Fringe Campaign

by Rachel Aukes

“Leave that to me,” Reyne said. “And the squad?”

  Fitzroy pointed. “Looks like she’s reporting the change in orders now.”

  They looked to see the squad checking their wrist comms. The dromadiers seemed pleasantly surprised that their guard duty was cancelled and wasted no time in departing. As soon as the squad disappeared around the corner, Reyne patted Fitzroy on the shoulder. “It was good doing business with you.”

  “Likewise,” the man said. “Look me up the next time you’re in Devil Town. I can help you find whatever you need.”

  “I’m sure you can,” Reyne said, and he and Boden took off at a jog.

  They ran up the ramp and on board the Gryphon. The door had been left open, and Reyne prayed Throttle had kept her breather mask on. He ran to the bridge and found the hidden closet door standing open and a breather mask on the floor. His heart dropped. “Throttle!” he yelled.

  When she didn’t respond, his heart began pounding. He pinged her wrist comm. “Search the ship!” he ordered Boden.

  Boden ran through the ship, calling her name.

  Reyne placed his hand on the instrument panel, and the ship systems came to life. He tried to focus on initiating launch prep sequences, but his mind kept going back to Throttle. If she wasn’t on the ship, then where the hell was she?

  Boden ran onto the bridge. “I can’t find her anywhere,” he said breathlessly. “What do we do now?”

  Reyne grimaced. If they aborted the launch now, they’d never get another chance at getting the Gryphon back. But if Throttle was hiding somewhere in the docks…

  His heart sank. His gut told him that if she wasn’t on board, she wasn’t in the docks. She hadn’t responded to the ping, which meant something was preventing her from responding.

  The droms had her.

  Reyne exhaled slowly to suppress his terror. “Get back to the engines and prepare for jump speed.”

  “What? We can’t leave Throttle behind.”

  “We have no idea where she is. They found the Gryphon, which means every drom on Spate will be searching for us. We can’t do any good for Throttle if we get caught.”

  “We can’t just give up on her.”

  “Trust me, I’m not giving up.”

  Boden clenched and unclenched his fists, glaring at Reyne. “What do we do now?”

  “We head to the rendezvous point. Throttle would go there first. Now, buckle in and prep the engines for jump speed the instant we break out of atmo.”

  Boden stormed off the bridge.

  Reyne opened the comm channel and immediately received contact.

  “Phantom Five-One-Bravo, launch approved and sequenced. Launch upon your command.”

  Not even a countdown. This dock control was good. Reyne hit the comm. “Dock Control, this is Phantom Five-One-Bravo. Launch acknowledged and approved. Thanks for your help.”

  “Anytime. Watch out for patrols.”

  The Gryphon was launched by Dock Control from its bay and straight up into the atmosphere. Reyne fired the navigational engines, and the ship blasted through the sky at over ten Gs. When the ship broke through the last of Spate’s atmosphere, he initiated jump speed.

  With the system running the ship, Reyne pulled up an image of Spate. He gripped his armrests. He couldn’t help but feel he’d left everything that mattered back in Devil Town.

  Chapter Five

  The Coastal Run

  The Space Coast

  Heid

  “Bring shields up to thirty percent,” Captain Gabriela Heid ordered.

  She felt the crew’s nervous glances being directed at her as they looked away from the screen filled with dots—each one representing a CUF drone—growing bigger every second.

  When the distance hit three thousand, Heid said, “Enter stealth mode. Then, jettison the flak.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Sylvian replied.

  A red border encircled the screen, the only on-ship visual sign that the Arcadia was in stealth mode. The warship was now effectively invisible to visual and radar systems alike.

  Moments later, lights flickered against the blackness of space as chunks of garbage—each piece of flak repurposed with a small power generator—were ejected from the warship.

  Heid had been in the CUF since she was fourteen, but her father had begun her teachings even earlier. She knew how the armada operated and knew how to exploit their dependency on unmanned defense systems. Drones were powerful tools with one critical weakness—they had no AI, therefore, no reasoning capability. Drones responded to threats exactly how they were programmed to. Heid had studied their programming, and knew things, like how drone sensors wouldn’t pick up any traffic beyond a 2,800-click radius.

