Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework

by Randolph Lalonde

  Two loader suits repurposed with roughly built flak guns took the opportunity to run for the security of the wall. One was peppered with rounds before he made the jump while the other leapt over cleanly. The pilot turned the loader around, climbed a support and reached back over for her partner.

  “Heavy support on sector twenty-three!” Oz called as he tried to press the framework soldiers firing on the failing loader suit. The pilot was opening the chest hatch so he could flee the failing armour. The suppressive fire drove most of the frameworks back behind cover, and the pilot chanced an escape. He was one of Frost’s loaders from the Triton gunnery deck, Timothy Dillon. He reached for the loader suit stretching over the wall for him, and it caught his vacsuit-clad arm.

  Three shots ripped through his legs and side as his partner pulled him over the wall, but according to Crewcast, he had a good chance of making it; the stasis systems were already taking over. Their infirmary would have to take care of him, the medical system on Timothy’s comm unit was burned out from over-use.

  The portable energy shield beside Oz took several shots. The runner flinched, Oz didn’t. He checked the line leading from the truck’s batteries to the small shield generator and saw the power reading was good. “Where’s my cover?” he shouted.

  Alaka’s son returned fire from his position behind a steelcrete slab, forcing the frameworks with a good shot on Oz back under cover.

  “Your ammo will be a few more minutes,” the runner replied.

  “Materializer fourteen is burned out, we’re down to one.”

  “Who got that ammo?” Oz asked.

  “Commander Rice’s unit,” the runner replied, choosing his moment to run then dashing back towards the hangar.

  “Ladies first, I guess,” Oz said to himself as he took aim at a framework leaning a little too far out from a chunk of an upturned landing platform. The platform and frameworks hiding behind it were ripped to shreds as a battered Uriel fighter strafed in low. Oz had just enough time to recognize the skull and crossed samurai swords emblem on the nose of the fighter. “Hello, Samurai Squadron,” he said into his comm.

  “How goes the war?” Ronin replied, slowing his fighter down and landing it abruptly behind the wall of their shelter.

  “I keep running out of ammo, burned through two rifles. It’s a gallery shoot for the most part,” Oz replied. “You’re going to have to join me up here, bring guns.”

  Minh-Chu was out of the cockpit of his Uriel fighter in a moment, carrying a fresh Triton rifle. He climbed up the side of the hover truck and got in position behind Oz. “Which area are you covering?” he asked.

  Ground crews started looking over his fighter, which had more than one hole and a burned out engine pod. “Sector twenty one, but I’m monitoring a lot more. Marking it on your tactical,” Oz said. He returned fire at a framework that broke cover to rush the no-man’s-land between the wreckage of the shanty port and the Triton Settlement wall. He fired wildly, trying to frighten his foes back behind cover as he made his run. There was a box in his other hand.

  Oz’s shots along with those of several other defenders riddled the framework female and the bomb she was trying to deliver exploded in a white and blue flash. A nine-metre section of the wall was blown inward, crashing against the side of the Day Hauler, one of the ships they hadn’t gotten around to working on yet. The hull held up, but the breach in the wall had to be repaired. “Third time today,” Oz said, intensifying his fire at the frameworks with an easy shot at the gap. Four loader suits were already on their way to move armour plating ripped from one of their oldest ships, Jayne’s Run, to begin repairing that section of the wall.

  “Have any of those soldiers made it to the wall with one of those bombs?” Minh-Chu asked, joining in with his own rifle.

  Oz cringed at the thought. “No, but they’re effective against the wall for fifteen metres, now I’m stuck here covering our maintenance guys while they try to rebuild that.”

  A runner arrived with a heavy crate of cartridges slung on his back. “Framework killers,” she announced, handing Oz four cartridges. “Our last mass materializer is dead.”

  “So, that’s it?” Oz said.

  “No, we got thirty five thousand rounds out of it before it went,” she replied with a grin.

  “Finally, a lucky break,” Oz said. “Now make sure you and the other runners tell our guys we only got thirty five hundred,” Oz said. “The frames might have a surprise up their sleeve.”

