Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11

by Randolph Lalonde

  Alice thought about commanders like Terran in their own military for a moment, then renewed her focus and opened a channel to the Ion Runner. “Attention, Order of Eden members. I am going to begin destroying your ships, murdering your trapped crewmembers and I will continue until you leave your ship and release your prisoners to my ship.” With a simple gesture, she set the message to repeat. “Can you make sure that goes across any band the Order are using for communications right now? I want them to know what’s coming for once.”

  “Immediately,” Theodore said.

  She targeted the nearest Order of Eden Interdictor Cruiser. “All gun emplacements, fire on that ship. We’re looking for soft spots with thin armour and their power systems. I don’t want them to turn that ship on ever again.”

  “Are you sure this is the way to do this?” Iruuk asked quietly. “They’re helpless.”

  The turrets aboard the Clever Dream began to fire as Ute directed the ship in a wide circle around the Interdictor Cruiser. “This is all they’ll understand,” Alice said. “Bring up the command codes for the Ion Runner and start sending power to its capacitor bank.”

  “I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” Theodore said. “After ten minutes and four seconds main capacitors will begin to explode resulting in the loss of life for several people aboard.”

  Alice took control from her station for a minute and started the chain reaction herself. “No problem,” she said. “It’s regulation: they don’t get that ship.” Out of the corner of her eye she could see Iruuk scanning it then nodding to himself. He could see what she did a while ago; there was no way the Ion Runner would be able to take off.

  “This is Unit Commander Sabolea,” came a response from the Ion Runner. “I see what you’re doing, and don’t consider your small ship a threat to our fleet. We are making recovery measures now and will be operational soon. We know you’re not a murderer, that’s why you’re using your small guns to pester one of our cruisers. Just retreat, it’s the only reasonable option. You’ll escape with your lives at least.”

  Alice targeted both the unshielded bays of a large carrier with Javelin torpedoes. “Ute, keep us steady and keep both our D-Drives charging.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Ute said, no doubt seeing what Alice was doing. “If it’s not too bold, I think you should show them how serious you are. Two of your torpedoes would be able to penetrate the bridge of the carrier you’re aiming at.”

  “You should have expected this,” Alice replied to the Commander as she adjusted her targets. Two Javelin torpedoes would strike the main hangar, another would land deep inside the secondary, and two would impact the side of their bridge. Her fingers pressed the launch buttons without hesitation and she started loading a heavy seeker mine in the rear launcher. It would thrust towards her target and when it reached optimum range, fling hundreds of intelligent bomblets at critical systems.

  The carrier’s biggest hangars were torn apart from the inside, secondary fuel explosions adding to the damage as a violent impact on the bridge sent torn plating in all directions, the atmosphere within following out with them. Alice sent her mine towards a group of ships; three destroyers were huddled against another interdiction cruiser that had left its main hangar wide open. Her next Javelin torpedoes were set to destroy the hangar and bridge of a battlecruiser, and she launched them.

  When another set of five javelin torpedoes were loaded, she sent them towards the only other interdiction cruiser in range, the one her gunners were picking pieces off of. A destroyer came up on her tactical screen, its power systems starting to come online and she made that her next target. “We’re destroying that before its shields come up,” she said coldly. Alice set her Saber seeker missiles to attack the destroyer and sent them behind a load of Javelin torpedoes.

  The seeker mine she dropped earlier exploded in a cloud of destruction, ripping holes open in its targets and stirring the drifting ships. The destroyer that was powering up in front of her had forty two Sabre Missiles strike the hull protecting its main reactors, weakening it severely seconds before the Javelin Torpedoes struck one after another, decimating their engineering section.

  “We’re going to surrender your allies!” the Unit Commander said. “Hold your fire! We have seen your intention to destroy the Ion Runner, and I have no doubt that you will tear every ship in the sky to shreds given the chance. We are abandoning our attempts to control your ship, and your people will be waiting for you at the docking bay.”

