Sydney Chambers

by B. T. Jaybush

  “Yes, sir.” This was the meat of the case, the very heart of what Sydney’s audit had uncovered. “More than a few ship captains had complained of finding their supplies anywhere from ten to thirty percent deficient. Many of those reports had crossed my desk, though it was my job only to record the reports and pass them along, not to act on them. Two of those reports indicated that active TSM operations had been compromised due to the shortages.”

  “So the situation was quite serious,” Coffmann said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Was the same situation being found at all supply depots?”

  “Objection!” Defense counsel Lieutenant Orrin Wilson was on his feet in an instant. “Question seeks information that is beyond the scope of the lieutenant’s position.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Let me re-phrase the question,” Coffmann said equably. “Did the reports that crossed your desk pertain to only the supply depot where you were stationed, or did they report on activities at all depots?”

  “All depots, sir,” Sydney answered, trying not to sound smug.

  “And did those reports indicate that shortages were occurring at supply stations other than yours?”

  “No, sir.” Sydney couldn’t help herself; she pause an instant for dramatic effect. “The only supply depot to record shortages was Supply Three-Zulu-seven-two-two. Captain Vattermann’s command.”

  “Were these shortages confirmed by your audit?”

  “Yes, sir. The audit showed that all pallets arriving at Supply Three-Zulu-seven-two-two scanned in strict conformance with their ladings —”

  “In other words, everything was present and accounted for when it got to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But shortages were still being experienced by ships who took on supplies from Supply Three-Zulu-seven-two-two.”

  “That is correct.”

  Coffmann directed his next question to the panel of officers empaneled as jury in the case. “Did you draw any conclusions from this, Lieutenant?”

  “No, sir. I was neither required nor empowered to draw conclusions, sir, only to document events.”

  “And?”

  Sydney drew a breath. “By comparing the incoming scans of all supplies to the outgoing scans of those same supplies, I determined that approximately twenty-five percent of all goods passing through Supply Three-Zulu-seven-two-two were, for want of a better term, disappearing.”

  Still looking at the jury, Coffman nodded knowingly. “Lieutenant, were you able to determine where these goods were disappearing to?”

  Defense counsel Wilson roared, “Objection,” even as he was jumping to his feet....

  4

  Present Day

  Memories of Courts Martial past fragmented in Sydney’s brain as the sound of klaxons shattered Morrigan’s usually peaceful environs. The captain slapped at her comm terminal even before becoming fully aware of how much time had passed, and that she was still in her office.

  “Status!”

  The terminal on her desk sprang to life with an image of Morrigan’s executive officer. “We’re in receipt of a distress call from a small freighter, Captain. They’ve got pirates off their bow.”

  “Fastest possible intercept,” Sydney ordered, heading for her office door without bothering to break the comm connection. Less than a minute later she reached her command chair on Morrigan’s bridge, calling out even before managing to sit down, “Time to intercept?”

  “One minute to micro jump,” Ensign Womack reported from his position at navigation. “Intercept roughly one minute out on the other side.”

  “Missiles and beamers to ready, Mr. Grelkin,” Sydney announced, her voice steely. “I want you to let loose with a beam burst as soon as we’re in range; do not wait for my command. Target to disable, only. I want prisoners.”

  “Disable at will, yes, Ma’am.”

  Garvey sidled up beside the command chair, placing a hand on the rest beside Sydney’s arm. “Remember, Captain,” he said in a low tone that no one but she would hear, “it’s supposed to be a different bunch of pirates in this system. They’re not reputed to be as nasty as the Cyg-A crew.”

  “Maybe so,” Sydney replied in equally soft tones, “but we’re not just dropping in for a Bar-B-Q, now, are we, XO? We have to assume the worst.” She glanced at her exec, whose face held a firm look of no comment. “Besides, I doubt that they’ll willingly hand themselves over for questioning.”

  “Likely not,” Garvey acknowledged, but looked unconvinced.

  “Micro jump in three,” Womack called from his post. “Two ... one....”