  “Yes, Sir,” the runner said, moving on in a hurry.

  Oz pulled his clip of explosive rounds and chucked the fresh framework killer clip into his rifle. “Lay down cover fire to the right, give the left a chance to think they can take a shot.” He could tell Minh-Chu was struggling, trying to figure out which of the hundreds of targets Oz was talking about, and he marked the frameworks on his tactical system. “Sorry, I’ve been doing this for so long that I forget there’s anything else,” he said.

  Minh-Chu’s aim left something to be desired, but he was out of practice. Oz had been practicing for hours, and he sent bursts into his targets the moment they broke cover in attempts to take a shot. To his great satisfaction, the frameworks twitched and died. “How are things up top?” Oz asked.

  “I thought you’d get the signal from here,” Minh-Chu said.

  “We haven’t gotten much since the Leviathan pulled into orbit. Something has been jamming everything outside of the atmosphere,” he replied. “I’ve been hoping to hear something from the Triton.”

  “The Triton never came up on my scanners. The Sunspire came back, they brought the British, and the first Lorander warship I’ve ever seen. I’ve had at least three near-death experiences since I last saw you,” Minh-Chu said, laughing. “Help is coming.”

  “What’s the Warlord doing so far down range?” Oz asked.

  “Alice is alive again, or something like Alice,” Minh-Chu replied. “Who knows? But she found a great big escape ship that’s dug into the ground. Jake is going in, he plans to clear it out and claim it.”

  Oz’s heart lightened at reminder that Alice was alive in one shape or another, and his steady calm was shaken by the news that Jacob was storming an objective with only the crew of the Warlord. “Oz to Slick,” he said into his communicator.

  “Slick, here.”

  “I need you to intensify firepower on anything our rifles can’t reach in our outer radius. Slag the field so we can get a team together to take an objective down-field. Put a rush on it.” He highlighted a ring outside of their firearms’ reach, knowing that frameworks were gathering, heading towards the Triton settlement.

  “One ring of fire coming up. Frameworks can’t survive if they’re a pile of slag,” Slick replied.

  Explosions sounded in the distance, followed by tall pillars of fire and flying debris.

  “We can have another bird ready for you in twenty minutes, Sir,” said a maintenance worker to Minh-Chu from behind Oz. He didn’t have time to look. He was too busy watching for frameworks who were brave enough to poke their heads out from cover. The constant sounds of firing rifles had changed to quick, short bursts echoing all across the wall as soldiers got their ammunition upgrades. “This is turning,” Oz said to himself, suppressing the surge of hope threatening to break his concentration.

  “I’ll give you a hand,” Minh-Chu told the maintenance worker. “Be down in a sec.” He turned to Oz. “There’s a Captain McPatrick commanding the Sunspire, you know him?” he asked.

  Oz thought a moment and realized who it had to be with a surge of dread. “You had to go and ruin my day,” Oz said. “He’s my uncle, the asshole of the family. Great commander, though.”

  Oz spotted a framework soldier with a larger than normal rifle as the muzzle flared when he fired and leapt from the hover truck. The projectile exploded into the hollow cavity of the truck and sent him end over end through the air. Nanobots attended to the weakened portion of his armour, and his personal shield read at zero,
but he rushed to cover unharmed.

  “That was close,” he said as Minh-Chu joined him. He made sure someone else killed that framework on his tactical system and nodded to himself.

  “I guess that’s what happens when they punch a hole through the wall,” Minh-Chu said.

  “Yeah, I’m going to miss that perch, but I should have known better than to stay up after the wall went down. Guess I just got complacent.”

  “I’ve had more near-misses since this thing got started,” Minh-Chu said, nodding. “I’ll just be glad when it’s over.”

  “Speaking of which, you have a fighter to get ready, and I’ve got to find another position,” Oz said. “Good hunting.”

  “Keep your head down,” Minh-Chu replied.

