Frost looked at it for a moment longer and chuckled. “I’ve got it. Might not be able to run one of these big encounter suits across, but I know how we can get loaders across.” He didn’t wait to discuss it with anyone, but stepped up to the edge of the severely damaged section, turned and let the suit fall backwards.
“Frost, don’t you dare!” Jason shouted, uncharacteristically angry.
He let the suit fall back and extended his arms over his head. It collided with the weakened deck plating below, forcing much of it down into the room beneath, but the hands of the suit caught the edge of a structural beam. He adjusted his grip and checked the integrity of the metal. With a nod he said; “There ya go lad, a really expensive bridge.”
“You could have hovered over it, you moron,” Jason shot back.
“Aye, but then what would everyone not lucky enough to be in a suit do? Most vacsuit armour doesn’t come with thrusters, in case you dinna notice.”
“But the loader suits-“
“Right about a meter too short with their arms up. Stop your belly acheing and get ready to cross.” Frost double checked the seal on his vacsuit and opened the chest cavity door. “Going to miss this rig though.”
“I could let you pilot mine, sir,” offered Mark Hunsler. “Why, that’s awful kind of you, lad, I think I’ll take you up-“ Frost ducked as he heard weapons’ fire and ran for the line of Triton soldiers. His vacsuit reported a hit right in the middle of his back as he limped for dear life over the thick legs of the encounter suit.
His allies opened fire with a vengeace, and the air was alive with bright, deadly rounds as he finally made it to the safety of a mobile energy shield. He’d forgotten to activate his vacsuit energy shielding, and the back of his lightly armoured uniform was so badly damaged he may as well as have been wearing a bed sheet. He turned with his sidearm in both hands and felt something strike the tip of his sidearm. Frost followed it in the air and he realized it was a grenade just as it went off outside of lethal range. The energy shield in front of them absorbed most of the blast, and the front of his vacsuit protected the rest. “Damn that’s gotta be the luckiest thing I’ve ever seen,” he said as he fired several particle rounds down the hall.
“I didn’t even see it until you batted it back, epic reflexes sir!” laughed one of the soldiers beside him.
“No reflexes there, lass. You’re just fightin’ beside an Irishman on a good day!” Frost laughed back as the air cleared, revealing a retreating group of soldiers. The scanner in his vacsuit mapped the way ahead, indicating that there was a broad elevator column. “I’d wager your trunk line’s right there, Jason.”
“Yup. Move up! First fire team get across the… bridge!”
When most of the troops had crossed and they set up several portable energy shields as cover Frost took Mark’s place in the last remaining encounter suit. “Kind of ya, lad. Don’t get yourself killed out there,” Frost said as the chest piece closed and he watched the Lieutennant, who was one of the night commanders of the Gunnery Deck normally, take a spare rifle from one of the rear soldiers. Frost knew that most of the people in the unit were painfully aware that he was the slowest among them. In the suit he was fine, and he was one of the best power suit pilots there, but outside of a loader or encounter suit, he’d hold them all back.
After he hovered across the gap he took the lead, and it was no surprise to him when several grenades came bouncing into the mouth of the hallway. He was well ahead of the rest of the unit, so he let the energy shielding take the hit. When they had all gone off the shielding was down to forty two percent. “Nothin’. These grunts just aren’t ready,” he said as he marched ahead. As soon as he came to the end of the hall he sighted several soldiers and opened fire. They had erected emergency barriers that gave them waist high cover, but none of it lasted long against the saw blade like shots from his main particle weapon.
“Teams one and two! Move up!” Jason called from the rear.
Frosts eyes went wide as he caught sight of several soldiers brandishing a weapon he hadn’t seen since his own time in the military. Expensive, dangerous, and difficult to handle, arc cannons were a brutal, last ditch infantry weapon. They required an exoskeleton to carry, an extreme environment protection suit to fire, and to anyone looking from a great distance it looked like the soldier was firing a thick lightening bolt, but a good arc cannon could strike its target with a thirty thousand degree focused shot.
“Back off!” Frost shouted as he opened fire at the armoured units coming out from the left hand hallway, forcing them back. He was just about to open fire on the right hand hallway when his suit alerted him to being struck with an electrical charge. It was the precursor to being struck with a plasma jet, and every alarm went off in the next moment. His shields were down to three percent, the ablaitive armour on his right hand side was gone, and one of his secondary particle guns had been destroyed. It was like being struck by lightening, and the only working on board computer was the connection he had to the left hand visual sensors.
He blindly opened fire with the last remaining particle cannon on his arm while maintaining fire with his left. “Rush left! Take out that cover, now!” he shouted as he tried to step back into the hall and shunted all the suit’s power to shields.
Another strike hit him and his world shook so hard the inertial dampeners in his vacsuit had to compensate. The right arm on his suit had been destroyed, and the shoulder reported that it had been cracked open by an ammunition explosion. The ship to ship micro rockets there had overheated and gone off. “You want ta play? Chew on this, whoreson!” he flung the left leg towards the hallway and activated the nearly overheated rocket back in the left shoulder of his suit, sending twenty eight ship to ship shape charged projectiles off.
