly from the pendant around Henry’s neck. It cut off abruptly a few moments later. Too abruptly. It wasn’t supposed to do that until he acknowledged it. Adrenaline coursed freely though his system as one hand grabbed his sidearm and the other slapped a half-hidden control on his room’s viewer. The display lit up in a split screen, showing a view of the hall in front of his and Areina's side by side suites. There were four heavily armed men quietly cursing in front of his hatch, all in dark clothing with what looked like a merc unit patch on their right shoulders. Areina's door was already open.
Henry's eyes darted to the inner room hatch for a heartbeat before they returned to the display. Just like the display he was watching, he had cut his hatches off from the ship's systems the first day and installed a rotating code scrambler on both inner and outer hatches for good measure. He had time.
Another tap of the half-hidden control switched Areina's display to the hidden camera in her main room just in time to see Teva, awakened by some sixth sense of danger, dart from her room and open fire on the six men already in the living area. She was good, but overmatched. Three of them went down, smoking holes burned through body armor, before she was dropped by concentrated stunner fire. Henry mouthed a silent prayer that the stunners were a good sign before moving backwards to the far bulkhead. Keeping one eye on the screen as the mercs swiftly bound Teva, he fumbled with a hidden latch and pulled away a section of the bulkhead as the mercs moved on to Areina's bedroom door.
No one had understood why he wanted this suite in particular. He'd originally been intended for the rooms across from Areina's rather than beside, but of course, this hidden panel hadn't existed then. Henry had spotted the ship's tight maintenance passageways passing behind the suite on the ship’s blueprints, and he wasn't a top flight engineer for nothing. Not even Areina and Teva knew he had quietly, and oh so carefully, cut a hidden access into that passageway. The hidden entrance was painstakingly concealed on both sides, and obviously didn’t show up on any of the ship’s plans.
He backed in and half replaced the panel, keeping his eyes glued to the display of Areina's living area. He breathed a sigh of relief when two of the mercs pulled a half dressed, struggling and bound Areina through into the main area. His expression morphed into a vicious grin as the last merc limped back into view. She hadn't gone quietly. Good girl. He watched a moment more to see them drag her out into the passage, assuring himself they weren't planning on killing her immediately, before sealing the hatch and moving, slow and quiet, away from the suite.
Henry had gotten several passages away when Tegan's voice came from the main ship's coms, cocky and full of satisfaction. His words were obviously addressed to Areina, who was doubtless still being led off to an ill fate. “Ah, my dear, sweet, foolish Areina. As you can see, I've taken control of your ship. Oh, don't worry, everyone else has been evacuated, told there is a flaw in the new technology you're meddling with. Well, almost everyone. Such a pity that you and everyone else who understands the technology will go down with the ship, irrationally trying to save your New Order instead of yourselves. A tragic loss to our people that will be blamed on those feebleminded outsider pets you keep around. You know, my dear, kind sister, I was actually worried for a moment? You were never one for the political games, sister, so this pathetic charade was oh so transparent. You knew it was someone in the nobility trying to kill you, but so much was obvious, wasn't it? It was that heavy-handed attempt to tempt me on the balcony that showed your inexperience, little Areina. I knew then that you suspected me, but that you couldn't prove it. I'm sure you were most disappointed when I didn't push you over, into the embrace of no doubt fully functional safety systems. So amateur. Even were I not to kill you, it would have been a short reign if that is the best you could do.”
Henry ground his teeth and tuned out the rest of the man's monologue. He was nearly to his destination at any rate. He just hoped Areina's surprise was still in play. Two more turns and a carefully popped service panel later had him back in the main corridors. A short dash and a coded tap on a hatch and he was pulled inside, coming face to face with said surprise for the first time in over a year.
Vairc Teelian stood there with a vicious smirk crossing his grim features, fully healed save but a slight limp.
“Somehow, I doubted they got you, Henry. Not after Tim said he managed to warn you at the last second.” His expression hardened. “I only wish you could have gotten to her, but I know you would have if you could.” He hesitated a moment. “Teva?”
“Alive last I saw her. I had an independent cam rigged in their central room. She got three of them before they stunned her. They bound her, not sure why they left her alive.”
Vairc breathed out a little bit of his tension. “Good. I'm guessing they don't want any corpses with blast marks. With a ship this size, it's too hard to say if anything will survive it coming apart.”
