Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10

by Randolph Lalonde

  For the entire time the Overlord spent with the Order of Eden, he looked for a way out of the arrangement with the Edxi, but other than turning on them and eradicating their number from the Milky Way, crippling the Order Fleet in the process, there had been no solution. Such an act would only bring the Edxi War Fleets, and he didn’t think humanity could defend against that. The prospect of having access to the Core Worlds through communications, and of speaking with an artificial intelligence that may be able to help him think of another solution was something he had to pursue. “We have to find Nadir. We have to find his communication device. Can his message be tracked back to him?”

  “We have traced it to a small communications buoy, but can’t determine its exact origin or what dropped it off. Suffice it to say, Nadir must have at least one fast ship, and he probably has scouts watching our progress.”

  “Unless he’s delivered his message and isn’t interested in us anymore. Capture anything that has power, but don’t destroy targets, we need information. Eve’s fleet did a poor job of taming the nebula when it came through here, that leaves the job to us. Nadir just provides an additional incentive to learn everything we can about this place, and when we find him, we must approach him peacefully. Send the directive out to all ships in the Iron Head Nebula. This is an equal priority with finding Freeground Alpha.”

  “Yes, Overlord,” Admiral Lodds said without hesitation.

  Chapter 10

  Rust

  Minh-Chu would never balk at the notion that he was a person with simple needs. Ambition led to misadventure as often as fortune, so he had learned to carefully weigh the consequences of reaching for more than he had, and he never desired anything he wasn’t willing to work for. Fear was seldom a companion to him, so when he found himself worrying about Ashley, and how the Revenge was faring on its scouting mission, he wondered why.

  Nothing made Minh-Chu happier than seeing Ashley smile, especially in his direction. He was recalling fond memories of her doing just that to allay his worries when the wake alarm on his comm unit went off. Without hesitation he swung his feet down off the bed and stood. The mattress was comfortable, but he still struggled to sleep over the previous three rest periods. Ashley would scold him for doing so, but he spent the last night in his uniform. He pulled his shoulder length black hair into a rough ponytail and stepped out of the Captain’s quarters. “We’re just about to emerge into normal space,” Finn told him. “The passive readings we’re pulling in are completely unexpected. There’s so much ice and iron that we might have a longer term hiding spot for Freeground Alpha if they can make it there.”

  “How many jumps would it take them to get where we’re going?” Minh-Chu asked, falling in step with the unusually enthusiastic Engineering Chief. One of his subordinates, a Private named Xanna, handed Minh-Chu a cup of steaming coffee. It was synthetic, but he still enjoyed the taste and jolt of caffeine.

  “Seven jumps,” Finn said. “And it’s still within the acceptable margin of deviation, so it’s on the way out of the cloud for sure.”

  “Any indication that someone’s beat us to it?” Minh-Chu said, looking at the navigational chart hovering over the middle of the table in the small common room. There was enough space for ten to sit down if they were all average sized, and the octagonal space had six hatches leading to quarters, the shared bathroom, and the front of the ship.

  “We haven’t been able to pick up anything yet, but that cloud and electrostatic charges pulsing intermittently in and around it are making a mess of any broad readings.”

  Minh-Chu brought a hologram of the scanned area up and it hovered over the table. They could only see the edges of major dust eddies, not inside. He leaned over and knocked on Carnie’s bunkroom hatch loudly. “Up and at ‘em! We’ve got new territory out here!”

  “So you think changing course was worth it?” Finn asked. “Based on the scans from our last stop, I mean.”

  Minh-Chu nodded at Finn, who was still a little too eager to please. “You called it. This is the kind of density we’ve been looking for, but there are shadows in this passive scan that have me worried.”

  “My shift doesn’t start for another four and half hours,” Carnie said, emerging from his bunk. “And there’s no alert.”

  “The alert’s just for you,” Minh-Chu said. “This is a scan of the iron cloud we’re coming up on. Other than its shape, we can’t see anything.”