  Chapter 54

  Confrontation

  He knew it was Alice. Jake wasn’t one of those people who were always conscious of how different people made him feel just by being in the room, but there was no mistaking the feeling his daughter transmitted to him as anything but what it felt like to be near her when she was alive as a human. There was a subtle difference he couldn’t ignore, however. She seemed more innocent. Jason’s message had come true.

  The Warlord had done her job, bombarding the area then dropping off her full compliment of marines. Joyboy and a couple of other fighters on loan from The Skyguard meted punishment out to any enemy soldiers who ran from the crater, or managed to somehow escape the devastation of the initial bombardment.

  “Warlord, head out, assist our air cover with clearing Port Rush,” Captain Valent said into his comm.

  “On our way, we’ve got four more mines together, so we’re going to take care of a few drop pods,” Frost said.

  “Just watch for survivors, I don’t want the Warlord to become known for collateral damage.”

  “Aye, watch my aim, got it,” Frost replied as the Warlord’s engines fired, sending the battered ship towards the Triton settlement.

  “Since when do you care about public opinion?” Stephanie asked, amused. She was supervising her marine techs as they hacked into one of the installation’s secondary doors.

  “I had a spare second,” Jake replied.

  “You know Frost doesn’t want collateral damage, either. He actually wants to be seen as a hero someday. He’ll never let on, but I think that’s more important to him than cash.”

  Jake didn’t know how to respond to that, but his expression of surprise must have spoken volumes.

  “Don’t tell him I said anything,” Stephanie said.

  “No problem,” Jake replied. He spotted Alice running down the inside of the crater, firing several shots behind her with two pistols. A Ramiel fighter swooped down firing, taking care of whatever Alice was firing at.

  Alice faced forward, and Jake could see her smile from over fifty metres away as she looked straight at him. She was all teeth, cheeks, and eyes.

  “She’s speeding up,” Stephanie said. “And I’ve never seen anyone run that fast.”

  Jake braced himself and deactivated the auto-hardening system in his armour.

  “You’re sure it’s her?” Stephanie asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “She’s not slowing down,” Agameg said, his eyes widening. “A collision is certain.”

  An excited squeal a second before impact was the only warning. The force of her enthusiastic embrace pressed him two steps backwards, and he wrapped his arms around her. She was more than a full head shorter, and seemed so small, disappearing into his long coat with her arms tightly wrapped around him.

  Alice breathed as though she was recovering from a very long run, and she rested against him. Everyone watched silently as father and daughter were reunited, until a surprised Agameg said, “You’ve shrunken. I’ve verified with scans. You are definitely smaller.”

  She laughed and stepped away from Jake, wiping tears away, still out of breath. “I think the framework picked up on me wanting to have a childhood, so when I died here the first time, it made me a lot younger. I’m just glad I didn’t come back as a five year old.”

  Jake looked at her and definitely saw someone who might be fifteen, perhaps sixteen. She held a pair of pistols like she was born to them though, and there were so many things about the way she stood, her general manner, that seemed familiar. He put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry no one got to you sooner,” he said.

  “S’okay,” Alice replied, slipping in under his arm. “I’ll take a break here and head back out. Maybe not alone this time, but I know I can help clear up Port Rush and start rescuing people. There are a lot of trapped folk out there.”

  Jake was surprised and irritated at the same time. “We’ll start arranging teams once we’re finished here,” he replied.

  “That was your ‘and that’s an order’ voice,” Alice said, crossing her arms, taking a step away and regarding him defiantly.

  “Whoa,” Stephanie said, almost stepping between them. “Okay, when we’ve cleared this bunker, we’ll get properly geared up with medical supplies and start clearing out Port Rush, helping some people. Until then, we’ve got a target in there.”

  “Hampon,” Jake reinforced.

  “You’re right, I want a piece of him. Killing Meunez wasn’t enough,” Alice said. She adjusted her vacsuit so two flimsy holsters formed and dropped her blade shooters into them. “Just get those doors open and me and my dad will go get ‘em.”

