When she lifted her head up, her curly red hair drifted between them. She flipped it aside, breathing heavily. “That was not a goodbye kiss,” she said with a new smile, one that was excited and amused and playful.
“We start over,” Jake said. He couldn’t believe what he was going to say next, and had to force it from his mind to his lips. By the time the words were in the air it was a groan. “Tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, you don’t mean that,” Ayan replied with a chuckle. She lowered her forehead to his and briefly extended her lips to touch his. “But you’re right,” she sighed. “You’re right. I came to tell you about a couple things anyway, didn’t think we’d get like this.” She shifted herself so her head laid on his chest. “You okay?”
“I’m fine. I’ve gotten to know this deck very well over the last few weeks, I might even come back every once and a while just to say hello with an awkward fall,” Jake replied.
“I missed that,” Ayan said. “Almost forgot you could be funny.”
“I’m serious, deck and I are proper mates at this point,” Jake persisted. “What did you come to tell me?”
Ayan took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It’s nothing to do with us.”
“Okay, that’s a relief,” Jake said.
“Doctor Messana has been restricting information to the Solar Forge, especially you, filtering what she thinks may be distracting. So, a lot about how Regent Galactic are pressing in, how the British Alliance Frontier failed when they couldn’t get critical stations in place, and how we’ve been finding spies in Haven Shore every week since you’ve been out. None of that’s been made available to you.”
“I’m getting out tomorrow morning,” Jake reminded himself aloud. “Just help me get back up to speed and I’ll try not to hold it against the Doctor, even though she had no right to do that to me.”
“About that, you getting out tomorrow,” Ayan said.
“What?” Jake asked, alarmed. “I am getting out tomorrow, right?”
“Yes, and I’ll be here at oh-nine-hundred when you step off this station right on schedule.”
“Okay, what about tomorrow?”
“The first thing you’re going to notice tomorrow when you leave, maybe even when you wake up, is how much lighter you feel. How much easier it will probably be for you to stay on your feet.”
“Why? Why would it be easier to walk off the station than inside?”
“Doctor Messana has been adjusting the gravity on you, just you. Whatever readings you saw about your environment were fake. Right now the localized field around you is at one point two eight standard units. When you picked me up earlier it was at one point four.”
“So you weighed an extra forty percent more? You were still pretty light,” Jake replied.
“Thank you, but no. The Lorander gravity systems on this ship are so precise that the gravity increase follows you as closely as a vacsuit. A really tight one, actually.”
“Okay, so people around me wouldn’t even know,” Jake replied.
“Exactly. I found out because I was supervising construction of the new gunships. I don’t think Doctor Messana ever meant for you to find out. But she does seem focused on having you recover as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, so I think her heart was in the right place. My father says he’s only seen that kind of thing in strength training, not trauma recovery, he doubts that it speeds things up at all, because you’ll spend time adjusting to lesser gravity later.”
“So it’s something I’ll watch for,” Jake said, reminding himself that if it weren’t for Doctor Messana, he wouldn’t be alive, laying on the deck with Ayan in his arms. “Anything else?”
“No,” Ayan said, raising her head and looking at him. “You’re really calm about all this,” she said. “I thought you’d take the news differently.”
“Why? It sounds like Doctor Messana was just trying to help. As long as I didn’t miss anything critical while I was out, or here, then I can’t say she did anything wrong. Time will tell if the increased gravity was a good idea.”
“She changed your mind, too,” Ayan said, “forced the rebuilt parts of your brain to be rewritten in a sequence that resembled an average human mind, ignoring the pattern you had as a framework.”
“I know,” Jake said. “I was too paranoid not to look at how I was put back together. I’ve even seen parts of the operation footage.”
“No,” Ayan gasped. “She restricts tactical data and news but lets you in on your whole medical file? I couldn’t watch more than a few seconds of your operation.”
“I guess she knew I’d notice that parts of my file were missing. Besides, I couldn’t watch much of the operation either. I didn’t think I had a squeamish bone in my body until I was a few minutes in, then I had to call it quits. I went back and looked at what I wanted to see later.”
