Spinward Fringe Broadcast 11

by Randolph Lalonde

  Three were able to extract themselves from the fray, running towards the heavy bulkhead Remmy rested behind. "Surrender Captain Valent and Commander Buu. It is the only way to get out of this situation without further loss of life," the Beast told him.

  Remmy released his programmed skitters and they rushed into the service hatches that would take them to chutes leading to the other levels. He needed to know what else the Beast was doing. He had to keep him talking, splitting his attention as much as he could, but he was near the end of his patience. Casual talk was almost over, all he had was spite and hurt after that. "Last chance, Clark. You know you're related to one of your heroes? Yeah, Oz, or Terry Ozark McPatrick. His uncle let me in on it before I came here. You want a way to cross to the other side? That's it, a real chance. We won't even make you fight. You can work your way through all the hate you picked up when Freeground killed your sister…" Remmy started loading his hyper accelerator rounds in the front of his rifle and pointed at the narrow cone when Dimitri, his helmet half ruined, nodded at it. He and Sammi started doing the same, loading a type of weapon that had no business being fired aboard a starship. "…yeah, and then they exiled you. It's all different now. The Puritan Party has been disbanded, Freegrounders are refugees and freedom fighters. There's almost nothing left."

  "You're missing a few of my dead," Clark replied.

  "Oh, Isabel?" Remmy looked at his tactical scanner and saw that two of Jake's squad remained, they were five metres from joining him. He waited. "You got her killed after you broke her heart, buddy. I count her in my tally. You murdered that angel by dragging her into something she couldn't handle." Remmy was surprised at the hurt and anger that brought, just admitting that he blamed Clark for her death. "And who knows where that got Mary. You're a menace, but I'll forgive you if you switch sides now." He gave Clark two seconds to reply then sent a scan pulse down the long corridor. There was nothing in the way of the missiles they were about to fire. The pair of soldiers left from Jake's squad were secure behind the bulkhead with him. All their shields were recharged and the rest of the soldiers they had aboard were clear of the blast radius. They were ready.

  "You can't imagine you have the upper hand here," the Beast replied. "Morally or tactically."

  Remmy leaned into the hallway, Sammi and Dimitri doing the same, and they fired their missiles at almost exactly the same time. All three of them were blasted back by the pressure and heat as the missiles struck their target milliseconds later in the middle of the ship. The main lift column would be gone. Knights would be completely slagged, and if they were lucky the Beast would be dead.

  A sharp pain in Remmy's side and an alert on his helmet display told him that he'd been stabbed, stabbed! He flailed towards the black suited attacker standing over him. It was armour he'd never seen before - sleek with form-fitted thin plating, a hood and mask without a face - and he managed to draw his sidearm and blast it on full auto, sending it reeling back. The sword was stuck on an edge of Remmy's armour, which pushed it out with the help of emergency nanobots. Dimitri was on his feet, rifle in hand, blasting at another darkly dressed figure.

  A ripple in the air and a slim slice of visible armour where the cloaking field of the dark assailant was failing showed Remmy where another attacker was; behind Dimitri. "Sidestep, Dimitri!" Remmy said.

  He did so, and Remmy took several shots at the dark assailant but it didn't deter it as it hacked Dimitri's head in half after three strikes against his damaged helmet. Sammi had her own nano blade out and blocked a strike from another assailant who was visible from the waist up. She was losing. Their shields had regenerated enough for them to survive a blast from a grenade, and as Remmy fired at the sword wielding bastard who was rushing back at him, he pulled a slim standard concussion grenade from his belt and tossed it into the middle of the room. "Grenade!" he shouted one second before it went off.

  It sent their assailants flying, catching one hard enough to blast an arm off and break his side wide open. His shields gone, he leapt after Dimitri's rifle and came up firing at a dark figure only two metres away who had his blade raised. The weapon did what it was made to do: shatter armour and blast people to pieces. He turned towards Sammi in time to see her decapitate her attacker.