  “We’re doing this carefully,” Jake said. “There’s no telling how prepared he is.”

  Alice nodded and sighed. “As long as I get a shot in.”

  The doors opened, and Jake turned towards them. “I’ll take point, you fall in with Stephanie and Agameg’s units,” he said, hoping that he wouldn’t meet more resistance.

  To his surprise, she rushed in front of him, turned, popped up on tip-toes and kissed him on the cheek. “Aye-aye, Captain!” she chirped before falling in with Agameg’s unit. He pressed the confusion and surprise at the range of attitudes Alice displayed in less than three minutes to the side and activated all the features of his armour. He strode through the doors, drawing his sidearm and paying close attention to his tactical system.

  No one came up on the scanners - not a single soldier, framework or crewmember - and his scan results reached down three hallways, into eight different compartments. The armoured entrance hatch slammed together, isolating him from everyone outside. The clank of heavy bolts inside the hull and the smell of smoke told him something worse was going on. He touched the door panel and discovered that the bolts securing the doors were in place, and an emergency security measure welded them there.

  He turned and tried to pry the doors apart despite the pain of overexertion. His enhanced muscles made the surrounding flesh feel as though it was ripping. Even with the addition of the enhancements in his armoured vacsuit, he couldn’t get the doors to budge.

  “Stephanie, check in,” he said over his comm.

  “We’ve got hostiles coming from the other side of this thing, about two hundred,” she said. “Holding them off, but they’ve got-“ her communication garbled and the channel closed.

  “They’re dead, Valent,” Hampon’s voice said over the intercom. “Unless you kill me and take control of the frameworks outside.”

  He used the intercom system through the door panel to connect to internal security scanners and verified that he was talking to Lister Hampon. Hampon was standing in the absolute centre of the drop pod. Rows of crew seating surrounded a command where he calmly looked up into a security sensor.

  Jake removed his hand from the door panel and whirled around. He set his sidearm to burn through metal and fired beside the doorway, where there were two thinner sections of metal to burn through as opposed to the solid door. The thermite rounds hissed, sparked, and burned.

  “You won’t get through for another hour that way, the outside of this garrison ship is a metre thick,” Hampon said. “You’re going to have to face me if you want to save your pe
ople.”

  “Watch what you wish for,” Jake said. He knew Hampon was right, and there were no other options. He reset his Violator Handgun and used his connection to the door panel to find a map of the installation. As soon as he knew how to get to Hampon, he rushed down the hallway, watching his corners. There was no telling how Hampon was manipulating the security systems. Jake could only see what his opponent wanted him to.

  The darkened halls all led to the central lifts. An emergency shaft running parallel to them would take him down. He was passing into the central chamber when one of the bulkhead doors slammed down on top of him, driving him to his knees. He could feel Hampon in the ship systems, forcing the computer to override safety systems, and pushing the motors to press the heavy door down.

  He heard his knees pop as the motors worked harder, his vacsuit warned him that the synthetic muscle built in was being pushed to near failure as he fought the door. “It’s time to stop using your body as a blunt instrument, Mister Valent,” Lister Hampon said. “Or is it Valance? I remember when you were just a pile of synthetic bones, an experiment waiting to happen.”

  Jake hated the fact that he was right. There were so many things he could do that he barely understood. The motors in the door struggled, whining as he pushed back. All he could physically do was keep the door from crushing him for another minute at best, and hope the motors burned out.

  “Use your comm node, Dad!” he heard his daughter in his mind.

  “Don’t have one,” he replied aloud.

  “No cheating!” Hampon said. “No outside transmissions!”

  A mental image of Alice’s communications node appeared before she was cut off and he realized that it was the doorway to everything he needed. “Gotcha,” he said as he forced his framework body to create a node exactly the same as Alice’s. As soon as it came online he could feel his vacsuit, the systems in his command and control unit and so much more without any distraction. He was suddenly living in two worlds at once, connected to everything electronic and wireless as though they were nothing more than external appendages.