Warpath

by Randolph Lalonde

  “There are crimes there,” Oz said quietly. “But they would take longer to pursue and we do not want any of the experiments with Alice’s physiology in the public record. I hereby find you guilty of endangering your fellow crewmembers by creating, arming and attempting to detonate an explosive device in the form of a power source set to overload. I also find you guilty of attempting to damage property with that same device. These charges give me all the justification I need to eject you from service with Triton Fleet. I require an Officer to oversee your removal.”

  “I volunteer,” Stephanie said.

  “Accepted.”

  Governor Anderson cleared his throat before speaking. “As Governor of Tamber, I recognize the crime you have been convicted of by Triton Fleet and see cause to revoke your citizenship. You will be conducted safely out of the system aboard the next available transport.”

  “Lieutenant Commander Liara Erron,” Oz said to her. “You are the new Communications and Legal Officer in Captain Valent’s staff. Are you satisfied with how today’s proceedings were conducted?”

  “Yes I am,” she said with no hesitation.

  “Lieutenant Commander Vega,” Jake said to her. “You are the head of my Security Staff. Are you satisfied that Mister Rinette has come to no harm, and has not been abused during these proceedings?”

  “Yes I am,” Stephanie replied.

  “If there is any person in this room who feels they have not been honest with their testimony, please say so now,” Governor Anderson said. They waited for what seemed like ten minutes, but Finn’s command and control unit said it had only been ten seconds by the time he looked at it. “Then these proceedings have concluded. Good luck out there, Mister Rinette.”

  “I can’t survive out there, I don’t have any money,” Rinette said as Stephanie led him to the door by his arm. “We made important medical discoveries, the framework system can be controlled now, it opens a whole new field of cybernetics!”

  “You’ll get whatever pay we owe you after we finish estimating the cost of whatever repairs we’ll have to make because of your bomb,” she said to him. “I’m sure someone else will continue your work ethically.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ayan said. “That wasn’t pleasant, I know. But we couldn’t arbitrarily throw him out of the system. If it were three days ago, when we’re not forming closer ties to the British Alliance then we could have done anything to him, but now, with this being so personal, we had to demonstrate some kind of process.”

  “He is being discharged and deported on an explosives charge you can prove, Ma’am,” Liara said with a smile. “As a trained lawyer, I can say that these military proceedings can seem a little rushed and lopsided, but in this case the charge, the proceedings and the sentence were perfect. I couldn’t invalidate this case if I had a whole legal team.”

  “Thank you for reporting, you’re all dismissed. You understand that these proceedings, aside from the explosive charges and the sentence, are top secret?” Oz asked.

  “Yes,” Finn said.

  “I do,” Liara added.

  “Yes,” Agameg said. “Alice, the real Alice is well?”

  “Yes, she’s fine,” Jake said. “And we have someone investigating whether or not this cure is real, but no one can know anything about that vault, or the D-Drive, or that you’ll be overseeing it’s installation aboard this ship. Lieutenant Commander Erron will make sure there is no chatter or record describing the drive, Chiefs Agameg and Finn will direct the installation, and Lieutenant Commander Vega will oversee security as soon as she delivers Mister Rinett to the Caraway Company Starliner that’s set to arrive in about an hour. It’s time for us to get off this ship, before we hold up the Solar Forge’s work. Take a rest for lunch, then start getting ready, you have your work cut out for you.”

  Finn couldn’t help but feel satisfied with the long morning he had as they left the room.

  “Isn’t he supposed to get a defence?” Agameg asked Liana.

  “You’re thinking of human civilian courts,” Liana said with a smile. She seemed happy with the outcome. “In military courts like that, you have the evidence against you for everything the court wants to prove presented, then there’s a sentencing depending on what the Officers decide, and then you get an appeal. The system is made to trust the Officers overseeing the process because they get into much bigger trouble if they’re reviewed and it’s found that their rulings were unfair. That, and it’s made to be fast, so a ship can keep running.”

  “That’s the way I was told it was aboard ship,” Finn said. “When I was in college.”

  “Oh,” Agameg said. “Rinett will have difficulty appealing from wherever he’s going, I think.”

  Chapter 31

  Port Chalmers, Kambis, Minutes Before The Attack

  Bismark Industries. It was a name Burke would never forget. He had been studying their ships for weeks, and was finally almost ready to steal one from Port Chalmers, when a planet wide alarm was activated. He was sitting in one of the many ports on Kambis when he heard a thunder crack in the sky, and people started panicking.

  He didn’t know what was going on, only that his luck had most likely run out, whatever karmic payback he had coming was probably a few seconds from dropping on his shoulders. Burke’s version of Karma was more an enhanced theory of cosmic give-and-take, but that didn’t matter. There was something dark and red in the sky, and it wouldn’t get him.

  He picked a terminal, his sidearm in hand, setting off port alarms in the tallest section of Port Chalmers. Security personnel, most of them hired goons by the Termi Cartel, spotted him at the last possible second. He knew where he was going, and the security doors that started closing in front of him as he headed down the gangway to the small interplanetary transport he was watching wouldn’t stop him.

