“That makes sense,” Liara said. “There’s one thing I’m wondering about, though. Why didn’t she tell us to keep her real identity a secret?”
“Maybe she assumed we would?” Dotty asked.
“Look at who we’re travelling with, would you lay a secret like that out in front of him if you knew who he was?” Liara asked, crossing her arms and looking at Remmy.
“You have a point,” Dotty agreed.
“What? So you think just because she laid it out in front of the master disseminator, we’re supposed to let the whole station in on it?”
“Let me think about it for a while, but I’m sure she wants the word out, but for some reason she doesn’t want to be the source. Either way, if we play this right, there could be hope for Freeground’s people from within.”
Chapter 18
The Concord
Before she had time to react, grabbers took hold of Alice’s wrists and ankles. Her exercise suit was deactivated, retracting into a small pouch with the display of her command and control unit on one side. A real command level Command and Control unit was applied to her wrists. Each one was a little smaller than the single unit she was familiar with.
A new, black and gold light armour vacsuit was sprayed onto her, over a dozen layers piling up in less than twenty seconds. It was still form fit, and less than three millimetres thin, but the design felt stiffer. Her feet were shoved into a pair of heavy combat boots. She recognized them from a design she’d seen in the Fleet database. The walls of those boots had an entire armour layer for the rest of her vacsuit inside, ready to activate and deploy in case of serious combat. The grabbers dropped her onto her feet as a metal collar was added. The Command and Control unit displayed a diagram of her new Triton Fleet Uniform, and she was amused to see that a hard helmet was folded into the metal collar around her neck and could be deployed whenever she needed it. The synthetic muscles activated, powering up to the lowest setting, and the whole outfit supported its own weight and perfectly followed her movements.
Alice picked her weapon up and slipped it into the holster attached to her thigh and the inner doors opened. “Hello Commander Valent,” said a crewman in a blue uniform as he passed. “Looks like we’ve got things under control again, but it’s good to see someone from the bridge.” Before her was the long power core of a ship. The multi-segmented mass reactor was seventeen metres long, dominating the middle of the room. Several engineering and maintenance team members in blue and white uniforms were busy attending to multiple systems.
“You were here to check on the secondary bridge, we should get to it,” a lieutenant with large, inhumanly dark eyes told her.
A schematic of the ship appeared on her right command and control unit, critical information appeared on her left. They were aboard the Concord, a light frigate in the Triton Fleet on patrol near the edge of the Iron Head nebula. The emergency bridge was at the other end of the main engineering compartment. The ID tag on her command unit read: COMMANDER ALICE VALENT, ASSIGNED TO SECURITY AND OPERATIONS ABOARD HF CONCORD
Even though it was only a simulation, it took Alice a moment to concentrate, faced with the sudden promotion and all the trappings around her. She looked at the hologram hovering over her left wrist to see what the HF stood for, the designation was new. HAVEN FLEET. This was a simulation that started by showing her how the organization she was fighting to join would be changing, right down to the higher number of non-humans she observed in the engineering section at a glance. “Right, let’s go,” she said.
All the studying she’d done on procedures and regulations started paying off. They were at alert level Yellow Two, which meant the ship’s shields were up, and they were actively scanning for enemies after finding evidence of combatants in the area. “Where’s the chief?” she asked an Ensign in a white vacsuit as she walked past.
“Up there, Ma’am,” she pointed to a ladder that had been tack-welded to a railing temporarily.
“Chief, status report, please?” Alice asked as she looked up the ladder at the older officer in blue. He was taking close readings on a segment of the reactor with a hand tool.
“Full power available, we’re done with modifications and the new systems are working properly. What’s going on up there?”
“You have the same information I do,” Alice said.
“Oh, come on, Commander. We’re not at Yellow Two because someone spotted a star liner. What’s the Captain expecting to run into?”
Alice checked her command and control unit, scrolling through the log quickly. She came across a red notice that told her that they were scanned nine minutes ago at close range, but they couldn’t determine the source. At least one cloaked ship in close range, and we can’t find it. Alice thought. “Better come down from there and secure that ladder, Chief. You’ll have to ask the Captain for more details.”
‘Thanks for the tip, Commander.”
Alice moved down the broad catwalk towards the forward section of Engineering. Her Lieutenant was on her heels the entire time. “We’re just checking the backup bridge?” she asked him.
“Powering up, getting the reserve crew in place,” he said. “So checking, I guess, but I think the Captain is expecting a major fight, and she wants you ready to pick up her slack.”
“That’s out of order, Lieutenant,” Alice said, remembering the section of the regulations about respect up and down the ranks.
“She’s greener than you are, our Captain,” the Lieutenant said. “I won’t be surprised if she freaks out and hands you command as soon as her shields drop to ninety percent.”
“They put her in the chair for a reason,” Alice retorted quietly but firmly. “You secure your opinions and remember your place, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he said, snapping a salute. “You won’t hear any more of that from me.”
“I’m going to track you on Crewcast, to make sure,” Alice said.