When Frost came to he was lying beside the elevator column, his ears were still ringing. With a quick look around he could see that the suit he was piloting was lying on its face, they had to use the emergency hatch to extract him from the machine. The entire right side had taken critical damage from explosions, melting and plasma cutting. Evidence of serious explosive damage filled the right side of the large foot traffic hub, and signs of a firefight to the left told the rest of the story.
“You’re completely insane,” Jason said as he shook his head. “But we’d be on our way back to the Triton with a lot more dead and wounded if it weren’t for that stunt.”
“I aim to please. Too bad about the suit though,” he looked from the encounter suit to the medic who had been treating him for a moment. “All my important bits where they’re supposed to be?” he asked.
The medic smiled and nodded. “Yes sir. Looks like you’ll be sheep dogging us around the gunnery deck as soon as we’ll get back.”
“Sheep doggin’ — now where’d you hear that?”
“Saw a movie made in New Ireland right before all this started. Most of the Gunnery Crew did,” he replied.
“It All Points North,” another crewman confirmed, naming the picture.
“Good movie, makes us gunnery dregs look like heroes,” Frost smiled.
“Found it in your personal collection and made it public. The preview looked good,” Jason said as one of the Triton soldiers finished cutting through the bolts on a large access panel and let it drop to the side. “There it is, the main trunk line.” He stepped up to the collection of cables and, without a moment’s hesitation, reached into the bundle. A moment later he pulled several silver lines, affixed two boring clamps, verified that he had full contact with the ship systems and then deactivated all ship controls using program he had ready on his command and control unit. “The ship is ours.”
“Aye, as long as we can make sure you can stand right there patched in,” Frost replied, eyeing the way they’d come and the two broad hallways to either side. “Think I might just go get the last good encounter suit.”
“Sir, what will we do about a bridge?” asked Mark.
“We’ll use the one with cr
acked armour. Damn thing’s probably too fancy to repair in good time anyhow.”
Chapter 36
The Burden Of Knowing
Ashley watched the movement of Oz's group through the ship as they moved towards the lower decks. They had made fantastic progress with the command deck after subduing the highest ranking enemy officer aboard Triton. The captives were stripped of their gear and sealed in crew quarters, and Ashley couldn't help but ponder the similarity between her situation and that of the captured soldiers.
Zoe kicked in her sleep where she was curled up in the seat beside her. Ashley stroked the youngster's side gently, prompting her to roll over and capture the appendage in an unconscious hug. “Might be a while before I get that back,” Ashley said with a sigh.
There was a lot going on aboard Triton, and even more happening above, in the destroyer outfitted with a Command Module that was still firmly affixed to their dorsal mooring port. Over the last few hours Ashley listened to the chatter as Frost and Jason's teams maintained possession of the lower decks of the ship, and cut main power to the rest. It was both exciting and frightening, listening in on that drama. At times she found herself cringing at the sounds she was overhearing, many of which were never explained, and more than once she was relieved to hear familiar voices after the action was momentarily over.
Taking care of Zoe was more challenging than listening to Jason and Frost's battling egos or their fight with the destroyer’s crew. The toddler had taken the vacsuit Ashley had made for her with her command unit off twice and she'd already gotten bored of survival bars. There was a working materializer just outside in the main medical bay, and she could have gotten more interesting food for them both, not to mention a light blanket or a toy for Zoe, but fear kept her locked inside the conference room. There were no working sensors in medical or the aft section behind it. It would be hours before Oz's people could get there, and for some reason Agameg couldn't contact the former slaves that were fighting past the middle frame of the ship. That was a lot of space left in the dark, and the thought of running into soldiers like the ones she met in medical kept her awake, she didn't need stims.
A knock at the door made her jump so badly she woke Zoe, who looked up at her with wide, bleary eyes. “Uh oh, that's your; 'I'm about to start crying because I'm tired and scared face,'” Ashley said as she carefully picked the youngster up and cradled her against her chest. With a glance she could see that the autopilot was still running, her controls were still locked, and the comm was set to listen only. No one would be able to hear what was going on in the conference room.
“Please unlock the door Ashley,” Larry said through her communicator. “I have a few things for you and Zoe.”
“We're fine thanks,” she replied quietly.
“Listen, I understand how you might have misgivings about letting me in, but I think I've already shown that you can trust me.”
“Oh really?”
“Just a few hours ago I saved you from a pretty bad situation, remember?”
“Because you needed someone to fly the ship.”
“I could have done that myself just fine. I'm sure Oz and Jason would have no trouble believing that I was able to re-route controls to this room and get us on course. I saved you because I know you're a good person, and I couldn't watch that soldier take advantage.”
“Okay, but what guarantee do I have that you won't take me out just to be safe?”
“You watch way too many movies. If that’s what I wanted, I could have opened the door for myself using a terminal down the hall. With the right code I can override anything as long as it still has power. Check for yourself, just bring up a raw code console and enter the word: ‘absolution’ followed by the number four.”