  The curl of red and white mist – a representation of the shape of the space they were approaching in hologram – hovered over the table. “Looks kind of like a wave,” Carnie said, closing the front of his vacsuit.

  “Or a claw,” Xanna said.

  “These high density things here,” Minh-Chu said, highlighting five black shapes within the cloud. “Could be big ships or stations. The cloud’s heavy particles would be attracted to the microgravity, make it impossible to get anything from a passive scan. That’s just a few kilometres in, who knows what else is in there.”

  “That group,” Carnie said. “I’ve seen something like that before.” He gestured at a tight grouping of fifteen small shadows. “Yeah, that’s the right size and formation for Eden attack drones.”

  “Are you sure? There’s no power reading,” Finn said.

  “So, they’re asleep,” Carnie replied.

  “If he’s sure, then there’s no way we should continue,” Purdel, a tall maintenance crewmember said. “Bend the wormhole and slow down, turn around.”

  “If only it were up to you, Able Crewman,” Minh-Chu said. “We’re going to increase our deceleration and come out a little further out. We go in cloaked, make sure our gravity field is perfectly neutral so we don’t start picking up iron particles.”

  “That’ll take two minutes to tune, Sir,” Finn said.

  “Thank you, Chief. If all goes well we’ll have some actionable information to bring back to the Fleet,” Minh-Chu said. “Exploration, new navigational dangers, the potential for disaster, I’m excited,” he said casually to Carnie. “You excited?”

  “Yup, so excited,” Carnie replied with a sigh, starting for the small bridge.

  “I don’t get it,” Purdel whispered after they were out of the room. “Are they excited, or trying to be funny, or?”

  “They’re fighter pilots,” Xanna replied. “For them, this mission is already a week longer than they’re used to.”

  “So? That makes their humour weird?”

  “Gotta keep yourself amused somehow,” Finn said. “Otherwise we’ll be at each other’s throats. I’m going to adjust the gravity field from the cockpit, make sure it’s set up right for this.”

  “I’ll watch the readings from the lower deck,” Xanna said. “You should try to keep yourself entertained, Ike,” she said to Purdel. “Keeps the claustrophobia from creeping up.”

  “I am not claustrophobic,” Purdel objected.

  “It also relieves tension,” Finn said. “Go down there and double check the aft linkages for the weapons package.”

  The ship intercom system sounded a whoop-whoop. “Everyone to their posts, especially the gunners. Hot Chow to the bridge, you’re on sensor duty,” Minh-Chu announced.

  It only took Hot Chow a few minutes to rouse from sleep, get dressed, and squeeze into the seat at the rear of the small bridge. “This ship was not made for a man of my generous proportions,” he sighed as he started reviewing the spool of sensor data crossing the screens. “Wow, so much iron in this cloud.”

  “How are the fitness meds treating you?” Carnie asked over his shoulder.

  “Pretty good, dropping weight, but I get restless in the middle of my sleep cycle, like I’ve got deep itches I can’t get to. Used something to put myself out twice in a row now,” he replied, unwrapping a tangy orange meal bar.

  “It’s working, you’ll fit in every craft just fine in a week or so. When we play Thunderspike next time, you’re on my team.”

  “I never thought about that, man. I used to do the spo
rts thing when I was a kid, then I got the freighter gig to get away from Uno-Li, you know, leave home and spread my wings. No one I knew could afford fit meds where I came from, so all us freighter jocks just called our guts the ‘freighter captain forty’ and got over it.”

  “They had to have some way for you to stay in shape out there?” Minh-Chu asked. They were about to emerge from the wormhole, and everything but their destination looked normal.

  “Well, sure, their version of fitness meds. They had the Fat Gobbler, this parasite that you ate, it would crawl around and gather fat up, then it just came out later with uh,” Hot Chow hesitated. “It was nasty. Then there were the pills like you guys have, but those would cost half the profit from one run. There was no room to work out in those freighters either – they were just two man haulers with a bunk room, a cockpit and a little personal storage. I was saving up for a leisure car when the big virus hit, but never got the credits together. My thousand-day bonus was coming up, I would have had enough after that.”