“What parts did you have to see?” Ayan asked.
“Mostly the later parts of reconstruction, when they were putting the new legs and parts of my lower torso together. I just had to see if the trouble I was having in recovery had anything to do with my new factory installed parts.”
“And?”
“The comparisons to the kind of thing nature builds are almost perfect, and the differences are all minor improvements anyway.”
“Improvements like?” Ayan asked with a teasing smile.
Jake laughed and shook his head. “Nothing to get excited about.”
“Really? Maybe we should do a comparison scan.”
“No scans on the first date,” Jake said sternly.
Ayan rolled over and slowly stood up. “Something to look forward to,” she said. “We should get off the deck though.”
Jake wouldn’t have admitted it while Ayan was still atop him, but his shoulders and head were getting sore from being on the hard surface. “I don’t think the deck is as good a friend as I thought.” He rolled over and carefully got to his feet, something that was impossible for him weeks before. Every time he stood on his own it was still a small victory. “Extra gravity,” he muttered. “Can’t wait to see what its like to try to walk in a normal environment.”
Ayan put his arm around her shoulders. He looked down at her and smiled. “Where to now?” she asked.
His gaze wandered from her eyes, and eventually answered, “the guest lounge?”
“Good idea,” Ayan said with a raised eyebrow. “Enjoying the view?”
Jake nodded, “Very distracting, you could be impeding my recovery.”
“Oh, I can adjust the pattern,” Ayan said, bringing an image of her dress up on her bulky command bracelet.
“That’s all right, I think it’s having the opposite effect, actually. I feel better already,” Jake said in a rush.
“If you say so,” Ayan replied. “But eyes front, soldier. I don’t want you tripping on my watch.”
“Aye,” Jake replied.
“Besides, there’s something I have to tell you about tomorrow morning.”
“Oh?”
“There may be just a few people waiting for you when you arrive aboard the Triton. There are a few Captains who have been looking forward to meeting you.”
“How many Captains?” Jake asked.
“Twenty eight, I think. The fleet is a little bigger than you remember,” Ayan said. “Something else Doctor Messana thought might be distracting, news of new people in the fleet.”
“Catch me up?” Jake asked.
“It’ll be my pleasure,” Ayan replied.
Chapter 10
The Push
The gathering the night before hadn’t kept Minh-Chu up for as long as he expected. Finn and Agameg brought a few new faces from the Warlord with them, unaware that the hostess wasn’t going to be there. Ayan’s absence made Lacey the hostess and centre of attention, and people were curious about the tall, dark British woman who had been at Ayan’s side for months. She warmed to the attention, and was soon exchanging questions with Triton and Warlord crewmembers. She
was curious about military life, and many of them were curious about Haven Shore, and her very political existence.
There were no arguments, even though politics, especially the recently rocky kind that were happening on Haven Shore could have been a minefield. Lacey was a born diplomat, and Minh-Chu was amazed at how she could turn conversation in a fairly harmless direction.
It wasn’t a party where a lot of imbibing took place, though, more of a gathering where people exchanged scuttlebutt and shared what they brought. When it started getting late, the party broke up pleasantly, but calmly.
Minh-Chu missed Ayan’s return to the apartment much later in the evening, but things must have gone well, since Jake indicated that he’d be at her place later that day through Crewcast. Minh-Chu looked forward to visiting, so did Ashley, he just had to get through his patrol in one piece.
He had great faith in his Wingman for the patrol operation, Dent, who had five solo kills against Order of Eden fighters, and several cooperative kills on corvette and other classes. He was competent, believed in staying in the present, and had a good mind for strategy.
They had one of the long patrols, taking them to the asteroid belt slowly drifting past the boundary of the Rega Gain solar system. “So, no British Alliance out here?” Dent asked through their private communications channel.
“Not so much as a satellite, which is one of the things we’re looking for on scans,” Minh-Chu replied.
“Oh, that wasn’t in my briefing,” Dent replied.