  "I have Billy Finn," the Beast said. "His neck is in my hand. More Knights are coming. The outcome of this is certain."

  Remmy cursed himself silently for believing that the Beast was where he thought he was; right in the middle of the ship waiting for someone to blow him sky high. Of course, he was elsewhere, skulking around the ship setting up an advantage.

  The bridge doors behind them opened. Jacob Valent and Minh-Chu Buu emerged in full armour. "Let's make this our fight."

  Sixty-Two

  On The Verge

  * * *

  The Clever Dream emerged from the inter-dimensional corridor into normal space on the edge of the Haven System. "I have distress signals from an Aucharian ship called the Nova Concord," Theodore said. "There is an isolation field around the ship, that's the only way I can describe it. No transmissions are being allowed in."

  "It's not coming from that old ship," Iruuk said. He was wearing his full armour, unable to fit in his seat properly, so it was minimized to a stool. "We're too far out for accurate scans inside but I can tell that there is a firefight going on. Temperatures inside are many times what we could normally survive, changing quickly, and there are five hull breeches that indicate explosions from the inside. There's only microgravity in there."

  The tactical displays told Alice that there were nine ships on the way, one of them was at the head, it was the Noble Son, a refitted British Alliance Cruiser, still five minutes away. "Can you get a scan of what's docked with that old ship? The Nova Concord?"

  "I'm trying, it looks like Citadel type cloaking, estimating its size…" Iruuk's voice faded away. The next instant she was on her feet, as though she disappeared from her seat and reappeared at the cockpit entrance, where Iruuk stood in her way, holding her shoulders. "Are you all right? You shut down our weapons and signalled surrender."

  "I lost time," Alice said, feeling a powerful presence retreating from her mind. A glance over her shoulder was enough for her to see that Ute was guiding the Clever Dream away from the Nova Concord. "I've got you," she said, reaching out with her will, concentrating on that fading presence. In that moment she had a link with it, Alice made it impossible for its mind to retreat from hers.

  It lashed back, it felt like an iron spike was driven from the front of her mind all the way to the back and she screamed, falling to her knees. "Oh, God, that one's powerful. That Geist is not normal."

  "You already strained yourself," Theodore said. "Simple scans are showing signs of exhaustion."

  "Wait, what am I doing?" Ute said, pulling her hands from the controls. "We're going the wrong way, but I don't remember turning the ship."

  "Allow me," Lewis said. The Clever Dream flipped end over end and began thrusting towards the Nova Concord.

  Alice didn't feel whatever it was in her head anymore, it was entirely gone, so she took her seat at the co-pilot's station. Their Prometheus beams were charging up again, so she targeted the dorsal side of the Nova Concord and set them to their lowest intensity, firing right away. "Let's see if we can find the enemy," Alice said.

  "This is Gabe, down below," he said over the intercom. "We're all suited up, ready to go. Did you just signal our surrender?"

  "Sorry, wrong button," Alice replied. "We're still moving in to help our people on the Nova Concord."

  "Lewis?" Ute addressed. "I think I'm okay to take the controls, now."

  "Then you have the controls," Lewis replied.

  "I have control, thank you Lewis."

  "There's a working airlock on the aft side," Iruuk said.

  "Then that's where we're going," Alice said. The beams felt their way across a shape above the Nova Concord, affixed to it, and it matched a destroyer class Order of Eden ship. Alice could
sense where the Geist was inside; near the front, outside of its most heavily armoured tank. She targeted that spot and burned it, turning her Prometheus beams all the way up. They would drain in seconds, require a recharge, but she wanted to frighten this Geist. With a few quick adjustments she fired five Javelin torpedoes at the hull plate covering the more armoured safe tank aboard the Citadel ship and followed it with a whole round of Sabre missiles. The Citadel ship's shields began to fail thanks to the Prometheus beams, and as they burned their last, starting a recharge cycle from zero, the Sabre missiles struck the armoured plate like the head of a big drum.

