by Terry Mixon
The lead marine did the opposite of what Veronica would have expected and sped up, the feet of her powered armor gouging the deck as she launched herself at the shrinking opening. She sailed through the air sideways and bounced through the narrow opening right before the hatch slid shut with a clank reeking of finality.
“Lewandowski?” Zia shouted over the com. “Are you okay?”
“I’m a little busy. Hang on.”
The next fifteen seconds dragged by before the hatch began opening. The opening revealed the marine threatening a group of crewmen with her armored fist from beside the hatch controls. They were trying to stun her with zero effect. The thick armor was proof against that.
Since the massive suits were immune to that kind of weapon, they didn’t come equipped with them either, so Brenda Lewandowski had no way to stop the people attacking her without maiming or killing them. A standoff of sorts.
The balance of forces changed as the unarmored marines and recovery crew opened fire with their stunners. That quickly cleared the Rebel Empire forces nearest the hatch and got them into engineering.
“Suited marines, dig the enemy out of any pockets of resistance,” Veronica ordered. “Everyone else back them up. Clear engineering before someone does something we can’t fix.”
Veronica led the charge to the drives. She figured the attack had been far too sudden to give anyone the idea of sabotage, but she wasn’t going to take any chances when their future depended on it.
A few crewmen tried to use the drives as cover, but an armored marine simply tossed them out into the open where they were stunned. Veronica verified the drives were intact with a sigh. Then she went to make sure the fusion plants were equally secured.
Ten minutes later, she was reporting to Princess Kelsey that engineering was theirs. She’d heard that the bridge was locked down, but without Fleet security and their weapons, clearing the ship would be simple enough, if time consuming.
Of course, any strays might get their hands on a crate filled with weapons, so clearing the freighter quickly was critical.
She left two armored marines inside engineering. Her people would lock the hatch behind her and keep any intruders out. If someone somehow managed to blow the door, the marines would come down on them like an avalanche.
Two other armored marines would secure the Fleet security armory. The final two would join the search for holdouts.
She hoped it didn’t come to it, but depressurizing sections of the ship was an effective method of flushing them out. Drop the pressure slowly while calling for anyone hiding to come out. When they couldn’t breathe, people tended to see reason.
Her primary task done, Veronica took a couple of unarmored marines to guard her and headed for the bridge.
Princess Kelsey hadn’t summoned her, but she owed it to Don to get him out of there alive. His friendship had meant a lot to her back then and she wouldn’t allow him to die for the Lords.
She found Jason Young working on the hatch while Princess Kelsey and a team of armed marines and recovery specialists waited impatiently in the corridor nearby.
Veronica didn’t have much hope for the man’s success. The bridge hatches were designed to keep people out. They’d have to talk Don out or use plasma cutters to burn the hatch off.
“What’s your status?” the princess asked as she approached.
“Engineering is secure,” Veronica assured her. “I sent some armored marines to guard the Fleet security armory and others to help with the search. I came here to get Don out.”
The short woman nodded. “You know him better than I do. Can we end this peacefully? We don’t need bridge access right now, but it makes my spine itch to have hostile forces in there, even if all the primary systems are locked out. One never knows how resourceful they are.”
“Don is very resourceful. We have a bond. Let me use it to save him.”
Kelsey’s eyebrows rose. “As in a romantic bond? That could prove awkward if he feels betrayed, since you… ah, betrayed him.”
Veronica shook her head. “No, not that. He’s not my type. I’m more into… well, that’s not important right now. What matters is that we we’re friends. I can get him to surrender.”
Princess Kelsey gestured toward the door. “The com at the hatch works. By all means, give it a try.”
Veronica walked over to the com and pressed the button. A moment later, her friend’s voice came from the speaker.
“We’re not opening up.”
“I really wish you would, Don. We don’t want to hurt you. Quite the opposite, really.”
There were a few moments of silence. “What are you doing, Veronica? I never saw you in the role of a traitor.”
She leaned her back against the hatch. “Me, either. Then I found out the Lords had been lying to us all along. Enslaving us. Now I’m working with people determined to throw off the yokes of our electronic overlords.
“We’ve locked you out of all the critical systems. I’m sure you have hopes of regaining control of something. I’ll grant that you’re resourceful and can probably pull something off. What then? The Ghosts have control of this system and neither one of us wants them to catch us, trust me on that.”
Her friend sighed gustily. “You ruined a perfectly good escape and literally years of hard work and planning. Now you probably have most of my people out of action and we’re both going to pay the price for that. Why?”
“You’re not the only one with secrets,” she assured him. “We can and will get out of this system, if you don’t screw up our plan.”
When he didn’t respond for a minute, she figured she’d failed and the conversation was over, but the hatch slid open. She stood and turned to face the bridge. All four men inside stood there, their hands raised high.
Princess Kelsey wasted no time in sending her marines in to secure them.
Don’s eyes never left Veronica. “If you’re working against the Lords, I deserve to know who you’re working for.”
