Rebellion at Ailon

by T J Mott

  His jacket. It was gone.

  He awkwardly ran back to the fork truck. He felt light-headed and his legs threatened to buckle beneath him, but he pushed through his discomfort and retrieved his jacket. Quickly donning it, he unsteadily walked south across the pavement at a pace that was not nearly urgent enough for someone who was so close to a building that could collapse or explode at any moment. He removed his filter mask and tossed it to the side. He gasped for breath, his lungs feeling scorched, and all of his exposed skin felt like it was beginning to freeze as the cool breeze blew across his sweat-soaked body and caused him to shiver greatly. He knew he would have bruises beneath his ribs where the steering wheel had slammed him over and over again. Blackness crept in at the edges of his vision and stars still danced before his eyes. All around him, Ailon seemed desaturated and gray. His arms and face and lips tingled.

  But he was alive. And so were the hundreds of Ailonian slaves in cyan jumpsuits who carefully followed behind him, all afraid of stepping out of line lest they be gunned down by Avennian troops as they approached the Foundation clinic.

  He gave himself a once-over as he walked. His jacket was scorched, with blackened holes burned completely through in places, the left sleeve gone nearly up to his elbow and perfectly exposing his robotic forearm and hand. His pants, made of a thinner material with no insulation at all, were practically gone.

  They reached the makeshift clinic Ria’s crew had set up around its supply trailers, and Thad finally gave up. He found a spot on the pavement and just sat down on the ground, sweating, panting, coughing, and shivering. He planted his elbows on his thighs and held his face in his hands as he gasped. Each breath was painful, drawing cool air into his throat and lungs, air so cold that he felt like he was drowning in ice water. Blackness continued to flood in at the edges of his vision, and he couldn’t keep from shivering. He coughed, and everything seemed to grow strangely silent and dark…

  Chapter 6

  “The X-11 group reports that they have finished reverse-engineering the hyperdrive,” said Senior Captain Abano. “I ordered them to begin construction of four new units.”

  “That’s great news!” said Commodore Cooper with a broad smile. “Now we just need some ships to install them on.”

  “They have to be smaller ships for now. The technology might scale up to larger hyperdrives, but it could be some time before they’re ready to attempt that. Anyway, I pulled a couple of our couriers off their routes with plans to upgrade their ships.”

  Cooper nodded. “Courier ships are the obvious starting point, at least for our organization. So much of what we do depends on having up-to-date intelligence. If we can start getting messages around in weeks instead of months, we could have the best intelligence network in the galaxy.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  Cooper gazed into the holographic map of the Norma Empire which floated above his desk, and continued to wonder what was going on there. They’d received sporadic and incomplete reports, many of which seemingly contradicted each other depending on the source. “I want the hyperdrives and those couriers on top priority. Once they’re ready, get them assigned to our Norma network. The faster we can figure out Norma, the better shape we’ll be in to react.” He smiled. “If nothing else, we can just resell our intelligence to the other empires. Having the fastest ships in the galaxy could be worth a lot.”

  “Didn’t you learn anything from the last time Marcell sold Imperial secrets?” asked Abano. “He still has some bounties out for him in that part of the Empire.”

  Cooper chuckled. “The Organization has improved since then. He has me now. I’m not scared of the Empire.”

  “ ‘I’m not scared of the Empire.’ I will have that stamped on your gravestone, right next to a copy of the Imperial bounty contract that leads to your death.”

  “I’m not planning to sell aristocratic gossip to rival Imperials, like Marcell did,” said Cooper. “There is a lot of value to the locals here in the Independent Regions if we can help them understand the changes in the Imperial power structure, as well as internal fleet movements and plans for expansion. And I’m sure it’s worth a few credits to places like Xionne and Betellia, too.”

  Abano wrinkled his nose in disagreement. “Why should the other empires care? They’re far enough away and I don’t think Norma would ever attack them. Not in our lifetime, anyway.”