  She also knew drones weren’t equipped to scan for ships in stealth. Even so, Heid disliked using stealth. It burned juice at an exponential rate, and juice was at the top of their limited resources list. But even she acknowledged that stealth had its value, especially when she was planning to run a massive CUF blockade.

  Her entire plan hinged on the assumption that drone programming hadn’t been changed in over a year. It was a big assumption, since one of the armada’s newest warships and a supply vessel now sat under torrent control.

  Like clockwork, when the flak reached 2,800 clicks, the drones stationed at equal intervals across the entry to the Space Coast whirred to life and flashed red and white warning lights.

  Heid continued to watch the distance close between them. At two thousand clicks, the drones fired at the flak. When no shots came at the Arcadia, Heid let out a breath. “Take us in, Will,” she commanded.

  “Taking us in,” Will, the ship’s pilot, said.

  Before this moment, nothing larger than a Myrad cargo hauler had never entered the Coast before. The Arcadia, a massive warship, was easily ten times the size of the Collective’s largest hauler. Heid would’ve preferred to have taken a smaller ship in the specter fleet with stealth capability, but she needed the space for the refugees. At least, she hoped there were still refugees alive to rescue.

  A rock hit the hull, sending a ripple through the ship.

  “We’re too big,” Will said, a frantic tone to his words.

  “You can do this, Will,” she countered.

  “I—I’ll try,” he stammered.

  The Space Coast was an asteroid belt that sat outside the Collective’s control. Up until a year ago, the CUF had ignored the Coast. Citizens avoided the Coast. Only the most adventurous colonists braved the asteroid belt to journey to the unauthorized colony situated in the middle of the Space Coast. Nova Colony sat inside a hollow asteroid that had been colonized by outlaws and smugglers as a sanctuary for those who needed to avoid the CUF. It had become the center of all less-than-legal business activities, and one of the few places offering colonists the opportunity to earn a decent living—or die trying.

  A small asteroid hurtled at them. Will banked, but too late, and the rock the size of a house ricocheted off the bow. Two other asteroids followed in quick succession. Each hit made Heid cringe. As a rock scraped alongside the entire length of the hull, her hands gripped her armrest. “Will, don’t break my ship.”

  “I’m trying. I mean, I’m trying not to,” he stammered.

  A massive asteroid filled the view screen.

  Gasps and murmurs filled the bridge.

  “I can’t do this!” Will exclaimed.

  Heid reached out to her panel. “Okay, Will. I’m taking the controls.”

  “Oh, thank the gods.” Will’s words drifted off as he slumped back from his panel.

  No sooner did she take the controls, she leveled the ship, raised the bow slightly, then shoved the bow downward, arcing the massive warship under and around the asteroid in a half-loop. The Arcadia passed by the rock so closely she was surprised the asteroid didn’t slice a hole across the hull.

  She twisted the ship around the next asteroid and then the next, banking and corkscrewing through the Coast. If they’d been within a planet’
s atmosphere, the g-forces would’ve made nearly the entire crew either sick or pass out. But they’d been flying with minimal gravity, making the maneuvers feel more like a simulation than a real life-and-death race.

  As they neared their destination at the Coast’s center, the asteroids grew larger, but fewer, and Heid felt herself relax. When Nova Colony emerged onto the view screen, she smiled. “Hello, beautiful,” she said softly to no one in particular. She maneuvered the Arcadia to lock on to the asteroid’s outer rock. Once the locks clicked into place, she announced, “Sylvian, has one of the landers been loaded with standard emergency supplies?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Sylvian replied.

  “Good. Prep all eight landers.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  Heid stood. “Will, the helm is yours.”

  “I have the helm.” He turned around. “Captain, about what happened back there…”

  Heid placed a hand on his shoulder “You did well. No ship this size is meant to fly through an asteroid belt. Trust me. With some practice in a patrol ship, you’ll be able to handle the Coast in no time.”

