by M. D. Cooper
As Sabrina approached, a new sight appeared in the distance; a one-thousand-kilometer long arch that was drawing in the clouds of material torn from the star, funneling it into two of the massive ships.
As they watched, one of the ships ceased its intake of material and a brilliant light erupted from it as antimatter-pion drives boosted the ship toward its destination—a ring several thousand kilometers retrograde off Gisha Station.
"The jump gate," Finaeus noted as he caught Jessica looking at it. "Getting these big daddies through a gate took a bit to work out. Focusing the negative energy across a ten-kilometer ring is no mean feat, but I solved it eventually."
“Jess, we’ve got a hail from one of the ships out there,” Cheeky said from her station.
“Oh, shit, sorry, missed that,” Jessica said, glancing down at her comm console. “Weird. It’s from that smaller destroyer hanging out just off the outer docking ring over there.”
Jessica glanced back to Cargo who nodded, and then placed the caller on the main holo tank.
The figure of a tall man resolved into view. His face was grim, and his brow was creased from a frown he must frequently wear. His long, dark hair fell behind his shoulder in tight curls. His grey uniform bore no markings other than a colonel’s birds on his lapels.
“Captain Cargo, I am to inform you that your docking arrangements have been altered. Please alter course to dock with my ship and await further orders.”
Cargo’s frown deepened to match the man’s. “Colonel….”
“Bes,” the TSF officer supplied.
“Colonel Bes. I have very strict orders from a TSF admiral, and a berth from STC. If you would like to have those changed, please proceed through proper channels.”
“Cheery sort, wasn’t he?”
“Kinda cute, though,” Cheeky mused. “I’m OK with going to see him. Maybe I can get that frown off his face.”
Jessica gave an appreciative laugh and leaned over to give the Cheeky a high-five.
“Friend of yours?” Cargo asked Finaeus, ignoring Cheeky’s comment.
“Bes probably doesn’t have any friends. He’s GD.”
“A Good Doobie?” Cheeky asked with a grin. “Doesn’t seem like one to me.”
“Grey Division. Officially known as the 137th Division of Space Force Strategic Research, but no one calls them that. They work for her,” Finaeus replied.
“Her?” Cargo asked. “Any chance that’s the same ‘her’ that President Tomlinson gave Airtha to?”
“One and the same,” Finaeus grunted. “She was behind my exile as well—hunted me across the Inner Stars trying to take me out. I’d really hoped we would beat them down here. Fool’s hope, I guess.”
“Does she have a name?” Jessica asked.
“Jelina,” Finaeus replied. “Whatever you do, don’t dock with that ship.”
“Wasn’t planning on it,” Cargo said. “You get a berth from a station, you take that berth. Especially when you can see their defense turrets tracking you.”
Finaeus rubbed his jaw. “Maybe that was his hope. That we’d deviate and get blown away. Stuff like that is GD SOP.”
“Well, I suspect that we’d get a warning first. Not really sure what his plan would be then,” Cargo replied.
As he spoke scan lit up, registering beamfire, and Jessica hit the stasis shields an instant after Sabrina.
“What the—?” Cargo called out.
“Shit! That looks like it came from us!” Jessica exclaimed while re-running scan analysis on the shot.
Sure enough, analysis showed that the shot came from Sabrina’s forward dorsal beam. It had struck one of the nearby station turrets, tearing the unshielded weapon to shreds.
“Station’s on comm,” Jessica called out. “And surprise, surprise, that Bes guy just fired on us, tried to take out our engines, but Sabrina beat him to it with the shields.”
“What a shit-show,” Cargo grunted. “Put the station on.”
“Vessel Sabrina what the hell was that! Why did you just fire on this station?” The call was audio only, and the voice was pissed.
“Gisha Station, this is Captain Cargo. I promise you, we did no such thing. Whatever just happened, that shot did not come from our ship.”
“This is Stationmaster Lloyd. Our scan shows your dorsal weapon hot, and now you have shields up.”
“I don’t understand it yet, either,” Cargo replied calmly. “But we raised shields because we thought we were under attack, and it’s good that we did because that Colonel Bes guy just shot at us.”
There was no response from Stationmaster Lloyd, and a new call came in. “It’s our friend, the Admiral,” Jessica said.
Cargo sighed and waved his hand. “Let’s see what she has to say.”
“Captain Cargo,” Admiral Krissy said, her expression severe. “You’ve just made my day immeasurably worse. Thank you very much.”