  “Everyone’s expanding into the space between the empires. They may not clash yet, but what about a hundred years from now? There are entire agencies of bean-counters tracking and extrapolating everyone else’s growth until then. As unstable as Norma is now, any intel is going to sell quickly. I want all that intel coming from us. And all that money coming to us.”

  Abano shrugged and made a face. “Anyway, back to the X-11 hyperdrive. Do you still want to strike at Academy Engineering?”

  “If we have everything we need, then yes. The Organization will be at a huge advantage if we’re the only ones with that technology.”

  “Marcell might not be happy about it. He’s been so…weird, since the Cadria Minor incident.”

  Cooper nodded his agreement. The Waverly mission had deeply affected Admiral Marcell. After returning home, he’d ordered that the Organization’s operations try to minimize loss of life and collateral damage. Cooper sometimes found the hindrance frustrating, although he agreed with the policy change for a different reason entirely. It would reduce the rate at which the Organization gained new mortal enemies. “Do it anyways. But try not to kill anyone unless absolutely needed.”

  “Very well.” Abano paused. “I’ll make sure they leave behind evidence that implicates someone else. Academy’s facilities are within the Imperial borders and I definitely don’t want them tracing anything back to us.”

  Cooper nodded his agreement. It should be a simple operation. Academy Engineering’s hyperdrive research division was very small, and relied on maintaining a low profile to protect it. But Gray Fleet knew exactly where their facilities were, and had an inside agent, too. A simple night raid could set them back years. If it all went well, Marcell’s Organization would be the only group in the galaxy with the technology for at least several more years.

  Admiral Marcell might not have plans for an empire, and neither did Cooper, at least not in the traditional sense. But if they built up fleets equipped with the new faster models of hyperdrives, and found a way to take advantage of the Norma situation, the Organization could become a large, important, and even more profitable information empire. And he who controls the flow of information controls the fate of the galaxy itself.

  ***

  Lieutenant Commander Poulsen looked over the proposed Table of Organization and Equipment and was once again glad that her new XO, Lieutenant Commander Vacek, understood how to organize her squadron, because, apart from the flight crews, she still didn’t have a clue on what kind of personnel or roles she needed to fill, or where to find people. She still felt embarrassed by her encounter with Commodore Reynolds aboard the parked gunship, having been proven completely oblivious to the enormity of the task before her.

  Vacek had been the Executive Officer on the Blue Fleet frigate Lynx until Commodore Reynolds had transferred the experienced officer to Ghost Squadron. Once complete, her squadron would have about the same number of personnel as the frigate had. So far, Vacek had comfortably fallen into the role, handling day-to-day operations while training Poulsen for her new role.

  She quickly read through the document, displayed on the screen of the tablet she found herself carrying at all times, but her eyes kept skipping over entire sections. The TOE called for a lot of personnel and resources to support the squadron, and she didn’t even pretend to understand much of what she read. Once they were more operational, she’d spend the time to visit with all the sections and better understand their needs, at least at a high level. But until then, it was all up to her XO. She just didn’t have the experience or knowledge.

  She’d
already laid out how they’d share command. Vacek would handle the groundside facilities, support personnel, and general administrative work, while she planned to take a more direct role among the gunship crews. Training pilots, teaching tactics, performing exercises in the simulators and eventually on the ships themselves—that was her domain. Not detailed budgeting or scheduling the laundry facilities.

  She had finally given in to Vacek’s advice to settle on a standard crew size of ten for each gunship. She felt that was more crew than necessary, but eventually she conceded the need to have more hands available to run the ship during the night watch or to have extra men who could assist with repairs and other tasks even during the busiest, most chaotic moments of a battle. The Hyberian Raiders had run similar gunships with smaller crews—but Marcell’s Organization was not the Hyberian Raiders.

  Looking over the table’s listing for crew roles, she frowned. It called for enlisted crew in most of the gunships’ crew slots. Enlisted members of the Organization—most of them recruited from populated star systems throughout the Independent Regions—were only obligated for a two-year contract, and that meant some of them could be gone by the time Ghost Squadron was actually trained up and operational. She wasn’t comfortable with that.