  Without a sound or physical sensation Sydney sensed the world polarize and elongate around her as Morrigan’s powerful engines drove the cruiser into that odd part of the universe known as null-space. She had always visualized the sensation as being shrunk down to pass through the eye of a needle, as though she was being funneled through a single point in time and space. It wasn’t a bad feeling — there was no pain, no discomfort — but all the same Sydney would happily forego the sensation had a better way to traverse the unthinkable distances of interstellar space been available. Since no better way had yet been found, she accepted the phenomenon for what it was, and simply endured.

  In the larger scheme of thing this was a short transit, anyway. No sooner had the micro jump begun, than it ended, Womack calling out as though his count had been uninterrupted, “... and we’re through.” There was a pause as the navigator checked his instruments. “Fifty-seven seconds to intercept.”

  “Captain.” Shannon McInerny spoke up as her scan showed rapid developments ahead of them. “Either the pirates have finished already, or they’re running. Both enemy vessels are firing their engines and beginning to pull away.”

  Garvey’s face reflected the surprise felt by everyone on the bridge. “Not staying to get in even one lick?”

  “No, sir,” McInerny confirmed. “They’re pouring on the speed.”

  “It seems that the stories may be right about these pirates,” Sydney mused, relaxing slightly as hostile contact became, at least temporarily, less imminent. “They are a very different set of bad guys.” She considered her options a moment. “Mr. Womack, plot a course hard on their tails. Ms. McInerny, keep that scan tight on them, in case they —”

  “They’re micro jumping, Captain,” McInerny interrupted.

  “Huh.” Sydney grimaced. “Took the words right out of my mouth. Got a good enough fix on their course for us to follow them?”

  “I believe so, Captain,” the scan tech replied.

  “Feed it to navigation on the double,” Sydney ordered, urgency now filling her voice. “Mr. Womack, get us to wherever they went.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  “Could this possibly be a trap?” Garvey’s words were again for the captain’s ears only; this time, though, his face reflected a combination of disappointment over a missed opportunity and concern for his ship heading into something unexpected.

  The captain shook her head. “We haven’t been in-system long enough for them to plan much of a trap,” she said, though a twinge of concern slipped through her as well. “I’m betting that they’re just scampering home to mama.”

  “Hmm,” was the exec’s only comment.

  “Micro jump in three,” Womack called out, “two ... one....”

  The world briefly polarized and elongated once again.

  “... and we’re through.”

  “Tell me what you see, Ms. McInerny,” Sydney said, quickly shaking off the short jump.

  “Multiple contacts, Captain!” The scan tech’s voice held an edge of excitement as she reported activity in the area around them. “Looks like a — no, wait, it’s still only the two ships from before. There are an awful lot of asteroids in the area, though, Ma’am. It’s more of a swarm than a belt.” McInerny studied her board intently for a moment. “The ships are heading directly into the densest concentration of rocks.”

 
; McInerny’s report drew a grin from Garvey, still standing beside Sydney’s command chair. “Actually sounds like a fairly decent place for a pirate base,” he said, the comment drawing a raised eyebrow from his captain. “Or a trap,” he added, then he raised his voice to call across the cabin. “We close enough for a visual yet, Scan?”

  “Just coming in range, sir,” McInerny replied, quickly touching controls on her panel. “On main screen ... now.”

  The standard black of space vanished from the bridge’s large main viewer, jumping into a close-up of two ships just in the process of disappearing behind a hunk of airless rock large enough to be classified as a dwarf planet. The scan output displayed in one corner of the viewscreen indicated it was just over four hundred miles in diameter. Beyond that world hung what was clearly a dense field of rocky debris. Sydney could see nothing else as large as the asteroid that now hid her quarry from sight, but there were clearly hundreds of chunks that looked to range in size from a few feet to a few miles in diameter. A swarm, indeed, the captain mused as she pondered finding the pirates that she sought.