  “You hauled cargo trains for a thousand days?” Minh-Chu asked, remembering his years of isolation with a shudder.

  “More, that was just my total with that company,” Hot Chow replied. “Man, I liked that job, I had so much time to read, and I’d sneak peeks at some of the cargo, see what was so precious that it had to be hauled across the stars. Looking back on it, comparing it to this, it was boredom city. I may be a little tall, and way wide for the ships you guys assign me to, but this is exciting, and I’m always learning. I gotta thank you for bringing me on for this.”

  “No problem,” Minh-Chu said. “You’re qualified, and everyone in the wing likes you. That goes a long way in small spaces.”

  “I guess, yeah,” Hot Chow said. “Thanks.”

  They crossed through the end of the wormhole into an area that was illuminated in red and yellow hues. Minh-Chu checked his instruments and saw that the space ahead was clear. The slowly moving cloud of crimson iron particles had pockets of empty space that were mostly interconnected. “Anything interesting coming through the sensors?”

  “Derelicts,” Hot Chow replied. “Stand by, getting more info from the passive scanners now.”

  “I’m seeing a few paths ahead that look like they’re maintained by something,” Carnie said from the co-pilot seat to Minh-Chu’s right. “Something’s keeping this place in shape, I’d guess.”

  “He’s right, there are sections like tunnels through the cloud, clear spots that aren’t made by magnetic fields or normal motion. The passive scanners are picking up twenty-eight ships in total from our spot. Nine are not in our profile database, six are old Eden Fleet ships, there’s a Communications Runner from Paradigm Systems, two whole cargo ships with trains intact, and a few other minor planet hoppers. No life signs from what I can tell, no activity, and minimal or no power at all. Those Eden ships took major combat damage, and a few other ships show signs of damage too. They’re all coated in iron particles, pushed out along the sides of the clear areas. I’ll know more for sure if we can do an active scan.”

  “So those Eden Fleet ships are out of commission for good? They’re not on standby?” Minh-Chu asked, looking at the results for himself. They did show signs of severe damage.

  “I’d stake my spot in the squadron on it,” Hot Chow replied. “No sign of what did this though.”

  “I see a way in for Freeground Alpha,” Carnie said.

  “I see three ways in, and several pockets that it would be able to hide in,” Hot Chow said.

  “You always gotta one-up me,” Carnie replied with a smirk.

  “I don’t trust this,” Minh-Chu said. “Not yet, so no active scans. We’re cloaking.”

  “Gotcha, I’ll just watch what our passives pick up,” Hot Chow said.

  The ship’s status panel reported that all the members of his gunnery, damage control and technical crew were in place and ready. “We have to get our response time up, guys,” he said through the intercom. “We are moving into the iron cloud. No firing without orders to do so, keep signal and electrical noise down to a minimum, we are cloaking.”

  Minh-Chu activated the cloaking systems and checked the gravity field. If it was off by any measure any particles near the ship would either be repelled or attracted to them, revealing their location.

  “My work is done here, our artificial gravity field is perfectly balanced. Time for me to head down below and make sure we’re ready for anything.” Finn said as he locked the fourth station in the cockpit.

  “Good work, hopefully we don’t need anything in that weapons package for this mission,” Minh-Chu said. Finn and his team had balanced the system’s output, so their ship would be undetectable. He took the flight controls and the ship began its journey through the darkly lit red cloud, staying within the cleared area. “If this is as good as it looks, we could hide the entire Freeground Fleet and the station inside while they make repairs,” he muttered as he piloted the ship past a derelict star liner. Only the shape of the ship was discernible through the thick coating of iron dust that clung to it.

  The cargo trains were ahead and to the left, stationary relative to the narrowing clear space that reminded Minh-Chu of a dark tunnel. “I might be able to get some information on one of those freighters if I try to ping their communications system,” Hot Chow said.

  Minh-Chu considered it for a moment. They didn’t have time to explore the whole iron cloud, there were so many corridors and open spaces that it would take one ship a month. He had to find out what happened to the ships then move on to their next destination. “Go ahead, but ping on our weakest setting.”