They arrived at the heavy armour doorway to the backup bridge and activated it. A small amphibian woman joined Alice and smiled cheerily at her. “Backup pilot here,” she said, her voice more like a soft, high whistle than anything human. Alice immediately liked her, with her protruding eyes, flat head top and metre tall wide body.
The door opened to reveal a small, dark seven-station bridge. “This isn’t right, everything should be powered up,” her lieutenant said. He stepped forward, about to cross the threshold and she stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“Wait,” Alice said, scanning the room. “Chief!” she called down the hall. “I need your people in here, the main power couplings under the secondary bridge aren’t connected.”
“What the hell?” she heard him call back. “On it!”
“We have a saboteur on board,” the Lieutenant said.
Alice turned to the short pilot, whose skin was turning from shades of white and light blue to dark green. “Report this to the bridge and find an open secure control station in case you have to help them maintain control of the ship,” she said as she found the nearest security officers on her comm and brought up a tactical screen so she could order them to protect her. “I’m going to give you a couple well-armed friends so you feel a bit safer.”
“I know where there’s a station,” one of the black armour clad security guards said as he approached from down the hall. “Follow me.”
“Okay, thank you,” the amphibian pilot chirped.
Alice looked the security officers she’d assigned to her pilot up in the logs, neither of them had accessed maintenance panels aboard the ship since they boarded the week before. It was unlikely they were the saboteurs.
“Condition Red One, we are in combat, to stations,” the Communications Officer announced over the ship wide intercom.
A maintenance worker pulled a handgun from her tool box, a wide-bore, six shot explosive shell launcher, and pointed it down the hall at her and her Lieutenant. Alice didn’t have time to draw her weapon, but shoved her second in command thro
ugh the door and fell in after him.
The explosive round went off past the door, and then Alice’s heart shrunk as she heard four more explosions in engineering. Alice emerged from the secondary bridge with her weapon in hand, hoping that her guess about the shooter’s weapon was right. If she was, the gun only had five shots before it needed to be reloaded, if she was wrong, she was about to find out the hard way.
Coolant pipes and main power lines were burned through, the pair of security officers assigned to the main engineering compartment were out of commission, and Alice couldn’t see any others. The saboteur was busy trying to reload her weapon as quickly as she could while two engineering staff in damaged vacsuits tried to get to her through the twisted catwalks. Alice opened fire, her first shots bursting through a section of twisted metal grating, and the following hits pummelling the saboteur.
It would take more than a few hits to break through the enemy’s maintenance vacsuit, so Alice charged, leaping over a gap in the catwalk and landing right in front of the turned worker. She kicked the handgun to the side and levelled her sidearm at the traitor’s head. “Are you working alone?” Alice asked.
“Surrender to the Order, and you may be spared,” she replied.
“We don’t have time for this,” Alice said, activating the medical system in the saboteur’s vacsuit and putting her in stasis. “We’ll question her later. Chief, what’s our status?” she called out.
“The Chief took a direct hit, he’s in emergency stasis,” said another engineering crewman in a blue suit. “But, uh, we’re dead.”
“Come on, get it together, you can do better,” Alice said as she opened a channel to the bridge.
A maintenance worker in a scorched but intact white vacsuit pulled herself up and activated a terminal across engineering. “Power flow down to twelve percent, no connection to forward shield capacitors, and main power generation is down to sixty-three percent, but it’s not connected to much of anything. Two of those explosions hit our main power distribution net.”
“Did you catch that, Captain?” Alice said.
“Yes, thank you, we’re going dark here, how is that backup bridge?” asked the Captain.
“Still disconnected, I can –” the connection to the bridge closed suddenly, and an advisory appeared on her tactical display. The forward section of the ship had taken massive damage, and the bridge was gone along with the entire command staff. Much of the remote reporting systems were going dark, so her tactical display couldn’t get accurate readings on which systems were working and where they were.
“Orders, Commander?” her lieutenant asked, emerging from the backup bridge.
The last sweep of the sensors indicated that there were three Order corvettes closing in. “You are the highest ranking Officer aboard.”
Alice looked at the ruin of the main engineering room and started running through standard priorities for combat. “Can you repair one of our main power nets? Get this ship navigable so we can fight, or at least run?”
“With this much damage?” asked the maintenance worker who worked at her station. “It’s not just severed, Commander, the explosion took out three metres of heavy lines, just untangling the mess would take a couple hours.”
“I can’t get control from here,” the amphibian pilot said over Alice’s comm. “Should we come back to you?”
The sounds of scrapes and thuds against the hull told Alice one thing: they were about to be boarded. Another look at that status of the ship on her command unit told the rest of the story. The scanners built into her suit reported that two thirds of the vessel was dark, with no main power and little reserve, the shields were down, and she’d have to use the emergency band to give orders. Normally the ship could take out the three corvettes, it was almost an even fight, but she had a third of a ship left, and no command crew. She opened the emergency band as she picked her way across engineering to the one maintenance worker who seemed to know what she was doing. “All hands, abandon ship. Immediately abandon ship using hyper-pods.”
“Well, that’s an answer, good luck, Commander,” the amphibian pilot answered.