“Then I was supposed to brief you on it and forgot,” Minh-Chu replied, feeling like an amateur.
“It’s not a big deal, I would have noticed it on my scanner either way. Leave anything else out?”
Minh-Chu sent his list of objectives to Dent, “Nope, here’s the whole thing.”
“Let’s see,” Dent said, clearing his throat. “Watch for signs of enemy activity, report anomalous signals, forward transmission bursts, assist ships in distress, and scan for signs of damaged vessels in the Paulo Belt, especially the Ash Sen and the oh-seven-nine-dee-bee British Alliance communications satellite. Above all, observe and report, do not engage unless fired upon. Yup, you just left the search items off. My orders don’t include those.”
“Well, now you know,” Minh-Chu said as he began his sensor sweep of the first section of the asteroid belt.
“The Ash Sen was a Carthan Battlecruiser, wasn’t it?” Dent asked.
“Yup, was due in Kambis orbit five months ago but never reported. They figure there’s a chance it crashed somewhere in this mess.”
“On account of bad navigation,” Dent said. “Love those Carthans, there’s nothing like a two hundred billion Galactic Credit battlecruiser manned by a brainwashed convict crew.”
“Did you hear that we’ll be raising one of their battlecruisers from the surface of Kambis and repairing it in two weeks?” Minh-Chu said.
“There’s actually a crashed Carthan ship worth salvaging whole?” Dent said.
“There is, I couldn’t believe it either. It’s almost spaceworthy right now, only the reactors need to be rebuilt, and a few thrusters, and the bridge was slagged, but overall, it’s in fair shape for a losing ship.”
“The fleet just keeps growing,” Dent said. “Hey, I got a ping.”
Minh-Chu saw a computerized response from a ship at the same time, a simple signal that told his Uriel Fighter that, somewhere in the asteroid field, there was a communications system on. “Cut power to everything but passive sensors,” he said as he did so. “Make sure your navnet ident is off. We don’t know what that is, so we don’t want to broadcast what we are just yet.”
“Might be too late,” Dent said, “I didn’t turn my ident off when we left Kambis navnet range.”
Minh-Chu checked to see if Dent’s fighter was still broadcasting it’s operating identifier, and saw that it was off. “No worries, we’ll know what kind of system just reached out to us from that asteroid group in a moment, I think.”
They drifted in a parallel course to the asteroid field, moving a little faster. Minh-Chu watched his scan results, which were mostly reporting geological data from the nearest bodies of stone, ice, and iron. Through his display he could see the dark masses slowly tumbling through space, there wasn’t enough light to make out most of the individual asteroids, but he knew they weren’t as close together as they looked. There was plenty of room for ships to hide in there.
“Got something, Ronin!” Dent said.
Minh-Chu saw the data stream as his wingman reported it. “Data stream, what kind?”
“It has a Regent Galactic header,” Dent reported, “Combat group identifier.”
“All right, power everything up, sensors first. Let’s do a deep scan for two seconds then hit our xetima boosters home.”
As soon as Minh-Chu powered his systems on, his computer analysed the data stream from the asteroid field and concluded that it was from a Regent Galactic repair drone. “This is encrypted, my computer’s working on it,” he told Dent. “But small ships don’t carry repair drones this big.”
“Targeting the area with sensors, they’re going to see us as plain as day if they don’t already know we’re here,” Dent said.
“Or you could do that,” Minh-Chu said.
The broad profile of a Regent Galactic Carrier appeared on Minh-Chu’s screen and he hit his solid xetima thrusters. The inertial dampers whined as they strained to compensate for the sudden acceleration. He was relieved to see that Dent had followed his previous instructions, firing his thrusters at the same time. “Only have seven seconds of thrust left,” Minh-Chu said.
“Same here, these things don’t go long, but it’s one hell of a ride when they go off,” Dent replied.