  “You will not be in the hangar when we arrive. If you make any attempt to complicate our rescue, I’ll make an example of you.”

  “That is clear, Captain,” the Unit Commander replied.

  “Ute, get us alongside the hangar and bring us in sideways. Gunners: if you can aim at the hangar our people are coming from, do it, and be ready to tear the inside of that thing up at a moment’s notice. Not until I give the order though, we want our people back whole.”

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Woone said.

  Alice looked at her tactical displays carefully. “I need your help, Iruuk,” she said focusing on the scans of the carrier with her people aboard. “You have to watch the bigger picture. Start figuring out where we’ll drop pulse mines on our way out. We need to do everything we can to slow this fleet down, but we won’t have much time to do it.”

  “Working on it.”

  “Oh and watch for any other ships that are about to come online,” Alice added.

  “I am,” he said.

  Alice set the Javelin Torpedoes that were loaded to cruise along a long course between Order ships, bursting over and over again with electromagnetic pulses as they went until they ran out of power. She gave Iruuk the ability to change their course as he found better targets. The mines would do the same, only launching bomblets that would affix themselves to hull plating and pulse over and over again until it ran out of energy. The Sabre missiles she pointed at the open hangars of the carrier where her people would be delivered.

  “They gave us a communicator,” Gabe said. “Good to see you, Captain.”

  The Clever Dream slowed, moving into position next to the hangar. “Ready for a ride home?” she asked.

  “Absolutely,” Yawen shouted into the communicator. “The room service here sucks.”

  “There are soldiers coming into the hangar,” Woone warned from her position in a turret.

  “You didn’t actually think we’d allow you to have our prisoners?” the Unit Commander said. “Victory is our right. Victory is our fate.”

  “Cover our teams!” Alice said to Woone and the other gunners. “Jump across to the Clever Dream, guys,” she told Gabe.

  “I’ll get them inside,” Theodore said, rushing out of the cockpit.

  Alice watched her starboard side sensors as several of her people were gunned down despite the turret fire driving some of the Order soldiers back under cover. Of all the soldiers she’d come to rescue, seven were able to leap across the narrow distance between the edge of the hangar deck and the Clever Dream. Gabe was one of them, but she couldn’t see Yawen, Regan or several others. There were several burned and torn bodies near the edge of the hangar bay, none of them showed any signs of life.

  “We have everyone who could jump across,” Theodore reported from the starboard hatch.

  “Ute, take us out, then circle us around,” Alice said, unloading one of her electromagnetic pulse mines and loading a high explosive one instead. It was set for the bridge of the carrier.

  She entered the interface that let her control the critical systems aboard the Ion Runner and armed all its missiles. “Are you sure you want to do that?” Iruuk asked in a hushed whisper.

  “We have to destroy it anyway,” Alice said. The rear sensors showed her a clear picture of soldiers approaching the bodies of the Special Operations Team. Rage filled her as she watched them fire at the corpses, making sure there was no way to necessitate them, to save so much as a scrap of grey matter. “Look.”

  “I und
erstand,” Iruuk said. “It’s more than revenge. You’re killing monsters.”

  The energy build up aboard the Ion Runner was almost at critical levels, and she pushed the generators aboard. There was more than a minute left before, but with her adjustments, the overload would happen in seconds. That overload would cause hundreds of Javelin and Decimator Torpedoes to explode along with thousands of bomblets. “I hope you’re aboard that ship, bitch,” Alice said to the communication line that was routed through the Ion Runner. She launched both her mines. One spun away, following a course that would take it towards two other carriers where it would hopefully cause enough electromagnetic damage to keep them out of the fight for weeks. The other strafed directly at the bridge of the carrier that became a tomb for many of her squad members. It burst, sending bomblets raining down on the bridge, bursting the transparent metal open and continuing to pummel the inner deck.

  The Ion Runner was next, sending a blue then white explosion forth that nearly cut the large carrier in half. “Chart a direct course from here to the Haven System and use both D-Drives on full charge.”

  “That’s only a theoretical use of those systems,” Ute countered.