  The Geist was almost there, retreating from the front of the ship, and she could sense it hesitate, slowing its swim. Javelin missiles hammered the same spot one at a time, almost blasting through that heavily armored plate. A presence tried to reach out to her mind again and she greeted it with a savage grin, remembering what it was like to feel a Geist die while it was connected to her consciousness. The Geist aboard the ship ahead of them may have been old, it may have been powerful, but the sensations she recalled with fresh clarity terrified it, and she learned something important. Geists could live forever, the thought of being killed or telepathically lobotomized was horrifying. Seeing evidence that someone had killed one of them, the Geist connecting to Alice attempted to recoil, but fear made it weak. "I am what your brother Geist made me," she told it, aware that she was speaking aloud. "A being who remembers a digital life, more than one biological life, and someone who can show you death. More than anything: I hate Geists," she told it, feeling her determination rise and her hate fade at a simple realization. If the war was to be won against the Order, against Citadel and all their allies, all the Geists had to die first. A little amusement surfaced in the Geist she was tied to, then she recalled that she had a teacher who was from Lorander and let him see her memory of Quan. All hints at levity faded. "He will train me to use my mind as a weapon that doesn't cut both ways," Alice said. A lance of pain struck her again but she refused to let go. Instead, she closed her eyes and focused. "Telepaths frighten you, don't they?" she taunted.

  The pain forced tears to spill down her cheeks, but she fought to grip the Geist harder then pushed as though she was ripping through its skin. Something was working: it recoiled, but her head felt like it was being ripped in two from the inside. "Afraid I'll see something important?" she asked it.

  "Alice! You can't take any more stress," Theodore said. "This will cause damage if you continue."

  "We're docking with the Nova Concord," Iruuk announced.

  Alice tried to let it go but found that it had a grip on her as well. Even through fear it saw reason and realized she was a serious threat. The Geist inflicted pain that was so severe that she opened her mouth to scream but couldn't make a sound. Her hands gripped her knee and the edge of the console as she rocked back and forth. "I have to sedate her!" Theodore said.

  The pain eased then, and she heard Oz's voice in her mind. "It's all right," he soothed. "I'm blocking it now. Let go, Alice."

  In that instant she saw Quan visiting Oz, spending precious time showing him how to put what he learned from Haus Geist to use, and how to use those skills for defence. It was only a beginning, but what once made Oz vulnerable to any Geist was already making him strong.

  "The Citadel ship is detaching from the Nova Concord," Iruuk announced. "There is an explosive decompression on the dorsal side of the ship."

  Alice swept the tears away from her face and looked at her tactical scanner, her head throbbing. She cancelled the sedation meds that her left command and control unit was about to administer. The Citadel ship was retreating quickly, too fast for anything to catch it. "Don’t put me out, Theodore. That Geist is bugging out now that it realizes that it's outnumbered. Just gimmie something for this next level headache," Alice said.

  "This is the last time I will do this before I must prescribe a period of rest and relaxation," Theodore said, sending medication into her arm through her command and control unit.

  "We're ready to enter, the last firefight is about thirty metres in and five up," Gabe reported. "Your, uh, special troops want to take the lead."

  "I'll be right behind you," Alice said, leaving her seat and patting Iruuk on the shoulder. "You have command, Fur-Face."

  "I thought I'd go with you."

  "Next time," Alice called over her shoulder.

  Sixty-Three

  Standoff

  * * *

  Warped decks, a firefight that was pushing parts of the ship's temperature into hundreds of degrees, the arrival of more Order Knights than he knew existed, didn't make Jacob Valent doubt himself more than the fact that he could only see one plan that could save them from further losses. Minh-Chu and Remmy were directing the remainder of their forces to fallback positions near the front of the ship as the Beast and his Order Knights pushed forward primarily on the second lowest and the middle decks.

  The Order Knights had a new trick, their shields could merge with Haven Fleet personal shields, so they were using their cloaking systems to get close to their enemies, then making contact, blasting their prey at point blank range. It was surprisingly effective, the kind of tactic that Jake shied away from when he considered using nano-blades years before.