“But not me,” said the maintenance crewmember.
Her name came up on Alice’s head’s up display as she approached her, Trisha, she preferred to be called Trish. “Trish, I need you in a pod because someone has to drag the Chief with them to Rega Gain, but before you go, I need to know if the auto-destruct will still work.”
“No way,” she said. “We can’t get power to it, so it won’t start an overload, and our primary weapons are down.”
Alice thought for a moment, looking at the schematic for the ship. She had seconds at best to get a solution under way, and she knew she couldn’t allow the ship to fall into enemy hands. “Do we have enough power stored back here to blast the ship with an EMP?”
“Won’t work,” her Lieutenant cried out as he pulled a steel grate away from a hatch that would take him to an escape pod. “All the computers are individually shielded against it, especially when they’re shut down.”
“Hey, Lieutenant,” Alice said. “Take that with you when you go, Fleet Intelligence is going to want her.” She pointed at the unconscious saboteur on the deck a couple metres away from him.
“It’s been a privilege, Commander,” the Lieutenant said, popping the pod open. He hurriedly pulled the traitor across the deck to the escape pod entrance.
“Class act, that one,” Trish said. “I have good news, and bad news. You can still blow the ship, but you’ll have to get to the main magazine two decks down, behind frame twenty-six F.”
Alice checked its location on the tactical map and nodded. “All right, Get in your pod.” The sounds of boots against deck plating from the forward section of the ship was all the warning she needed.
Alice ran to the wall nearest them and opened an emergency armoury compartment then activated her heavy armour. It slid up from her boots and covered her in thin but durable slats that projected a personal shield around her.
She stuffed two energy cells into the fortified pocket on her left leg then pulled a Defender 9 rifle from the armoury compartment along with a grenade pack. The first pair of enemy soldiers were in Order of Eden green and black armour, and were caught off guard as Alice opened fire at them with her rifle. It was on its maximum setting, and made quick work of them, puncturing through their protection and ripping their bodies apart.
A sad, descending beep sounded from the rifle then, and it lost power. “Oh, shit,” Alice said as she dropped the rifle and drew her sidearm just in time to open fire on the next pair of soldiers. It cost her half the weapon’s remaining charge, but she riddled them with bursts of white energy, ripping their suits apart before they could get a clear shot at her. There would be more coming around from behind, she knew. There wasn’t much time. Alice looked to where Trish was pushing the Chief’s unconscious form into an escape pod. “Hurry, we’re about to be overrun,” Alice said.
“Just about in,” Trish said. Several shots tore through her from the opposite hallway. Alice returned fire, catching one soldier off guard as she blasted a path of scorch marks across his shoulders. He fell into the soldier behind him as he scrambled for cover. The exhausted cartridge fell out of her weapon and she popped another in, running to the hyperspace capable escape pod containing the unconscious Chief Engineer. Trish’s vacsuit didn’t protect her head well enough to keep several shots from piercing her brain, there was no saving her. Alice ducked behind the hatch of the escape pod as the enemy soldiers fired several shots from the aft hallway entrance.
She pulled a grenade stick from the bundle of thirty-three she’d taken from the weapons compartment and tossed it. Her shields reported a hit on her arm, but the grenade was away, and she took no damage. Ten seconds passed, and the soldiers were still firing from the hallway. “Did I find the first ever dud in the fleet?” Alice asked herself as she started pulling another grenade free. The one she tossed exploded, rattling deck plating a
nd catwalks throughout engineering. “Wow, they didn’t notice it either.” She said to herself as she programmed the Hyper-pod to immediately enter faster than light mode and head for the Rega Gain system. There were more soldiers coming from the forward hallway according to the tactical display in her helmet. The power level on her sidearm was at full charge, so she unleashed a barrage of cover fire at the onrush of soldiers, sending them back under cover.
“Wish I was going with you,” Alice said as she kicked the emergency launch button on the outside of the hyper-pod and heard the door close. The small pod dropped out of the ship, and her scanner indicated that it was accelerating away at an incredible speed, untouched by the enemy. “You’re not getting this ship,” she said as she tossed two grenades towards the main forward hallway. Her sidearm was already down to seventy percent.
“Grenade!” she heard an enemy soldier shout, the panic in his voice brought a grin to her face.
She used the distraction to get to the maintenance access leading to the lower decks. A warning flashed in her heads up display in red letters: IN OUTER BLAST RADIUS it said, and she ignored it.
The grating covering the emergency access to the lower deck was twisted, and she had to use her suit’s strength augmentation to pull it free. The grenades exploded, costing her half her shield’s charge. It would take over two minutes for them to recharge completely because she didn’t have any backup power cells installed.
The hatch opened, and she tossed three more grenades into the middle of the engine room before dropping down into the maintenance access crawlspace and slamming the hatch behind her. Alice moved as quickly as she could, skipping ladder rungs entirely to get one deck between her and the explosion she knew was coming. Her intention was to sabotage the ship’s main generators so the enemy would be left with a hunk of metal instead of a partially functioning ship, just in case she couldn’t get to the main magazine.
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 10 Page 17
