Twin Stars 1: Ascension

by Robyn Paterson

  Tysen’s gut told him they were something else.

  He transferred his findings to the main display for the bridge crew to see.

  “Ensign,” Tysen called out after taking a moment to cancel the bridge alarms with a thought. “Can we move?”

  The Ensign turned her head to look back at him, worry on her face. “No, sir. They put a shot right through us after we transited, we’re dead in space.”

  “We could fight.” Kip offered.

  Tysen shook his head. “Two against one, and in any case we’d be stranded here even if we managed to win. We can’t afford to be late.”

  “Afraid of the old lady?” Kip joked.

  “Something like that,” Tysen agreed as he checked the ship systems one more time and then made a quick decision- he was going to trust his gut on this one. “Kip, call Mister Ulstead to the bridge. Ensign Helgi, shut down all power to everything but life support and basic functions. Let me know as soon as they start to move in on us.”

  Kip looked at him, concerned. “They’re going to board us?”

  “They’re going to try,” Tysen said as he began to work out what he’d need to go through with his plan. “They want the Emissary.”

  “So what’re we gonna do?” Kip asked. “We can’t let them have her!”

  “We’re not going to,” Tysen told him. “We’re going to take her with us. Tell all hands to start preparing for a boarding action.”

  Kip stared at him. “Uhh, Captain. Don’t you mean to defend against boarding?”

  “No,” Tysen corrected him, looking up and meeting his worried gaze. “Kip, if we’re going to make our schedule we’re going to need another ship.”

  It took a moment, but Tysen saw the answer hit home in his friend’s eyes. “Al…” He stammered, decorum slipping in a moment of stress. “You don’t mean…?”

  “We’re going to take one of theirs.”

  * * *

  “All systems are down, sir. Their whole grid is offline.”

  Colonel Rodrick Cole of the Fleet Intelligence Service leaned back into his chair and watched the readouts carefully. His Squire was right, the Cutter was now dead in space, the holographic image of the ship before him an inert blue with only faint hints of green lines where backup power still remained.

  “Move us alongside them, Ashe.” He finally ordered, once he was certain. “Tell the Firethorne we’re moving in and to stand guard. Tell Major Garret and his men to prepare, and remind him I need the old lady alive.”

  “As you wish, my master,” the soft female voice echoed around him in the darkened room, then after a pause she asked “Master, the Major asks what you want done with the ship’s crew?”

  “Tell him Saint Rail wants no witnesses. Grab the lady, scuttle the ship.”

  Another pause.

  “He understands. It will be done.”

  Colonel Cole let his fingers draw into a peak in front of his lips as he considered, “Pity we don’t have more time,” he mused. “I’d have liked to interrogate them and find out what they know.”

  “Major Garret could capture the ship’s Captain for you, if I inform him of your desires.” Offered Ashe, helpfully.

  Cole considered this a moment, useful intelligence was always a benefit in times such as these. He wanted to know more about these traitors, and how far their networks ran. Still, “No. Orders are orders, I doubt they know much that the Grand Admiral doesn’t already. The lady will tell us the rest.”

  * * *

  “You wanted to see me, Captain?”

  Keith Ulstead peered around the dimly lit bridge of the Crystal Leaf curiously, he hadn’t been up to the bridge before and he’d expected something a little more…grand. Instead it was a small round room with three work creches and a chair in the middle. Hardly the type of thing he’d expected from a Guard starship. He’d thought they’d look more like they did in the dramas- big open airy things with lots of people rushing around and gold trim everywhere.

  “A moment, Mister Ulstead.” The Captain told him, then went back to where he was working with a lanky dark-skinned woman at one of the creches. While he waited, Ulstead called up the file on that one- Ensign Marissa Helgi of Matsos, fresh out of the academy and on her first cruise. Noble background, but her family were nothing special in terms of social status, just the kind that had worked for generations for other nobles who had real power. Her instructors at the academy apparently felt she was doing this more as a phase to rebel against her parents, and would lose interest soon enough. That made Ulstead smile, he knew what that was like.