  “Mr. Womack,” she said after a few moments, sounding thoughtful, “can we set a course that will cut them off on the other side of that rock?”

  “Ah....” Womack calculated feverishly for a moment, then turned to look across at the captain. “Yes, Ma’am, I’ve got a possible solution.”

  “Send it to the helm,” Sydney almost snapped. “Mr. Hellespont, engage when course is laid in.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Hellespont responded, then punched at a couple of controls.

  Sydney felt a momentary sensation of inertia as Morrigan responded to the helm. Gravity quickly returned to normal as the ship’s compensators kicked in, though, and the only indication of motion became the view on the bridge’s large screen. There, the dwarf world seemed to slew to one side as Morrigan charged around it in a direction opposite to that taken by the two pirate ships. In seconds the planetoid was gone from the screen, leaving in view only the dense field of asteroids that lay beyond — no pirate ships in sight. Sydney frowned at the scene.

  “Where did they go,” she muttered, leaning forward to glare at the viewer as though that piece of technology was to blame for the disappearance. “They couldn’t have landed that fast, and we would have detected another jump —”

  The captain’s thoughts were shattered by the clangor of alarms, followed closely by the ugly red blink of warning lights from multiple sources around the bridge.

  “Proximity alert, Captain!” McInerny’s voice was loud and tense as she clarified what the alarm signified, all the while frantically working to refine her scans. “Three — no, four contacts, directly behind us!”

  The asteroid field disappeared from view as McInerny shifted the main viewscreen to display the space behind Morrigan. Four fairly small pirate vessels hung there, seemingly motionless in relation to the TSM ship.

  “Class?”

  “They read as pickets, Captain,” McInerny responded. “I’m scanning armament, but not very much of it. If there weren’t four of them I’d almost say that — hold on.” The scan tech paused a second before continuing. “Captain, I’ve got more contacts, now. These are in front of us and a lot bigger than those four.”

  The viewscreen shifted again to show the path directly ahead of Morrigan, where three vessels now held station.

  “Well, crap,” Sydney growled. “Apparently they don’t like unannounced guests. Status on those newcomers, Ms. McInerny?”

  “Cruisers, Ma’am. I’m not getting any ID squeals, but they’re smaller than Morrigan — likely of an older, retired class, from the readings. Heavily armed just the same. They’re also beyond weapons range for the moment and seem to be holding that range.”

  “That’s something, at least,” Sydney said as she stood and headed for the rear of the bridge. “Mr. Hellespont, make sure that we stay out of the range of those things. Feel free to indulge your inner hot dog — weave and roll if you have to, but stay away from those guns.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Hellespont said, hands flying over his controls.

  “Ms. McInerny, fire up the tactical holo tank.”

  The scan tech jabbed at a spot on her board. “Coming up now, Captain.”

  As Sydney reached the bridge charting station a large-scale, real-time hologram of the area around Morrigan finished coalescing into a glowing sphere of information, with Morrigan at its center. Acquired thanks to Garvey’s finagling during the ship’s recent refit, the holo tank was a modern version of the three-dimensional ocean coastal charts that had begun appearing at the very end of the twentieth century. It gave Sydney — or any ship’s captain fortunate enough to have one — a full and integrated perspective of not only where their vessel was in space, but where it stood in relation to every other object around it. When you added an almost infinite zoom capability the end result was an incalculable boon to navigating through tricky areas like asteroid swarms.

  Of more interest to Morrigan’s captain was the edge it provided in tactical planning. Unfortunately, that edge was of no help when she immediately saw that there was no simple path out of the trap they had jumped into.

  “Any brilliant insights, XO?”

  Garvey had joined the captain at the holo station; now he frowned as he studied the tight situation pictured there. “I don’t think we’re going to get those prisoners you were looking for,” he told her.

  “No, we won’t,” Sydney agreed, “though that wasn’t quite the brilliant insight I was looking for. Mr. Hellespont!” Her tightly-controlled shout crackled with the bile of having been out-flanked. “Hard around. Take us back the way we came.”