  “Can you make it work?”

  “It should work, yes,” she replied.

  “Then do it. I want to be back in the Haven system in twenty minutes,” Alice launched the last Javelin Torpedoes Iruuk programmed and locked her station. She stood up and came face to face with Gabe, who had a mournful expression. “Yawen pushed me ahead of her,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  Alice steeled herself and nodded. “She always wanted to get cloned. Who else made it?”

  “Knud, Jessen, Newell, Eckles, Nash and our objective; Wanda Teller,” Gabe replied.

  Clenching her teeth and clearing her throat, she turned back to the seat she left. It was as if her heart were in her head; she could feel its heat and its beat between her ears. Holding her grief and anger down was nearly impossible, but she did it.

  There were other problems; that fleet wouldn’t be down for long, there was another recovering fast near Iora, there were Citadel ships nearby that could return any moment, and she had a crew aboard who were depending on her. “Put some armour on if you’re in shape to fight.” Instead of facing Knud, she took her seat and unlocked her station. “We can’t take anything for granted.”

  “We’re ready to try this jump,” Ute said quietly. “We’ll know if it worked before we make the transit to extra dimensional space.”

  “Execute,” Alice ordered.

  A low, loud electrical hum filled the ship for a moment before a blue-white tunnel opening in space appeared. “That is a viable trans-dimensional corridor,” Iruuk said.

  “Take us in,” Alice ordered quietly.

  Sixty-One

  Knights

  * * *

  Remmy's sensor suite was turned all the way up, causing so much visual noise that he suspected few people would be able to understand much of what they were being shown. It was the only way to manually watch for Clark Patterson's tricks. The Beast was trained by Freeground like Remmy, felt like Freeground Nation and the Puritan Party wronged them deeply. He'd lost every friend he had from that place.

  Remmy's experiences were almost exactly the same with two exceptions. The first was the most obvious. Patterson was turned into a hybrid human, framework, Issyrian with a touch of Edxi mixed in for good measure. The second was something that Remmy hoped he could use.

  Four Order Knights approached silently, invisibly. The only thing that ruined their cloaking profile was a stirring in the air. Remmy was the most visible person on the ship, hiding behind a thick bulkhead with the broad hatch beside him open. Dimitri and Sammi were at his side, ready with rifles. The output of his scanning system was turned all the way up. He was ahead of the Order's plans to break through the old-fashioned defences aboard the Nova Concord, but if they got one knight through that could flip in an instant.

  The four Order Knights moved with the certainty of people who believed they were invisible. Remmy had split Captain Valent's entire squad into two groups. Each hid motionlessly in rooms adjacent to the main corridor running up the length of the command and control deck, their stealth systems on full. The Order Knights were almost in position when Remmy marked their position and sent a power system draining energy pulse in their direction with a small load of nanobots that would affix themselves to the Knights, defeating their cloaking systems.

  He broadcast the Knights' locations and watched as Jake's squad broke cover, pointed fourteen heavy rifles that were becoming known as Knight Killers at the cloaked Order Elite soldiers and burned them down in a focused hail of explosive rounds. They were little more than a burnt pile of grease and metal melted to the deck.

  "Damn, man, this is working," Dimitri said eagerly.

  "No, it isn't," Remmy said. "It's forcing them to think of another way. They want to get to the bridge, this would be a direct route if we weren't prepared for them, but after three of their cloak teams have been greased, they're going to change to another strategy."

  Remmy watched the main group of Order soldiers. The Beast was surrounded by Knights, twelve of them were visible to normal scanners. He was behind two bulkheads and the lift bank, too obstructed and far off for Remmy to get a read that would reveal cloaked soldiers. "We have to switch tactics first," he said, activating a program that started trying all of Clark Patterson's old identifier codes, starting with his Freeground civilian number. An Order of Eden emergency command code linked with him, and Remmy's heart jumped. He had a direct line open with someone who he hoped he'd never see again. It was like seeing a friend you thought was dead for years.