  He sat a little straighter. “Thanks.” Then he added, “I’ll practice.”

  She smiled, left the bridge, and headed to landing bay One, where her lander sat.

  Her gunman, Luther, stood waiting for her. Luther had joined her crew recently, after being freed from the Citadel back on Terra. She’d gained nearly twenty additional crewmembers from that batch. Many were in poor health, but all carried heavy vendettas in their hearts. Unlike her crew she’d had since serving the CUF, these new crewmembers often questioned her orders, and she worried she wouldn’t be able to count on them if—when—things went sour. They didn’t trust her, which meant she couldn’t trust them. Luther was the only one of her new members she somewhat trusted. Even then, she’d never want to put her life in his hands.

  “From the sounds of things out there, I was beginning to wonder if you were trying to hit every asteroid in the Coast.”

  “Not every asteroid,” she answered. “I wanted to save some for our flight out of here.”

  He gave a small nod that hinted he expected as much, and then led the way onto the lander. She buckled into the pilot’s seat while Luther strapped in next to the door. Only two rode in each lander—the minimum required crew—to make room for as much cargo space as possible for transporting colonists back to the Arcadia.

  Heid’s lander departed the ship first, and the other landers followed hers into the large asteroid’s jaw-like opening. She led them through a natural cave dimly lit by a single string of lights, and finally to the colony’s docking station.

  The docking station’s doors stood open.

  Heid opened a comm channel. “Nova Colony, this is specter flight of eight, requesting permission to dock.”

  No answer.

  She repeated her request, and then tacked on, “Is anyone home?” When there was still no response, a rock settled in her gut. Were they too late? Had she waited too long to come?

  “Don’t worry,” Luther said. “Colonists are tougher than you think. They’re probably watching us right now, debating whether to drift us before or after they rob us.”

  “You think they’d shoot us when we dock?”

  Luther shook his head. “Nah. They’d never do anything to hurt the ships. They’re too valuable. These guys would wait until we all made it to the airlock and then suck out the air.”

  “That’s not exactly reassuring.”

  “You want reassurance, see a therapist.”

  She pursed her lips and remained silent as she maneuvered the lander into docking position and slowly backed the small ship into a bay. Luther stood and extended the lander’s braces. Locks clicked around the lander, securing it firmly in place.

  “Well, if they want the landers, they’ve got them now,” Luther said.

  Her jaw tightened, and she stood. “Suit up and let’s go.”

  The CUF had set up a drone blockade outside the Space Coast, closing off Nova Colony from the rest of the Collective. In the days that followed, many colonists had made a run for it. Most died, though a few had made it through the blockade without getting blown to pieces. Soon, there were no ships left in Nova Colony’s docks, leaving all the remaining colonists stranded within the asteroid. Those colonists who’d remained had estimated they had a year left—if they were lucky—before they ran out of supplies, as no supply ships could reach them.

  The blockade had been in place now for fourteen months.

  The torrent captains had wanted to send ships earlier, but their hands had been tied. The CUF had implemented martial law across the entire fringe, and it was getting near-impossible for torrent ships to travel through the system without running across a CUF ship or drone of some kind. It had taken the Arcadia two months of zigging and zagging across the fringe to make it to the Space Coast. Even with taking an obscure route, the torrent warship had had to enter stealth mode three times on their way to the Coast, burning nearly half their juice. They’d use up most of it by the time they left the Coast, leaving no room to evade or fight off any unwanted company they might run into on their return trip.

  The seven other landers positioned into docks as Heid and Luther exited their craft and hooked their suits onto the zip lines rigged into the bedrock. With no gravity in the docks, Heid shot small bursts from her suit’s propulsion system to shoot across the dock to the other side, where the airlock stood open. Luther came up right behind her.

  They disconnected their suits from the zip line and propelled through the doorway. Heid flew over to the airlock’s far side, where a screen and a large button were encased in the metal wall. She tapped the button, and the airlock door closed behind them. Air shot out from nozzles in the walls, obscuring the tiny enclosure in a cloud. Artificial gravity came without warning, and they landed on the ground with jarring thuds. As they climbed to their feet, the moisture cloud dissipated, and the monitor on the wall lit up in green.