“I assure you, we did not fire. And we were fired upon,” Cargo insisted.
“That’s not what our logs show. You clearly took out that target and raised shields. Despite your protestations to Stationmaster Lloyd, we have no records of any ship firing upon yours.”
“Funny that this all happened right after Colonel Bes instructed us to change course to dock with his ship,” Finaeus said. “Don’t be daft, Krissy. This is the GD’s modus operandi through and through. What do we have to gain from an attack on Gisha? We need your cooperation. He wants us dead. Or worse.”
“Is this more of your insane ramblings…Finaeus? Nonsense like this is what got you kicked out of Huygens all those years ago. It’s time you put all that aside.” Admiral Krissy appeared as though she was going to say more, but then stopped and shook her head. “We’re running a detailed analysis on the attack, but if the scan data holds up, we’re going to have to take you into custody. You can’t just fire on a TSF facility and get away with it.”
“FGT, Krissy. This is an FGT facility. I’ve been away for a while, but Stationmaster Lloyd isn’t military, and neither is Gisha,” Finaeus countered.
“Close enough as to make no matter, these days, Finaeus. Now, Captain Cargo. Lower your shields and prepare to be boarded. This little game has come to an end.”
“Cheeky, take us out of here,” Cargo ordered.
“You got it, Captain, New Canaan, here we come,” Cheeky called out triumphantly
Jessica killed the connection to Admiral Krissy and glanced back at Cargo. “I assume you were done with her.”
Sabrina said.
“Weak, Sabs,” Cheeky said. “We live for naughty stations. You need to work at metaphors and allegory more.”
Finaeus stroked his chin. “Yes, yes, that would work. You have many upgrades from the Intrepid, but not a sensor suite that could detect a stealthed TSF vessel. Especially not a GD ship. But how did the GD sneak one in under Krissy’s nose?”
“You better find out, because we’re
not going anywhere,” Cheeky said.
“What do you mean?” Cargo asked.
“Station here has some serious grav emitters. They’re pulling us back. I could fire up the AP drive, or the burners, but we’re inside their shields. We’ll kill everyone on the station.”
“Fuck!” Cargo swore.
“That’s one hell of a gamble they’re taking,” Jessica said.
“There’s another layer of shielding that would keep them safe…provided you didn’t run your AP’s at max. Point-blank focused gamma rays would melt any organics in their path,” Finaeus said.
“The admiral’s betting on our decency, then, is she?” Cargo asked. “A bit risky with a bunch of Inner Stars smugglers like us.”
“Or they think they can take out our stasis shields,” Jessica suggested. “They have had some time to study what we did back at Bollam’s.”
Cargo pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and sighed. “Put the admiral back on.”
“Captain Cargo,” Admiral Krissy said as she appeared with a frown and crossed arms on the holotank. “I assume you’ve thought better of your folly? You’re not leaving.”
“No,” Cargo replied. “But only because we’re not murderers. We’ll come in, but we’ll take the dock you offered. We’re not leaving Sabrina out here where Bes can take more pot shots at it with his stealthed ship.”
Jessica noted that Krissy’s eyes widened slightly, and then narrowed before she replied. “Very well, but power your reactors down.”
UNCERTAINTY
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: TSS Regent Mary, Near Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“Is that possible?” Captain Lin asked in a low voice. “Could they have brought a stealthed ship with them?”
Krissy let out a long breath. It certainly wasn’t possible to hide a stealth ship in Grey Wolf for long. Bending photons and rads around a ship was one thing, but eventually its silhouette would stand out against the ever-shifting grav fields.
That meant if there was one, it jumped in right on the tail of Bes’s destroyer—though she had never heard of a ship jumping in stealth before.
“Have your teams review scan again,” Krissy said. “Look at everything for the past two hours. I want to know definitively whether or not there’s a stealth ship in Grey Wolf.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Captain Lin said, before looking to Nelson.
Krissy held back a comment. Once Lin had been a good captain, but for some reason his heart just wasn’t in it anymore. If war wasn’t looming, she’d recommend retirement for him.
It certainly wasn’t fair to Nelson—not that fair was the goal—but she didn’t want to ruin a good officer by saddling him with the duties, but not the honor, of a captain.
One crisis at a time. Lin could muddle through for a bit longer.
The reply was instantaneous.
Bes snorted.
Krissy replied.