Henry nodded. “As good a guess as any.” He moved past Vairc, eyes scanning the small room. The dozen men Vairc had here were the squad of Royal Guard that King Rellis had lent them, now acting as a ghost security team that no one aboard save Vairc, Teva, Areina and Henry had known about. It was, however, toward a small but power
ful server and holosuite that Henry's eyes were ultimately drawn. This room had been hidden, wiped off all blueprints, because of that server. After all, it wouldn't do for someone to have stumbled across their A.I. friend. “Tim, what happened? How did they get control?”
The holosuite lit up, projecting Tim's chosen avatar, a lanky but muscular, clean shaven man with an aquiline nose and sandy blonde hair of shoulder length. “Chief Programmer Halel was somehow aware of me. I was attacked by a number of military EW packages right as they began execution of their plans. He cut me out of the system, then presumably used the very backdoors we installed to safeguard Miss Areina to seize the ship.” The abashed look Tim had started with turned a touch vicious, showing that his face had some resemblance to Valkyrie’s when angered. “They didn't get everything though. I managed to scramble internal sensors and defenses before he pushed me out of the system. As well as send the silent warning to your pendant, of course.”
Henry nodded, hand unconsciously brushing the concealed beacon around his neck. His expression showed how unhappy he was to be outmaneuvered like that, but he knew it could be worse. He turned back to Vairc. “Do we know anything else?”
The man nodded. “We do. They started the evac at the same time they went for you, Teva, and Areina. With Tim's warning and internal sensors down we managed to get a rough idea how many of them there are and what they are doing. Rift 1, engineering, and the bridge are the only points they're holding. We think there are about three dozen mercs and as many again traitors from the crew. The traitors include deputy security chief Wendlass and several more security officers. They're rigging the projector to blow, as far as we can tell. All that energy will generate an unstable rift which will tear the Starlight apart.”
“How did they get in? And where are the rest of the security force?”
Vairc grimaced. “The rest of security is down, gassed or stunned by the traitors. As for how the mercs got in, it's not an issue now, but it will be when we get through this. They were disguised as the personal staff of several of the nobles. Most of the weapons are from our own armory.”
“The plan?”
“Hit the bridge hard and fast. We're outnumbered, but if we can capture Tegan we can force him to order the others to stand down.”
Henry's mind was whirling. Vairc's idea was too risky. There were better options. “No, we don't know how stable Tegan is. If he's willing to go this far, it's possible he'll just order the operation forward regardless, killing himself too. No, we need to take engineering as well. The rift projector can wait. We can cut power and rift energy flow from engineering.”
Vairc grimaced. “Henry, we don't have enough men to—”
Henry held up a hand to stop him. “We have what we need. Do you trust your people to take care of the bridge if we get them a distraction? Maybe even bring some of the internals on in their favor?”
Vairc looked confused but answered tentatively, “Yessssss...?”
Henry's expression slowly shifted to a manic grin. “Excellent!” Turning away from Vairc to the projection of Tim, Henry addressed him, “Tim, could you run one of the repair mechs if we got you a direct feed? Cut out the ship entirely, just a direct wireless hookup?”
Tim scoffed. “Of course, I could run the entire ship. A repair mech is simplicity itself.”
Henry's grin had taken on outright frightening proportions, to the point that more than a few of the security team looked uneasy. “Alright then. Here's what we are going to do….”
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
They had needed to tweak Henry's initial plan slightly. With no idea how much time they had, hijacking the repair mech had to be assigned to a pair of Vairc's men. Changes made, they had rushed into action. Now, less than ten minutes later, Henry and Vairc were trying not to pant as they made the final turns to their destination—the maintenance passageways around and above engineering.
“I'm beginning to feel too old for this, my friend,” Henry muttered.
Vairc grunted. “Says the man who's not limping.”
“Fair point.” They reached a hatchway on the upper floor of engineering and Henry eased it open just a crack, carefully taking in what was going on in his usual domain. He leaned back and let Vairc have a look. Once Vairc motioned for Henry to seal it back in place, he spoke in a whisper. “What do you think? I saw six engineers and the same number of mercs.”
Vairc frowned. “I counted the same, but those aren't the numbers I expected. Even assuming two more at the main entrance and one at the back, that's only nine. I expected a dozen.”
“Line of sight isn't perfect from here. Probably at least one or two we can't see inside.”
Vairc ran a hand through his hair, then checked his pulse rifle. “This is crazy, Henry. Even if there are only nine, there are only two of us.”
Henry's manic grin was back. “Yes, but we're two very skilled engineers in an engineering section, my friend. Did you see what the two mercs starboard and forward were leaning on?”