  Minh-Chu saw the signal go out and increased their speed. Something about going through the narrow, cleared space made him feel trapped, even though they could fly through the iron particles all around them in an emergency.

  “Transponder data coming in,” Hot Chow reported. “The Merryland, cargo hauler out of Saint Kitts port, departed one year and five months ago. The distress was set, but the ship reports that none of the crew are alive. They ran out of food after something disabled their engines and main reactor. Getting the text version of their logs, I’ll find out what got them.”

  “They just starved here,” Carnie said. “What a way to go.”

  The Pursuer III made it into another large cleared pocket of space and Minh-Chu guided the ship as close to the edge as he dared. Going through the middle seemed too conspicuous. He looked at the warnings log and noticed that he had a navigational advisory that was well out of range, and a warning from the large launcher in his own ship. “Finn, what’s going on down there? The mines are offline?”

  “There’s a problem between the mine launcher and the ship. I have to disconnect it while we find the fix,” Finn replied. “The best I can do is get you a pair of beam weapons and two rapid fire rocket launchers.”

  “That’ll do,” Minh-Chu said, turning his attention to the navigational warning.

  “Wait, Finn,” Carnie addressed through the intercom. “What’s the real problem? Were the modules installed in the wrong order? Are you missing something that might be stowed up here?”

  “Would you believe that the software for the main launcher isn’t up to date? Everyone who touched this system forgot to check, including me,” Finn said. “We could fix it if it’s mission critical, but I’d rather we focus on the systems we have working.”

  “Seriously?” Hot Chow said. “I could go down there and get that done.”

  “Stick to your job,” Minh-Chu said. “There’s something really big going down over there, first a stir in the dust, now there are energy readings. Looks like beam weapons.”

  “I had my eye on it,” Hot Chow said. “It’s way out of range, nothing coming in our direction. But seriously, they have a software problem down there?”

  “Let it go, man,” Carnie said as he double checked the navigational data. “New ship, maiden voyage, you’ve gotta expect some bolts to be loose, a piece of software to be mis
sing.”

  “You mean out of date,” Hot Chow corrected. “I thought Triton Fleet was better than that.”

  “This is the Triton Fleet we could put into the field at the last minute,” Minh-Chu replied. “Something old, something new, and a lot of all-purpose adhesive to stick it all together. Maybe when the new ship smell has gotten a little dull we can worry about this boat being perfect, but until then, everyone’s just going to do the best they can.” Minh-Chu guided the ship in a wide turn then through an open space that would lead them away from the distant activity. “Get ready to perform a high powered scan on the mess behind us. I want to know who’s fighting before we leave. Carnie, make sure all the shield emitters are ready and our wormhole generator is charging.”

  “Aye,” Hot Chow replied.

  “Checking,” Carnie said. “We’re charging up and will be ready to bug out in three seconds.”

  “All right,” Minh-Chu said, turning the nose of the ship away from the high energy readings they were picking up. “Send a high-powered scan pulse in their direction, then shut our scan array down once you have results.”

  “Done and done. I’m getting a clearer picture of what’s going on, Sir,” Hot Chow said. “Looks like about fifty fighters, three large ships. The biggest is about one point seven kilometers long, the other two, the one it’s fighting from the looks of it, are point nine kilometers, and point five kilometers long, though the shorter one is bulkier. Mass-wise, I’d say those two are about equal.”

  “Are the fighters after each other, or a single target?” Minh-Chu asked, carefully guiding the ship around swirl of iron grit.

  “They’re all after the two smaller ships, but most of those fighters are damaged. Should we help them?”

  “We don’t know who they are, and it’s not our mission,” Minh-Chu said. “We have to get back to the rendezvous so we can get a clearer picture of what’s happening in the area from everyone else scouting outside this cloud. This place isn’t as quiet as I’d like.”

  “Getting more information from passive receivers. The large ship is launching more fighters,” Hot Chow said. “A group of nine.”