Krissy chewed on the inside of her cheek, biting back what she wanted to say to Bes. Chances were that Finaeus was right, but without any proof, there would be little she could do. Once those orders were confirmed she would have no choice but to comply with Bes’s demands.
She considered letting the Sabrina go. All she had to do was order Lloyd to turn off the grav field holding the freighter in place. He would probably comply—he had no desire to take that ship into his station.
But that would go badly for her—though not as badly as it would for Finaeus and the crew of the Sabrina.
No, this would have to play out a little longer.
“Anything?” she addressed Captain Lin, though her eyes looked to Major Nelson.
“Nothing,” Nelson replied. “We’ll keep looking, but scan is clean. No signatures at all. No sensor suite in the fleet, or on Gisha, picked up a shot from Bes’s ship either.”
Krissy nodded absently. “Picking up the beam would be hard, unless you were looking for it—but we’d see the ionized atoms. Space isn’t exactly empty around here.”
“Yes, Admiral,” Nelson agreed. “A lot of dust about. We’d see the trail.”
“Very well,” Krissy said. “Bring us in. I want to be there to meet Finaeus when he disembarks.”
GISHA STATION
STELLAR DATE: 07.22.8938 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sabrina, Gisha Station
REGION: DSM Ring, Grey Wolf System
“Aaand we’re in the cradle,” Cheeky reported.
“This stinks,” Cargo said. “Any ideas what our next move should be?”
“We have to get out of here as quickly as possible,” Finaeus said. “That GD commander won’t have any of our best interests at heart.”
“We’re not going anywhere with that grav field there,” Cheeky said. “Not unless you’re willing to kill everyone on this station…”
“If it comes down to them or us, that’ll be an option I’ll consider,” Cargo said. “But for now, I’ll meet with them and see if we can’t resolve this peacefully.”
“Not on your own, you’re not,” Jessica said. “You need backup. Besides, I’ll bet Finaeus has something up his sleeve that Iris can use to disable their grav field.”
“What makes you think I have something like that?” Finaeus asked.
“Oh, well, I can see how you’d think that…” Finaeus said.
“So?” Jessica asked.
“So what?” Finaeus asked back.
Cargo rose from his seat and approached Finaeus. “What do you have up your sleeve, old man? Time’s running short. There’s a whole lot of troops forming up around us out there."
Jessica hadn’t looked at the exterior views, and when she checked she saw that Cargo wasn’t exaggerating. There were at least a hundred TSF soldiers in the bay. They were setting up defensive shields and heavy weapons all around Sabrina.
“No problem,” Finaeus said as he altered the view on the bridge holotank. “There’s Krissy walking into the bay. I’ll just go down and talk to her and—”
“Seriously, Fin,” Jessica shook her head. “For some sort of big smart guy, you’re damn stupid. They want you most of all. I’ll go out and see what we can work out.”
“Correction,” Cargo said. “We’ll go out. Sabrina, if we’re not back in twelve hours, and everything isn’t all hunky-dory, you fire up the AP drive and blast your way out of this joint. I don’t care who gets fried. Sera wants Finaeus delivered to New Canaan and she’ll get him.”
“OK,” Jessica said. “Then he
re’s the plan…”
* * * * *
“This is a horrible plan,” Jessica muttered as the ship’s airlock cycled. “We’ve had some dumb plans over the years, but this is the worst…the absolute worst.”
“Jess, it’s your plan, have a little faith in yourself,” Cargo replied.
“I thought someone would come up with a better plan! This was supposed to be the starter plan…the one that got the juices flowing. Not the plan.”
“I guess you’re just a strategic genius,” Cargo chuckled.
“Go me,” she replied as the pressure equalization light turned green and the outer lock door began to open.
She glanced to Cargo, who wore a sharp uniform, and then to her own outfit, a tight blue one-piece suit that Trevor had picked up for her a few systems back. It was a favorite of his because he liked that it set off her skin and hair.
Probably not the most conservative thing to meet the Transcend’s admiral in, but it was what she had on, and there was no time to change.
Even so, she hated being at a disadvantage, and something about Krissy led her to believe that Jessica’s mode of dress may lower her value in the other woman’s eyes.
Iris said.
The airlock door slid aside and revealed the muzzles of sixty guns pointed at them. The weapons—and the soldiers holding them—were on the far side of the stasis shield, but it still felt damn disconcerting.
In their midst, stood Admiral Krissy, alone, a look of grim displeasure on her face.