  Heid double-checked the air level on her wrist comm. Safe, but marginally so. Guilt sat like a heavy stone in Heid’s gut. Tainted air was a common problem in ships and on space stations if the air filters failed. At this level, it would’ve taken only weeks before bronchial infections set in. She swallowed, hoping the air levels dropped only recently. If they were too late, it would be on her.

  She tapped her wrist comm. “Heid to Arcadia.”

  “Arcadia here, Commander.”

  “Notify Jovovich to prep an air filter kit.”

  “Copy that, Commander.”

  She removed her helmet, inhaled cold air, and coughed. The air had a foul flavor, like she’d been stuck in an elevator crammed with people. Her next breath was smaller. Luther removed his helmet soon after.

  The door leading to the interior opened, and the pair found themselves facing a dozen gaunt-faced colonists. Heid would’ve felt relief at seeing the colonists alive except that every single one of them was pointing a rifle in her and Luther’s direction.

  She spoke, careful not to make any movement. “I’m Captain Heid of the Arcadia, and this is Luther Jackson of Terra. We’re here to rescue you.”

  A stocky man in the group’s center looked at Luther, then turned his gaze onto Heid. He looked her up and down slowly. His eyes narrowed. “You’d better convince us right quick that you’re not CUF, or else you’re going to be taking a swim out on the Coast in three seconds.”

  A couple members of the group coughed in between ragged breaths.

  Heid held one hand out as she reached toward her suit ever so slowly.

  “Watch yourself,” the man cautioned.

  She paused. “I can convince you if you give me one moment of latitude.”

  The seconds dragged on long, until he gave the smallest nod.

  Heid reached into a pocket on her suit, and pulled out the teardrop-shaped pendant—the emblem of the torrents—and held it high for them to see. She tucked the pendant back into her suit.
“I’m not CUF, and the longer you stand around with you heads up your asses, the greater chance the CUF is going to get suspicious about why so much space junk showed up all of sudden around their drone blockade.”

  The man’s lips thinned. “I didn’t believe the stories. I thought they were too farfetched. I’d never heard of a CUF commander changing sides before, let alone taking a warship with her.”

  “It’s your lucky day,” she said. “You can fly on that warship if you so choose.”

  After a moment, he glanced back to the people with him. “Put down your weapons.”

  They nearly dropped their weapons as they slumped and coughed. A few leaned against the wall.

  The man held out his hand to Heid. “I’m Stan. Operations Manager of Nova Colony.”

  Heid shook it. “Time is not on our side. The Arcadia is waiting to give anyone a lift to Playa, where we have living quarters set up for everyone.”

  “How can it be any safer than here?” Stan asked. “The last news we saw, the CUF has put the entire fringe under martial law.”

  “They have,” Heid said. “But, since they bombed Ice Port, they have written Playa off. They assume no one can land or take off on Playa.” Her lips curled upward. “They have no idea we have an operational space dock.”

  Stan eyed her for a moment before shaking Luther’s hand. “So, it’s true?” Stan asked. “There’s a new torrent Uprising?”

  Luther answered. “It’s called the Fringe Liberation Campaign, my friend, and it’s shaping up to be far bigger than the first Uprising. We’ve even managed to snag a CUF supply ship of our own.”

  “We’ll fill you on the way,” Heid cut in. “The CUF will have sent in patrol ships to inspect the blockade. We don’t have time to delay. How many colonists are in Nova Colony?”

  Stan grimaced. “Two hundred and eighty-four.”

  “Eighty-three,” a man behind Stan corrected. “We lost Jadin yesterday.”

  Heid’s heart sank. Based on all her calculations, the number should’ve been higher.

  “What happened?” Luther asked.

  Stan shrugged. “We’d already been on tight rations before the air filters started to fail. When the lung infections hit, we didn’t have near enough antibiotics. There wasn’t anything we could do.”