  “Ensign,” Tysen finally said, standing up. “The moment they launch Infiltrator Units I want to know. Clear?”

  “Yessir!” She answered, and Ulstead caught her looking back at him curiously. He smiled at her, and she ducked away, back to work. Cute, he decided, but not really his type. He looked at Kip, who was standing nearby.

  “Infiltrator Units?” He asked the first officer. “Who’s launching those bots at us?”

  “Guard Cutters, two of them. The Captain thinks they’re commando ships.”

  Suddenly, the events of the last half hour became extremely clear.

  “When you hired me,” he told Tysen. “You said you were worried about internal troubles, Captain.”

  “Oh, they’ll be internal problems soon enough.” Kip commented dryly.

  Tysen looked at Ulstead. “My own chief of security was killed two months ago and hasn’t been replaced yet as this ship wasn’t cleared for active duty. I need you to help with a counterattack. More specifically, I want to capture that ship when it comes to board us.”

  “Whoa, Captain.” Ulstead raised his hands in protest. “I’m just a driver. You need someone protected, a little quiet operation, then I’m your man. This…” He gestured at the bridge main holo-display. “This is out of my league.”

  But Tysen smiled reassuringly. “I don’t expect you to do it alone, Mister Ulstead. I’ll be working with you.”

  “Sir, they’ve launched Infiltrator Units.” Reported Ensign Helgi. “Sixteen of them. ETA is 7 minutes.”

  Everyone turned to see the small swarm of yellow dots that had just left the approaching ship and were heading right for the Leaf. Then Tysen looked at the mercenary and his first officer.

  “Gentlemen. Here’s what’s going to happen. When those Infiltrator Units arrive here they’re going to latch onto the ship’s hull and begin trying to take over the ship’s internal systems. Once they’ve disabled our internal defenses they’ll enter the ship and begin moving through the ship to seize our key control areas. When they’re done, one of those two Cutters will move in and dock with us so their commandos can enter and finish the job- which may or may not include us being alive. That’s going to be our window, once they’re docked they can board us, but we can also board them.”

  “Yeah,” Kip agreed. “But won’t they be swarming all over us?”

  “They will,” Tysen admitted, then looked at Ulstead again. “Which is why I’m going to need help from Mister Ulstead’s “Flowers”. Mister Ulstead, are your war robots cloaked against full spectrum sensors?”

  Ulstead smiled. “Yep. No problem there, nobody sees my girls that I don’t want to.”

  “Are they programmed for system infiltration?”

  “Wouldn’t be much good if they weren’t. But, they can’t fly through space, Captain.”

  The Captain just smiled knowingly. “Don’t worry, they won’t need to.” Then he looked at his first officer again. “Kip, one minute before those Infiltrators reach us I want you to crash the backup reactors and shut down the ship. They were designed to take over live prey, not hulks. That’ll put us on an equal footing with the Infiltrators. All crew are to be issued weapons, but order them not to engage the Infiltrators under any circumstances, we’ll let our own security bots take care of that.”

  “You got it, Al.”

  “Captain, what about the Emissary? How are you planning to keep the old
lady safe?”

  The young officer looked at Ulstead gravely. “By keeping us all alive, Mister Ulstead. By keeping us all alive.” Then Tysen brought up a holodisplay of the ship, and they got to work.

  * * *

  Aboard the Imperial Cutter Silverthorne, Colonel Cole continued to monitor the situation, nodding in approval at what he saw.

  “Colonel Cole, the Infiltrator units have arrived at the Crystal Leaf with no resistance. They report all ships systems are indeed dead.” Ashe announced.

  The Infiltrator units were specially designed war robots with a single purpose- to board and take control of starships. Normally, they attacked a ship’s systems from the outside first, some taking control of its control grid while the others entered and seized physical control. In this case, however, there was no system to take control of once they’d arrived on the hull.

  “Excellent.” Cole commented. “The shot must have crashed their reactor network. You are an expert gunner, my dear.”