  "Hey, man," he said casually. "It's Remmy, don't cut me off."

  The image of the Beast flinched visibly, as though startled by someone appearing out of nowhere. He was already off balance. "If this is Remmy, then you're a conspirator with enemies of order, of humanity."

  "I guess you could see it that way," Remmy said, looking at his tactical display and sending all but Sammi and Dimitri to the lifts behind him. He had a feeling Finn's hiding spot was about to get hit. That's where he'd send people if attacking the bridge didn't work; to engineering. Minh-Chu was too good at disrupting the wormholes the enemy was trying to drag them into. The Clark Patterson would have that shut down at the source and take Finn captive. "It's more like I joined the circus really. They'd leave your Order folks alone if they just let people live free and kick their hungry alien friends out of the galaxy. My circus friends back on Tamber just want to live free, have a day at the beach, a night at the club and get to the business of getting human numbers back up in the galaxy. You know they even have a guy with them named Carnie? He's actually the genuine article; travelled with a carnival and everything."

  "This is a fight for our lives, the Order is maintaining a balance between the demands of the Edxi and humanity's survival. Without us, the Edxi would take every well populated world for themselves."

  "Hey, I've got an idea…" Remmy said, programming three skitters he had in his backpack to go scouting on other decks. They couldn't take more than a few direct hits, but they were fast, and could scan sections of the ship as well as any soldier. His were also loaded with high explosives, which he armed. "How about you and I declare peace between our factions so we can turn on those Edxi buggers." He snickered. "See what I did there? 'Buggers?' They're an insect race?"

  "Surrender," Clark replied. Remmy had to remind himself that he was speaking to a person who took the name; 'Beast' willingly. It still sounded like his old friend, but there was a lot he didn't know.

  "Man, you never had a good sense of humour. I'd make a joke and it would roll right off and you'd think I was just making conversation. Listen, this is getting tense. I've got a Captain behind me who can be… well… let's be honest… he's got a temper and your Order guys are a bit of a trigger."

  "Goodbye, Remmy," the Beast said.

  Remmy's hands g
ripped his rifle as he was surrounded by shrapnel, his shields brought down to forty two percent. With a gesture he reduced the scanning intensity of his suit so he could make something out in the visual noise. An armoured hand reached through the smoke, surging through his shields and grabbing him by the neck. His rifle was between him and his assailant as he was drawn off his feet, blasting the Order Knight at point blank range, cutting him in half. He made a serious mistake by closing in too close when he could have blasted Remmy and his squad mates while they were still recovering from the grenade strike they landed.

  The hand let go of his neck and Remmy raked the torso with approximately twenty rounds in three seconds. Sammi was pinned to the wall to his left, an Order Knight was putting the muzzle of an oversized sidearm to her head and Remmy's first shots blasted that thing away.

  "Help!" Dimitri said behind him.

  If he turned, Sammi would definitely die and there was no guarantee that Dimitri would be saved, so Remmy riddled the Knight he was already aiming at with a barrage of rounds, bursting through his shielding then his armour, rending flesh and bone. In the next second he was facing Dimitri, blasting the Order Knight's dark green carapace like armour as it repeatedly fired its sidearm against the side of Dimitri's helmet.

  Dimitri wasn't idle even though his rifle had been knocked out of his hands. As his helmet started to break down, he beat at the Order Knight with his fists, causing more clashing between their shields and a little impact damage on the Knight's arm and torso armour. Remmy and Sammi's rounds blasting the Knight were enough to finish the thing's shields off and Dimitri's next thunderous punch was an uppercut that broke his assailant's armour supports and the neck within. It collapsed in front of him and Dimitri stepped away, picking his rifle up. It took seconds for Remmy and his companions to blast what was left so it would never rise again. "Nice try, old buddy," Remmy said over the channel to the Beast. "You almost got me." He looked through his tactical scanners. Seven of Jake's squad were down, the rest were fighting for their lives. "Retreat to my location," he ordered. "We're outnumbered."