Minh-Chu sent his sensor data to the British Alliance and Triton Fleet, knowing that it would take nine hours for the transmission to reach them. He opened a micro-wormhole to the safe deceleration area near Tamber and tried to retransmit, but his system reported a failure. He checked his communications system and immediately saw that the Regent Galactic forces in the asteroid field were jamming them.
“They’re jamming us,” Dent said over their secondary communications, a system that used direct laser linking instead of conventional ship to ship technology.
“I’m formulating a plan as we speak,” Minh-Chu said as he let the micro-wormhole close. “But I’m sure Triton Fleet caught their jamming signal and they’ll have the origin of my wormhole calculated in a couple minutes.
“So they’ll know where we are and that something is stopping us from communicating,” Dent said. “But it’ll be a bit before we see friendly support.”
“About an hour, I’m formulating a plan,” Minh-Chu said.
The Asteroid field lit up with live ship signals, populating Minh-Chu’s tactical display with readouts from fighters, gunships and several destroyers. The xetima pods burned out, their fuel exhausted, but they still had a good lead on the enemy. “Maintain full burn for the perimeter defence, “ Minh-Chu said.
“Roger, Ronin, full burn to Harnen navnet space,” Dent replied. “I just hope we don’t have to land there, I hate that place.”
“Well, that’s where we’re going,” Minh-Chu said. “I’m calculating a wormhole trajectory that’ll take us right into their emergency deceleration safe zone.”
“Uh, Ronin, there’s a bend in that trajectory,” Dent said, referring to a curve in Minh-Chu’s wormhole path that would take them up and around one of Harnen’s moons.
“Not so large that my projector can’t handle it,” Minh-Chu said. “I’m using a few tricks I picked up from Ashley, they make this kind of course a lot easier to verify and correct.”
“You’re going to make corrections to the navigational computers’ work?” Dent said.
Several flashes of weapons’ fire lighted their cockpits. It wasn’t high powered, but long range. Minh-Chu’s shield reported three minor strikes, not enough to cause any concern, but if the ships
behind them kept it up for the whole time it took them to get to safety, there wouldn’t be anything left of their fighters, or them.
“Carry on, Wing Commander,” Dent said, “But if you sink us into some kind of time compression space or something, you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Bah, little chance of that,” Minh-Chu said, looking over the navigation computer’s work. “See? Nothing here but perfect transit calculations. Opening the wormhole, follow me in.”
“Aye, Sir,” Dent said.
The wormhole generator and power systems whined as the space in front of him distorted. He only had three seconds to scan it before deciding whether or not to evade, and was relieved when he saw the other end let out to Harnen Navnet space. “Here’s hoping they take the signal noise those Rega Gain ships are making as our request for navnet coordinates on the other side.” He said as his ship passed over the threshold and began the nine second transit through the wormhole.
“What?” Dent said as his fighter followed close behind. “Oh, God, I didn’t think of that.”
“I’m sure we’ll be fine,” Ronin said as he gripped the controls and glanced to his right, nodding at a small red holographic square that activated the emergency evasion systems in his ship. “Ready to evade standing bodies in the Navnet pattern.” His ship crossed the far threshold, emerging from the wormhole, and he sent his ship into a port side turn, so Dent would be clear to emerge and pass on his starboard side.
There were only three large cargo ships in the area, and they were well out of the arrival space. The old Carthan station, where imported prison workers were programmed for service while they were still in the solar system, was nothing more than a tiny shining shard in the distance. They were headed in it’s general direction, and would decelerate right past it in under a minute.
The wormhole closed behind Dent and the jamming signals that came through with he and Minh-Chu ended. “-Base, to Uriel fighters. You are on approach to Anchor Station at high speeds, please state your intentions.”
“This is Ronin, from Triton Fleet Samurai Squadron,” Minh-Chu said as his thrusters fired at maximum in an effort to guide the ship into a smooth course past the station during his deceleration. He saw Dent slowly drift past, his ship looked like a white hot fireball with all of its thrusters firing. “There is at least one Regent Galactic Carrier and group on their way into the system, or getting ready to escape.”
Warpath Page 9