  He moved faster than he could remember, rushing down the gangway towards the heavy airlock door that was slowly closing. “Wait! Boarding pass! I have a boarding pass!” he shouted. It was a lie. The Steward, in one of those terrible white and blue uniforms they all wore with silly hats that looked like some arts and crafts project that turned out boring saw his sidearm and tried to push the door closed faster. “It’s only a precaution!” he shouted, lying as he fired several shots at the door, his wild, running aim only managed to scorch the door’s light armour.

  He collided with the door, pushed through the narrow space and almost got all the way through. His right boot was a little bit too wide by the time his body pressed into the cabin. He deactivated the armour seal at the top of his boot and yanked his foot free before the door finished closing, crushing his boot to less than millimetre thickness.

  “Boarding pass?” the steward asked, his voice cracking.

  Burke pretended to search through the pockets of his long brown coat as he looked around at the inside of the small passenger carrier. It was already taking off in a hurry, alarms were going off, and the back four rows of passengers were all staring at him. “Must have left it back in the terminal. We making an emergency takeoff?”

  “Yes, Sir,” the steward said. “Can I have your name? I’m sure I can find you on our manifest if-“

  An antimatter alarm went off on the personal scanner built into his coat. He used his ocular implant’s display to bring up a view from a Bismark Industries satellite and involuntarily yelped as he saw that the antimatter alert was closing in around them. “Time to go!” he shouted, holstering his weapon, so he wouldn’t set off the interior intruder nullification systems. He had never moved so fast in his life. “Get into one of these lifeboats, or you’re dead!” he shouted as he stopped at the front of the small craft and opened a panel in the floor. The roar of the rocket thrusters firing as hard as they could filled the cabin. The display overlaid onto his sight showed the antimatter cloud spreading across the globe. “Too fast! Not gonna make it!” he said as he dropped into one of the escape craft. It activated and he looked for the controls. PUSH ONLY IN CASE OF EMERGENCY said some
white writing above a big red button. He slapped it and crossed his arms atop his chest.

  The escape pod closed and he was launched from the small, fifty person transit ship’s fore, straight towards space. He watched the status display as the rocket at the rear of the escape craft indicated that gravity was slowing him down. “Oh, please, oh please, oh please, I’ll save an orphanage if you just get me out of this. Like, one just chock full of the ugliest kids or something.”

  Whether it was because of his prayer, or luck, or physics and a willingness to run, the escape pod left the atmosphere or Kambis behind. The antimatter warning spread to the entire planet. “Oh, that’s still going to kill me at this range,” he said. “Emergency coordinates!”

  A low quality screen slipped out in front of him with a navigational display. He tapped the coordinates he knew would take him somewhere safe onto the screen. “Voice command: use standard navigational routes to execute this transit,” he told the computer. “Execute!”

  The computer screen displayed a rosebud slowly growing then flowering. “What’s that? Your progress screen?” he asked, shouting loud enough to make his own ears ring. “C’mon!”

  The rose blossomed on the screen and the hyperspace escape pod accelerated away from Kambis orbit at hyper-speed.

  “Thank you for choosing Bismark Industries for your escape. Please remain completely still for the initiation of cold stasis, provided by our partners at GoChill. Remember, when you need to preserve living or dead matter for an undetermined amount of time, use GoChill.”

  “No freezing! It’s a short trip! I won’t even have time to get-“

  The cold stasis systems activated, and Burke was stopped mid sentence.

  Chapter 32

  Current Time, An Asteroid In Dead Space

  “Hungry!” was the first word out of Burke’s mouth. He was freezing, shivering, and the knock-off vacsuit under his clothing was just starting to warm him up. It would happen slowly.

  A big, mechanical hand reached into the pod and hauled him up onto his unsteady feet beside the pod. “I’m sure we can get you something, mate,” said Otto, a towering cyborg who had very little human left. Even his human skin had a sheen to it, indicating that it had been replaced with synthetic armoured flesh. “What happened to your other boot?”

  “Short story, long explanation, not really worth going into,” Burke said, shivering, feeling the moisture in his sinuses start to drain, and his gut rumble. Cold stasis didn’t exactly freeze people, but it came very close, and there was nothing he hated more, even though it had saved his life twice. He looked at his surroundings. He was in some kind of small hangar. There were a few newer model Order of Eden fighters nearby, and through the window he could see there was a larger bay with a stone ceiling. They were in an asteroid.

  “I tell you to bring me a ship, and that’s what you come in?” Wheeler shouted. “Burke, man,” he laughed. “You’ve gotta aim higher!”

  “Kambis,” Burke said through chattering teeth. “Probably gone.”

  “Yeah, I know, it’s not gone though. Good as gone, on fire for a century or two thanks to all the crap they left sequestered for terraforming on that rock,” Wheeler replied.

  “We lost everyone there?” asked Otto.

  “I think I only got out because I was waiting for a planet hopper to leave. I’ve been checking out Bismark’s patrol ships for you, figured I’d have one for you in a few,” Burke took a deep, steadying breath. The air was nice and warm. “A few days. I got all the scheduling info from Port Chalmers, for all the good it’ll do, and a bunch of scans.”