Ashley did as he asked and noticed that the password was assigned to her biometric ident specifically, something Larry would have had to do in advance. Suddenly the three dimensional cut away diagram of the Triton hovering over the table took on a whole new level of detail. Every wire, pipe, hatch, crawlspace and little secret was on open display. She could even see inside the Botanical Gallery. “Oh, well, that's just awesome.”
“Ashley, is everything okay down there?” asked Oz’s voice from the terminal.
“Yeah, I’m fine, why? Something goin’ on?”
“No, your comm signal just squelched then came back under a new priority signal.”
Ashley thought for a moment, unsure of what to say. She didn’t have the know-how to lie about communications, yet she didn’t know how much she wanted to tell Oz. “Um, I dunno, maybe something Jason did?” she blurted.
“Maybe. He’s cabling the Enforcer to the Triton so who knows. You should have flight control of the other ship in a few minutes, by the way.”
“All right, that should make the ship easier to stabilize. Thank you Oz.”
“Oh, don’t thank me, it’s all Jason, Frost and the whole gunnery crew. They’ve taken the whole bottom half of that ship. I’m busy clearing the interior compartments with everyone else.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Not really. I’ll tell you as soon as something comes up though. Talk to you soon.”
Ashley sighed with relief.
“Why didn’t you tell him, Ash?”
“Maybe I’m just getting used to sitting on this fence,” Ashley replied in a harsh whisper. “What was that code stuff all about anyway? You almost forced me to tell him everything.”
“I added you to the system at a higher security level than anyone in the ship. I can show you how to hide your access level, so no one knows anything’s changed.”
“Besides you. Does anyone even know this is possible?”
“As far as anyone knows, there's no way to get all that control and information at once, it comes in bits and pieces with the right security clearances. With that code you override security and your actions can't be recorded, it's how I get around without getting caught.”
Ashley thought for a moment, stroking Zoe's back. She was dozing off again, with her nose buried in her hair. There was no choice. Even with the extra access she couldn't see what was going on throughout half the ship, so there was a chance that a large group of soldiers could retaliate by taking medical. Besides, if Larry really wanted to get in, he would. She crossed the room and pressed the open button.
Larry was on the other side with a gurney laden with two large duffel bags. “Thanks Ashley, I knew you'd see reason.”
“I'll keep your secret, but you find a way to give the crew more control over this ship so you’re not the one holding all the cards.”
He regarded her with a stunned expression for a moment then asked; “That's your only condition?”
“Well, yeah. What were you expecting?”
“You know, I'm not sure. I've never trusted anyone with this before.”
“Really?”
“Yes, you're the first person I've trusted with my real identity.”
“Am I safe?”
“Well, I know you won't betray me if I don't do something that's outside of your moral boundaries. That's the kind of person you are, you quietly apply your standards and expectations to everyone you know and that determines how you behave around them.”
Ashley didn't know why, but she found his summary of her personality irritating. “That's no answer.”
“Ashley, I'll agree to find out what Citadel wants to do with Triton, if they’ll let this ship go to someone aboard if you'll keep my secret.”
“That’s not what I asked for.”
“It’s the best I can do. If I gave total control to a group of people and my superiors decided I was out of line, they’d just find a way to eliminate the whole complicated mess. So is that good enough for you?”
“I s’pose. If there’s no other way, yeah.”
“Good, congratulations, you're the safest person on the ship. As the only other person with a command code for the Triton I might actually need your help sometime.”
&n
bsp; “I wish there was something I could do to prove I'd keep your secret though. I mean, the more sure you are, the more sure I am that you won't just get rid of me.”
Larry nodded as he finished wheeling the gurney into the conference room and pulled one of the bags down to the floor. He pulled it open to reveal a large supply of meal bars, boxed food, water, and a few other odds and ends. “After seeing how you were mum about Stephanie and the Captain-”
“You know about that?”
“Yes, the ship alerts me of any unusual goings on, and that registered pretty high.” He handed her a full drinking bottle.
“The ship watches us?”
“Passively, but yes, everything is recorded and categorized.”
“And I can see all that with the code you gave me?”
“Well, yes, but that's not what it's intended for. Master codes are made for the highest ranking officers and Citadel agents for emergencies like this. The only reason why I could assign one to you is because I'm so far from home and I have the highest rank in the sector.”
“So you're some kind of Admiral?”
“No, I'm a Citadel agent. We're the ones who watch the government and the military. Most people think we're an urban myth, even on Earth.”
“Who watches you?” Ashley said, looking at him with mock suspicion.
Larry regarded her witheringly, a look she'd earned from him before under much less serious circumstances. “None of that matters now. We're about to have visitors and I need you to behave as though I'm no more than your copilot.”
“What kind of visitors?”
“You know that band of slaves Agameg organized?”
“Yup.”
“They're on their way here. Someone decided that they should secure medical and use it as a refuge from the soldiers left between here and the aft sections.”
“There are still soldiers fighting back there?”
“Not many, but enough to give the slaves you guys liberated some trouble. I closed a few emergency doors so they wouldn’t run into each other on their way here.”
Fragments sf-6 Page 34