  “Thank you, master.” The Squire answered, pleased. “The units await your orders to move in.”

  “Yes, tell them they can enter the ship. Bring the Silverthorne into docking position and have Major Garret’s men prepare to deploy. We’ll dock as soon as the Infiltrators sound the all clear.”

  * * *

  Kip floated down the darkened corridor of the Crystal Leaf, using his neutral implant’s map of the ship systems to overlay a graphic of the corridor onto his vision so he could “see”. If any objects were floating in the blackened corridor, he would fly right into them, so he kept a hand up in front of his face as he carefully navigated the halls. He wished there was another way to render the ship inert, as crashing the ship’s backup reactors had also taken away the artificial gravity and lighting.

  Finally, he saw a light up ahead from the mess hall, and used fingertips dragged along the walls to slow his momentum so he came to a stop in front of the propped-open doorway. Inside, a dozen members of the crew were gathered, and Jack Onoli, one of his engineers, was distributing weapons in the light of glow rods.

  His arrival made the crew jump, and half a dozen plasma pistols came up to point at him as he floated inside with raised hands.

  “Whoa there! I’m pretty sure I’m friendly!” He cracked, and the engineer yelled at them to point the guns somewhere else.

  “Sorry X-O,” the Engineer said as Kip let his smartsuit’s feet adhere to the decking next to the man. “They’re just on edge.”

  “Hey, no worries.” Kip told him, taking a quick head count. “You have enough for everyone?” Everyone he expected to see was there.

  “Yeah, and I got this for you.” The engineer reached into a bag and handed him a metal cube that looked black in the light.

  Kip took it, it was just small enough to hold in one hand, and if the gravity had been on, Kip knew it would have been surprisingly light. This was a battle array in its inert form, one of fourteen the ship carried aboard for general use by ship security personnel, and the one Kip was to use to keep these people safe. Once activated, it would flow out over his arms and encompass him in a protective web of thin metal that would generate a defensive field around him.

  But not yet, not until it was time or he might be detected by the Infiltrators.

  Touching it to his smartsuit’s pant-leg and letting it attach, Kip began to make his way through the assembled people, checking with each of them. He knew them all by name, and found himself making a few jokes to help lighten the mood as he went around the room. The Emissary was sitting on a chair behind the rest of them, her weapon floating above the table beside her.

  “Ma’am, you should attach that to your smartsuit so it doesn’t get lost.” He told her, gesturing at the plasma pistol.

  She glanced at it, and gave him a sour look.

  “Is this really necessary?”

  “Yes ma’am, I’m afraid it is.” He said, gently grabbing the gun and offering it to her. “The captain has asked that everyone be armed.”

  She just looked at it, not making a move to take it.

  “Young man, it’s not that I have never handled a weapon before, but I prefer to let others do the shooting for me.” She looked about the crowd. “Where is that man you hired to guard me- Ulstead wasn’t it?”

  “Ma’am, the Captain has him on other duties, and asked me to keep an eye on you.” He said cheerfully. “Hey, don’t worry, you’re perfectly safe in here with the…” Then he suddenly stopped, a distant high-pitched humming sound echoing from the corridor outside.

  Spinning around, Kip ordered all lights to be shut off, and crewmen quickly turned the room back into a pool of complete darkness and silence.

  Outside, the humming drew closer, and they could hear a light whistling sound as well. All eyes were on the propped-open door to the corridor Kip had entered through, and they slowly began to see a faint green glow that became brighter as the sound became louder.

  Then, it appeared in the doorway.

  The Infiltrator Unit looked like nothing so much as a large black metal walnut with a ring of red glowing gem-like eyes ringed around the top and bottom. From its sides sprouted eight long wispy tentacles that each ended in a sharp spike or a short cylinder. The spikes were for close combat, and the cylinders were plasma weapons for clearing away the things the spikes couldn’t tear apart. Glowing green with the light of its gravitic defense field, this thing was meant to be a weapon of terror as well as war, and it excelled on both counts.