  “You’re the worst backup plan I’ve ever had,” Wheeler said.

  “He’s unlucky,” Otto said. “Don’t think there was anything he could do about the planet blowing up.”

  “It caught fire,” Wheeler corrected exasperatedly. “It did not blow up.”

  Otto picked up a chair, brought it to Burke and sat him down in it. “Better?” he asked.

  “Yeah, thanks Otto, now make me a sandwich,” Burke said.

  “All we got is forma, and the E-Meals from the Order,” Otto said apologetically.

  “Just kidding, man,” Burke said.

  “Okay,” Wheeler said. “All I’ve got is a connection to the Order of Eden network. We’ll have to take something they’re bringing in. Something my little crew can manage to take.”

  “If you’re connected, then you’ve got the command codes?” Burke asked.

  “Yeah, but things didn’t go well, that’s why I’m here to greet you personally, not just Otto and the others,” Wheeler replied.

  “What do you mean, didn’t go well? They’re not after you now, are they?”

  “No, they’re not after me, but they don’t want me in their club either, I’m not exactly a devotee they can trust.”

  “So you didn’t get a ship,” Burke said. It was a damning situation. He knew getting stuck with Otto and Wheeler’s small mercenary crew in the middle of no where could lead to the break up of the crew, and he’d be alone again, penniless. The only thing he could lay claim to were his ripper gun, his clothing, and the pod he came in. “I got the entry code system figured out for Bismark ships, I made a hack.”

  “I got a ship,” Wheeler said. “It’s just a small customs corvette from the Codis System, and it’s out of date. Slow hyperdrive, small disabling weapons, you know, nothing worth keeping if we can get something better.”

  “I’ve been improving the thrusters,” Otto said. “Got an extra eleven point nine percent.”

  “Yes, Otto,” Wheeler said. “We’re all proud.”

  “So, let’s put a plan together,” Burke said, his shivering finally starting to subside. “Like I said, I got the travel routes, not just from Kambis, but for Bismark Industries, they’ve got hundreds of haulers and transports. They’ve got some ports we can go to, I’m sure I can find us something bigger. Something newer, we just need a few more crew, some guns, maybe a few supplies.”

  “Guns and supplies, we’ve got,” Otto said. “No sandwiches though.”

  “You didn’t say all of Bismark’s routes before,” Wheeler replied, smiling.

  “Sorry,” Burke said, then he leaned towards Wheeler and shouted. “I have the courses and timetable for the entire fleet for the next month!” He leaned back in his chair, coughed once and quietly asked; “Was that clear enough?”

  “And you can crack their security?” Wheeler asked.

  “Yes, I figured out their security software,” Burke replied, consciously not offering any details.

  “Congratulations, you’re important again,” Wheeler said.

  Chapter 33

  In Memoriam

  Visiting the Everin building was always surreal for Finn. The mountainous structure looked like the pictures of an Issyrian clutch he’d seen once, with oval sections closely affixed to each other, making one large, shining structure. This one reached for the sky, whereas the traditional underwater homes of the issyrians often rested in piles, wedged into crevasses on ocean floors.

  He was supposed to be helping to oversee the third day of the rebuild on Captain Valent’s new ship, but he was invited to the main floor of the Everin building that morning. There would be a memorial, and the engineering staff he lost would be featured. There were hundreds of people gathered inside the main floor, and thousands outside.

  Agameg stood at his side amongst the officers from the Triton and Captain Valent’s crew. Most of the leadership from Haven Shore was in attendance on the other side of the circle surrounding the covered monument. All he could tell was that it stood approximately three metres tall, and was semi-circular.

  Governor Anderson stood in front of it looking across the crowd. “This monument wasn’t supposed to be finished for another month, but I was approached by the team of artists who were sculpting this in their spare time. They wanted to devote their full attention to it since so many of our people are leaving tomorrow. I believe they have accomplished a mir
acle in the short time they had, and that their work will serve to remind us of the heavy cost paid for the peace we have in Haven Shore. Please, let your first round of applause be for them and their hard work.” He pointed to a group of sculptors, most of whom seemed sheepish, except for three, who had their heads bowed.

  The grey sheet covering the monument was lifted by cables drawn overhead, to reveal a crowd of stone people standing in an incomplete circle on a flat pedestal. In the middle of the pedestal was an etching of Haven Shore’s main island with a circle of words Finn couldn’t make out from where he was standing.

  Jason and Laura Everin stood prominently between all the other stone people, facing each other, holding hands and gazing into each other’s eyes. The rest of the semicircle of stone people were frozen in natural poses, as though they had gathered for a celebration with each other. They were all people who died during their arrival on Tamber and the year that followed. Several of them, near the outer edge on one side, were from his engineering team.

  Angela and Yolanda, who were as driven as he was to earn their way to Chief. Rain, Oscilla, and Frank, who were inseparable for their last few weeks of service. There was a plaque at their feet that the five of them were tilting upward together. The sight of them struck so deep, he almost forgot to applaud. He knew he’d have to speak at the end of the presentation, and clamped his jaws together, refusing to let a tear roll. He could not think about them until the moment was over, he had something important to say.