Vairc's eyes went slightly vacant for a moment as he tried to picture it. “A power conduit?” After he said it, recognition flared in his eyes. “Oh. Oh! So that's what you meant. We can access that conduit from the maintenance channels.”
Henry's smirk was vicious. “Never piss off an engineer on his own ship. He knows a thousand ways to kill you, even if he usually doesn’t realize it.”
Vairc nodded. “There was another merc in front of the port engine panel, along with one of the engineers.”
Henry nodded. “And one more at the rift flow regulator. Two engineers by the auxiliary shield cutoffs. Another merc leaning on a coolant conduit. I'll get those four. You get the engine panel and the power conduit. That will take us to opposite ends. We have four minutes to the distraction. Rig them and we’ll go at the same time. Pop out and start shooting when the distraction starts.”
They split up and started working.
♦♦♦♦♦♦♦
Henry took a deep breath, then another, as he counted down the last seconds. He peeked out to make sure no one had moved too far. Nope, one of the engineers had drifted but not far enough to matter. He awaited the distraction as patiently as he could, though it helped to imagine the reaction of the poor bastards sabotaging the rift projector.
That thought made him grin. A reinforced repair mech with a plasma torch running at you, playing Ride of the Valkyries and screaming war cries was certainly not something most people would handle well. The two men Vairc sent to rig it adding some support fire before they withdrew wouldn't hurt either. The last seconds ticked off and Henry flicked the switch. He hadn't strictly needed a switch, but felt it was a worthy addition.
Chaos reigned in the engineering section as all their sabotage went off in nearly the same instant. The power conduit had blown with a flash, blinding everyone but Henry and Vairc for a critical moment. The majority of the room were down, injured or dead, as they burst into the room, spraying fire from opposite ends of the compartment, careful not to catch each other. Secondary explosions went off as pulse fire hit critical components and all the systems locked down, trying to protect themselves and the ship. Only one of the mercs got a shot off and it went wide, flying past Vairc's shoulder by at least a half meter. A single merc burst in from the main hatch and Henry dropped him before meeting Vairc in the middle of the room. Going back to back, they scanned the room, grimly putting another shot in every corpse. No chances.
“Only nine. Where are the others?” Vairc asked in a tight voice as Henry moved to the consoles, quickly finding one that was undamaged and unlocking it.
Henry shook his head. “Doesn't matter. Cover me.”
Vairc stood over him, scanning the room as Henry tapped Areina's personal overrides directly into the main systems. “I have partial control. Power to the rift protector is...cut. Pumping rift energy out.”
“The bridge?”
Henry grimaced. “Completely in local control. I've only got limited access even
with her codes. I won't be able to do much.”
“Whatever you can.”
Henry nodded and waved to a miraculously undamaged display. A tapped pair of commands gave them a visual. Areina was standing next to Tegan, a merc with a rifle trained on her a half meter behind. Even half dressed, in night clothes that left little to the imagination, and with wrists bound, she looked imperious. Back straight, head high and eyes furious as she glared straight ahead, ignoring Tegan. There was no sound, but Tegan was shouting into a comm, waving his arms.
Obviously, he knew something was wrong. So did the mercs. They were spread out and covering the doors. Only six of them. Where were the rest? It didn't matter, not for the moment at least. More tapped commands and Henry nodded to Vairc. The other man keyed a click across the secure comms the ghost team were using and the hatchways onto the bridge exploded, withering fire coming in at the mercs.
At the same moment, Henry stabbed a command and a shimmering force field, intended to seal hull breeches, flared to life and wrapped around Areina and Tegan. That was as tight as he could make it, the system hadn’t been designed with this in mind. He blew the fire suppression next, throwing the mercs off balance as jets of foam hit them. Vairc's men poured in, taking losses but hitting the mercs like a hammer. Then the last of the mercs was down and all eyes went to the force field...where Tegan was curled up, holding his crotch, and Areina was kicking him repeatedly in the gut.
Vairc chuckled. “That's our girl.”
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
It didn't take long to discover why there were fewer mercs than we thought. Apparently, when they finally broke into my suite and realized I was missing, they dispatched a portion of their people to cover the escape pods, for fear I would get word off the ship that what was happening was no accident, but rather an assassination attempt. It is, perhaps, odd that it never occurred to either Vairc or I that such a plan was an option. That merely getting a person, any person, off the ship to inform the authorities would likely have resulted in a stalemate at the very least, as the entire military arm of the Arabuli turned on Tegan and the Starlight.