  Jake fought alongside Sammi Reynolds and Craig Kendrick, the first was from Remmy's squadron, the second was one of the last members of Jake's. They were both incredible fighters, and the three of them marched in a line, sensors turned up high, shields set to recharge using every scrap of energy their suits could provide. They were bait, made to draw as many Order Knights off from their retreat as they could.

  The beauty of the Aucharian ship was lost. Superficial walls near the middle of the vessel were blasted through or blown out, leaving shreds of metal between supports and heavy bulkheads. They approached the middle, where the main elevator bank was, and it was a blasted pit that led to molten holes leading up and down. "We're going to get hit, this is their line," Jake said, watching his tactical scanner and a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree multi-spectrum view stretched out across the bottom of his in-helmet display. He didn't carry his rifle, but a basic sidearm in one hand with five fifteen-millimetre shell shots and he flexed his other hand, ready to spring his nano-blade and the energy weapon mounted beside it. The thing was set to close range, adjusted to break through shields.

  A shape appeared for half a second on his three hundred sixty-degree view, it was less than three metres away, rushing Sammi, who saw it as well, opening up with her rifle on its highest setting, busting the Knight's energy shield down and blasting through its armour. Another came for Craig on his right, and he got the same reception, getting even closer. An alert appeared on Jake's display and he brought up the secondary shield on his arm, set wide enough to block him and the soldiers at his sides. Three micro-missiles exploded against it, the concussion blasting his shield so hard that he was forced back a step despite the extreme strength and fortification enhancements built into his suit. "Here they come," Jake said. "A rush."

  "Now that our thermal sensors are completely blown out," Craig said, rifle at the ready. The heatsinks on the weapon were out, jagged fins extending from the top of the weapon to keep it from overheating.

  Jake's sensors showed him vibrations against the floor in front of him and he blasted the spot with an acidic gel round. An explosion of green and blue liquid filled the space in front of him, taking the shape of three Order Knights as their personal shields reacted to the caustic solution. Jake stepped forward, touched his arm mounted energy weapon to the shield and let it blast the shield down with two high-energy, point blank range hits. The Knight tried to counter, bringing his sidearm up to Jake's head, but close range was where Jake shone brightest. He snatched the weapon away, flipped it around and fired it at the Knight's neck five times in quick succession as his companions blasted the Knights to his right and left with their rifles. There were more behind those three, he realized as his armour registere
d a pulse round hit. Headless, his quarry dropped, and Jake rose his rifle to blast in an arc in front of him.

  His tactical system marked hits on four targets who were charging fast, drifting across the open hole in the middle of the broad deck through zero gravity. Jake and the pair with him opened fire on them, their explosive rounds going off against their enemy's shields. "Cover!" Jake said as the space between them was filled with white-hot pulse rounds, the Order Knights weren't hanging in space without guidance either. Small thrusters on their armour started firing, directing them down to the deck as they tried to fend Jake and his people off. The minor propulsion made them perfectly visible on scanners. "I count seven," Sammi announced as she dove behind a warped bulkhead, her suit anchoring her against it so she could immediately return fire.

  "Confirmed," Craig said. "Six in a second." He and Sammi focused fire on the nearest Order Knight, a brat who was about to throw a grenade. He was torn to shreds before it could be activated.

  "We have reinforcements coming in," Remmy said, using the hull as a conductor for communications. It was the only means of communication since the jamming started. "Four Nafalli bad asses and some serious Haven Fleet armour. Aft docking port."

  Jake dropped a weaponized skitter and directed it to cloak and go after the group of Order Knights who just took cover behind the bulk head opposite them. It would take the long way, then blast them with an electromagnetic pulse before conventional explosives would follow up. It might not kill the Knights, but it would take a bite out of their shields and drive the less experienced of them out from behind cover. "Good timing, my groups' pinned down near the old elevator banks," Jake replied. "Do not send help, I'll try to break the stalemate and move on."