Veronica gestured at Princess Kelsey. “Her. She’s a descendant of people that escaped the Lords. They aren’t Ghosts. They call themselves the New Terran Empire. There are elements of resistance in our society and she’s working hard with some of them to help us free ourselves.
“We needed this ship because we had to steal something critical. We had no idea you were doing… whatever it is that you’re doing here. What are you doing with all those flip drives, armored marine suits, and this ship? How did you even get it built?”
He considered Veronica for a few seconds before shaking his head. “I suppose the ship and its contents are more than enough to condemn us if you’re working for the Lords, so I might as well take a chance you aren’t lying. You know that resistance you mentioned? I work for them. I always have.”
Veronica blinked in shock. “I… see. Then I suppose we need to sit down and have a long talk while Princess Kelsey gets us out of this system. We might still be able to be friends after all.”
Don frowned at Kelsey. “Princess?”
“That’s a very long story,” the short woman assured him. “Let me get this ship on its way to safety and we’ll have lunch while we tell it. I’m starving.
39
Zia hadn’t relaxed until all their ships had eluded the Clan warships in the system. She and her freighter hadn’t drawn any pursuit, but Princess Kelsey had drawn the attention of the invaders.
They’d had to go far out into the outer system to be sure they’d escaped pursuit. It had taken more than a day for them to join Zia at the multiflip point with Persephone guarding her.
In that time, the Clans had consolidated their control over the Archibald system. More and more ships had continued to pour through the flip point, emphasizing the point that this war had been long planned. Raul Castile might have kicked it off with his unprovoked attack, but it would have happened anyway.
The invading forces had seized control of the station, but the Rebel Empire had chosen to blow up the sh
ipyard just before the Clans reached orbit. At least after the chaos of the attack, no one would put together what they’d done.
Fiona hadn’t had to destroy the FTL com. The Rebel Empire had done it for them. Sadly, they’d lost the large transport rings. Carl was despondent and she wasn’t much better.
He’d thrown himself into going over everything they’d stolen. She hoped it was worth the loss they’d suffered.
If Commander Sommerville was to be believed, he was working for the resistance and had stuffed the Q-ship with all kinds of illicit goodies. He wasn’t saying where he’d intended to take it all, but he’d seemed fairly certain he could get it out of the system.
She supposed it was possible they knew about the far flip points, but he wasn’t saying. Maybe once he laid eyes on Audacious he’d be more forthcoming.
They dropped an FTL probe to keep an eye on the Archibald system and flipped back to Pandora. The Q-ship was large, though not as big as her carrier. Carl assured them that this segment of the multiflip point could handle something that size, but she still fretted until they were all safely across and in orbit around the planet.
She virtually snagged Carl by the ear and had him move her ship’s new flip drive over to the carrier. Getting it into engineering wasn’t a simple task, but a few hours later, her people were maneuvering it into place. They’d had no reason to leave the old one there, so it had been removed while they were gone.
“How long will the installation take,” she asked her chief engineer, Commander Tony Hastert. “Not that we’re about to rush off or anything.”
“Getting it into the compartment was the difficult part,” he assured her. “The unit is basically plug and play on a massive scale. We’ll have it locked down and fully connected in a shift. I’d prefer to spend another shift testing it before we head to a flip point to make absolutely sure it’s working correctly.
“We’ll want to flip into an empty system to test out the frequency modulator that Carl built into it. That’s unproven. We’ll flip once without it and then use the tuner on the way back. At that point I’ll declare us fully fit for action, barring any issues.”
Being fully operational in a day sounded excellent to her. “Call me if you run into any problems.”
She was about to head for the flag bridge to get an updated tactical briefing when her com chimed with an incoming call. It was Carl.
“What now?” she almost barked. “What else has gone wrong?”
The scientist shook his head sadly. “Someone needs a nap. In fact, we have some good news for a change. Can you come down to my lab?”
Zia considered begging off, but decided she needed to know what he’d found. It might have a bearing on the briefing she’d been planning.
“I’ll be right there.”
Ten minutes later, she was ensconced in his office. It wasn’t much of an office as he didn’t have a desk, just more workstations, so she snagged a rolling chair and sat. “Talk to me.”
He grabbed an identical chair and settled in across from her. “The researchers have been continuing to work on the FTL anomaly while we were at Archibald. They made a breakthrough right after we got back. It’s a big one and it has implications on what we do going forward.”
When he stopped talking, she gestured for him to continue. “Don’t make me drag this out of you. What did they find and why do I need to know about it right now?”
He smiled widely at her. “They discovered the communications throughput was going down because they’d found a way to enhance the range. That’s the tradeoff. Longer range means less bandwidth.
“They tested it by selecting an FTL pair where the other end was far outside our normal transmission range. They couldn’t send a message, but they pulsed it to see if they got a status response on the quantumly entangled pairs. They did.”
Zia blinked at him. “Are you telling me that we can talk to someone back home? Seriously?”
“Not exactly,” he cautioned. “We know the paired com detected its other half, but that end isn’t configured correctly to link up with it. I doubt an actual call would be successful without some reconfiguring on the other end.