  “Captain?” Garvey’s voice cracked with his surprise, then he had to grab at a hand support when Morrigan briefly shuddered in response the helm’s abrupt change in path. When the rocking ended the exec glanced once more between the holo display and his commanding officer. “That move may take us away from the cruisers, but it heads us right at the pickets. Those four may not be well armed, but they might have enough pop to do us damage when we’re missing hull plates.”

  Sydney shook her head but her eyes remained glued to the holo as the relative positions of the several ships changed. “We can deal with pickets, XO, but not pickets and cruisers at the same time. Besides,” she added, pointing to the display. It was now clear that the three pirate cruisers had not accelerated in pursuit of Morrigan but were pointedly hanging back — still following, but at an ever-increasing distance. “Much as I hate to admit it, it’s pretty obvious that these ships are just ‘defending the nest,’ so to speak. Look at them. Those are positions intended to drive us away, not hurt us.”

  Garvey watched the holo for a minute before shaking his head. “Damn,” he said, little more than whispering. “I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t seeing it.”

  “No?” The captain snickered. “Aren’t you the one who just reminded me there’s a different breed of bad guy here at Cyg-B?”

  “I didn’t mean to say they were kindhearted, just less evil.”

  “That remains to be seen — we’re still not out of this. Mr. Grelkin!”

  The weapons officer snapped eagerly to attention, or as close to it as was possible without actually standing from his console. “Ma’am!”

  “Keep those pickets in your crosshairs. If they shoot at us, you shoot right back — but my order to disable still stands. I don’t want to be the one to draw first blood, even if we’re not going to get prisoners.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Grelkin replied.

  Sydney studiously ignored the note of disappointment in the gunnery officer’s voice, instead favoring her exec with a wry look. “Now we’ll see just how less evil these guys really are.”

  Garvey shrugged in response; even as he did, Morrigan rang with the impact of a pirate energy weapon.

  “One of the pickets has fired on us,” Grelkin called out, his voice re-energized with excitement. “Firing to disable that ship.
”

  “And we have our answer,” Sydney said, then watched as her exec frowned at the holo.

  “Maybe not, Captain,” the XO said thoughtfully, eyes fixed on the holo tank. “Only one of the four fired. Take a look at the others.”

  Both officers watched as the tactical display showed Grelkin’s responding beam lance out, striking one of the four pirates cleanly along its engine mountings. The picket immediately skewed out of formation, shedding metal and venting gasses from whatever it was using for reaction mass. The other three, though, rather than re-aligning themselves to concentrate fire on Morrigan as it fled, did exactly the opposite — they moved apart, forming themselves into what could almost be described as an escort group urging the TSM ship along.

  Sydney found herself slowly shaking her head. “That is not what I expected.” She continued to watch as the display showed Morrigan pulling away from the pickets, cruisers and dwarf planet. “But it is consistent with the actions of the larger ships. It feels almost like a ‘here’s your hat, what’s your hurry’ kind of moment.”

  “Hmmm,” Garvey muttered, then turned away from the holo tank. “Mr. Womack, do we have a jump course computed for a return to the B-3 facilities?”

  “Yes, sir,” the navigator responded. “Plotted and sent to the helm for your command.”

  “Captain?”

  Sydney blew out a breath, then turned to Grelkin. “Yeah, take us back. If this is what we can expect from the local bad guys we might as well we might as well lay low for a bit and save our energies — I’m not about to go gallivanting about the entire trinary with sections of our gut open to space.” She scowled and headed toward engineering.

  “Mr. Hellespont,” Garvey said as he watched the captain shake of her head as she walked, “engage course for docking at B-3.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  By this point Sydney had arrived at Hailey Kristoff’s station, grabbing a hand-hold just as the world elongated with Morrigan’s shift into jump. When normal resumed a moment later the woman also resumed checking her hull monitors, looking for whatever damage the one shot they had received might have inflicted. Sydney waited until her engineer seemed finished before asking, “So how badly did they sting us?”