  The war robot floated in the doorway, and for a moment Kip was afraid it would enter. The unit knew they were there, the darkness was no cover against its sensors, but the Captain was gambling it wasn’t under orders to clear away non-hostiles and would leave them alone if they didn’t appear to be threats. If anything, he’d ordered the lights doused to make the crew feel better and less likely to take a shot at it, not to keep them from being seen.

  Then, after a tense moment it slipped away, and they heard the sound retreating down the corridor towards more important parts of the ship.

  Kip became aware of a hand gripping his left arm, and once he’d given the okay to turn the glow rods back on, he found it was the Emissary holding onto him. Her earlier arrogance had now been replace by a look of fear.

  “W-What was that?” He could feel her hand shaking.

  “Infiltrator unit. Don’t worry, they’re not looking for us, they’re just heading for the control areas. We’re fine for now.”

  She let go of his arm, and quickly grabbed for the gun, holding it with both hands.

  “Your Captain is letting them just come aboard like that?!?”

  Kip smiled, enjoying the sudden change in attitude. “Yeah well, the Captain’s got his own plan.”

  “A very poor one, from where I’m standing.”

  Kip laughed. “Lady, you don’t know Al Tysen. If you did, you’d be sure he’s as cool as a cucumber right now.”

  * * *

  “Esther, if I stop breathing remind me to start again.” Tysen said, wiping the sweat from his brow. His smartsuit was compensating for the dropping temperature in the ship, but he was doing precise and difficult work at the open access panel and had little time to do it in.

  Esther, holding a glow rod next to him so he could see, looked at him curiously. “Why would you stop breathing, Tysen?”

  “Too many things going on at once in my head,” he said as he tried to carefully remove the cover from a power node with a laser Cutter. “I keep wondering if I accounted for everything properly. We can’t communicate with the others with the ship’s link system down, so it’s all going to come down to my timing. Either I planned it right and everything works, or I didn’t, and we’re already finished.”

  Esther considered a moment, then answered- “This is true. I too hope you did account for everything.”

  Tysen couldn’t help but laugh at her straightforward manner. At times Esther’s bluntness was almost comical, even when she said things he might have
found offensive from someone else. “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said, carefully removing the cover to expose the orange metal capacitor beneath. “Hand me the last of the red detonator crystals.”

  Esther gave him the small red gem, and after looking at it to make sure he was inserting the right side, he placed it down on top of the exposed capacitor. Then he grabbed the cover panel for the access hatch and slipped it back into place.

  “Okay,” he said, letting his smartsuit detach from the wall so he could float free again. “That’s it. This one’s rigged too. Let’s get back to the rendezvous point.”

  * * *

  Colonel Cole watched his units move through the map of the target ship on the holo-display in front of him. Around it were direct sensor feeds from each of his infiltrator units as they carried out their work.

  He had watched as the target ship’s security robots mounted a series of defensive actions, and they had eliminated almost half of the Infiltrators he’d sent over. But the Infiltrators were efficient in their work, and naturally prevailed against the defensive units.

  He’d seen the human crew of the ship through the feeds as well, huddling in darkened rooms like trapped animals. They didn’t try to even attack the Infiltrators, but had let them pass unchallenged and let the robots do their work for them. Sad really, Cole thought, if the crew had helped the security units perhaps they could have defeated the Infiltrators. Of course, even if they had- where could they go?

  Finally, Cole saw the last of the defenders fall, and Ashe reported that they had control of all key systems and areas aboard the ship.

  “Time for the personal approach then,” Cole announced. “Extend the docking tubes and tell the Major to move in once they’re secure.”

  * * *

  Tysen watched the silver lines of the array spread out over his smartsuit, and then felt a sudden rush of sensation as the array connected itself with his neural implant. The world flared into brilliant color as the array added several more senses to his usual five, and he saw indicators for the array appear in AR windows inside his vision. After making sure everything was connected and working properly, he used the enhanced senses to check on the people around him.