“The hardest part will be making them aware of us at all. There’s likely no indication on that end that we’ve tagged them for a status. The coms weren’t designed to make anyone aware of that sort of thing.”
“So, let me see if I understand,” Zia said slowly. “We know that we can potentially communicate with home, but we need to somehow make them aware we’re out here. They would have no reason to look more deeply because they know we’re far too distant and a real call from us would cause their com to signal them.”
He nodded. “That’s about it. I have a few ideas that might bear fruit, but it’s going to be hard going. Also, it’s not all the coms at home. It’s a single com. We’ve tried others, but the range limitation is still too great.
“That said, I think you’ll be pleased to hear which com we’ve connected to. The researchers had no luck with the ones on Audacious, so they started working the sets aboard Persephone as soon as we got back into orbit. They hit pay dirt with the one Admiral Mertz keeps with him that’s linked to a special one for Kelsey.”
Zia felt her eyes widen. “That’s terrific! If anyone can help us get home, it’s Admiral Mertz. It’s kind of odd that his com is the only one in range, though. What about Invincible?”
Carl shook his head. “No dice there. Wherever the admiral is, he isn’t aboard Invincible or any of the other ships we have FTL coms for. I’d wager, based on the timing, that he’s in the captured destroyer giving the report about Harrison’s World to the Rebel Empire.”
That made sense. It also gave them an opportunity with a limited shelf life. The admiral would deliver his report and go home as quickly as he could.
“Keep working on this,” she ordered. “Make it priority one.”
“I have everyone working on it,” he assured her. “We’ll figure this out.”
Zia checked her internal chronometer. The briefing could wait. Kelsey would want to hear about this right away.
Kelsey watched Don Sommerville stare at Derek while Veronica explained where they were and what the New Terran Empire was all about. Since the Rebel Empire had no history with aliens, the man’s poleaxed expression made sense.
The Pandoran prince and his human friend Jacob Howell had been waiting for them and it tickled Kelsey’s sense of fancy to have them there for the briefing. They were still curious about their new associates and it wouldn’t hurt to have them see the Rebel Empire was made up of normal people, too.
She still hadn’t told anyone what the doctor had told her about the Pandoran DNA. It might be a long while before she felt comfortable with the revelation. In any case, at some point they’d be leaving and it would hardly be worth wrecking the Pandorans’ view of themselves before setting off.
Veronica was just finishing her basic overview of the New Terran Empire, but hadn’t started on how she’d been captured when Zia arrived. Kelsey left her to it when the commodore gestured for her to join her in the corridor.
“What’s up?” she asked when they were alone.
Zia proceeded to fill her in on what Carl had told her.
When the other woman finished, Kelsey was grinning. “Carl will figure out how to make contact. We need to start prepping for departure. Even if we don’t leave today, it won’t be very long.”
“I want to go with you,” Jacob said from the hatch. He’d slipped up on them quietly and must’ve overheard most of what they’d said.
She turned to face the man. “We’ll be going a long way from here and I can’t say that I’ll ever come back, though the Empire might eventually send someone. That could mean a one way trip. I’m sorry, but no.”
“Don’t you think that’s my decision to make?” he asked seriously. “And I know that Derek will insist that he and some of this people come along. We’ve heard stories of the Clans for decades. Now those c
razy bastards are on the loose. Add in the Rebel Empire and our people have to know what’s going on and do our part to set things right.”
Kelsey started to reject him again, but Zia put a hand on her shoulder. “Maybe he has a point. In any case, if his people want to send a group back to the New Terran Empire, we should consider it.”
“All I ask is that you consider my words,” Jacob said as he bowed his way back into the compartment. “I’ll leave you to discuss things without prying ears.”
She didn’t have to make a decision right this moment. Instead, she turned her head back to Zia.
“How goes the flip drive replacement?”
“So far, so good. We’ll know by tomorrow if all this was worth it.”
Kelsey laughed. “It was worth it. I’ve been looking over the master manifest on the Q-ship. Add in the ship itself and we’ve come out a lot better than when we started.
“Doctor Zoboroski tells me that he’s relatively satisfied that the new regenerator will be effective on Commodore Murdock. Doctor Lipp is helping with that. Not that we can trust her very far, mind you. She’s a spy.
“On the positive side, even with the loss of the large transport ring, we have the singularity computer and its data. That’s going to be fascinating. I can’t help but wonder what it might tell us that bears on our Singularity prisoner. Or how his tune might change if he knew we had it.”
“The next few days should be interesting,” Zia agreed.
Kelsey excused herself and sent a message to Veronica that she’d be elsewhere. She needed to get a handle on what they did next. Wherever Jared was, she had to find a path to him via multiflip points and far flip points. The regular network was far too dangerous.
They’d have to start mapping with FTL probes and that meant sending Persephone. Now that Angela was a fully operational Marine Raider, Kelsey could pass command of the ship to her.
Not that she really wanted to, but she had to focus on the larger picture. And it was time to start Talbot along the path to being a Marine Raider. Once he was done, they’d expand the program to the rest of the marines he thought were suitable.