  One of the things that had made the Hyberians who they were, she thought, was the tight-knit sense of family among its members. Sure, people had come and gone, but there had always been a large core of individuals who were there since the beginning, and with that came a ruthless efficiency and an intuitive understanding of everyone’s strengths and weaknesses. “I want everyone in the flight crews to be an officer,” she said.

  “That’s generally not how a squadron like this would be organized,” Vacek replied politely but firmly. “Most of your officers will be new and inexperienced, but we have access to a lot of experienced contract-level crewmen. And they cost less.”

  She shook her head, feeling irritation begin to well up within her. “It’s not about experience, it’s about knowing each other well enough to establish a high level of trust. An officer will stick around for a while. Enlisted guys transfer between ships all the time and many quit the group when their contract’s up. I don’t want a unit full of transients that I don’t know and am constantly training.”

  Vacek sighed and Poulsen knew he would continue to push back. Standards existed for a reason, he’d say, and then she’d tell him exactly where to stick his standards.

  On the one hand, she was grateful that he wasn’t afraid to question her, but on the other hand it really grated on her nerves because it happened so often. Was she really that naive? Or was Vacek so set in his ways that he couldn’t see things from other points of view?

  On some days, dealing with Vacek was a constant strain on her temperament. But so far, she’d kept her self mostly restrained. She hadn’t snapped on him too badly yet. After the Hyberian Raiders but before Blue Fleet, she’d lost a number of starship jobs because of her lack of patience and her tendency for explosive and unfiltered—but completely justified—outbursts. But after her promotion, Commodore Reynolds had been all too clear that such behavior was not tolerated among officers in Blue Fleet, and she’d been trying to respect that.

  Vacek opened his mouth to protest further, but she interrupted. “Listen, I want the flight crew to be completely cross-trained. Everyone has their main role, but I want to make sure anyone can jump into the other seats if they need to. Anyone can relieve anyone else, and anyone can take initiative and command if the situation calls for it.” The cross-training would also help the crews to work together more cohesively, she knew. Each crewman would know what challenges each other crewman faced.

  Vacek looked unconvinced. “That’s why the manufacturer’s suggested roster includes a crew of sixteen,” he said sternly. “You have plenty of redundancy that way.”

  “But most of the crew would be sitting around doing nothing. That might make sense aboard a starship in a taxpayer-supported full-time military, but we’re frontier mercenaries, with profit margins to keep. We don’t pay people to wait around and do nothing until someone dies and they have to jump in their place.”

  He scowled. “That’s not how it—”

  “And consider this,” she continued. “We all know how tightly Headquarters’ location is guarded. There are no secrets on a gunship-sized vessel. It could cause friction if the officers are trying to maintain secrecy with uncleared crew around. It might not even be possible.”

  “Listen, Poulsen, even most of your officers will not be cleared to know Headquarters’ location!” Vacek shot back. “There’s no way that Commodore Reynolds would add a hundred individuals, officer or not, to that list, and if he tried to, Admiral Marcell himself would block it.”

  She let off a frustrated sigh and rubbed the back of her neck for a second. “Regardless, I want officers,” she said stiffly.

  “I’ll have to clear that with the Commodore, then,” he said with a huff. “It’ll affect your budgeting and payroll and training schedule and a number of other things, and with all due respect, you’re inexperienced and I’d like input from above. I don’t even know if we have a supply of officers that big, and Reynolds might not want to delay long enough to recruit that many.”

  She glared at him. Then she suddenly moved towards the door. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “I’m doing that thing called showing initiative,” she spat back. “Reynolds says good commanders do that, and so I’m going to try to oblige him.”

  Most of the Blue Fleet offices resided within the asteroid base’s main operations building and that included Ghost Squadron’s staff until their new facility was constructed. The fleet often worked closely with Marcell, who spent much of his time here. Poulsen usually didn’t have to travel far to find Reynolds when he was on the asteroid and not visiting the other Blue Fleet vessels parked in nearby space.

  She reached the top floor of the building and heard a number of voices, including Reynolds’, coming from the extra office that Commodore Cooper had claimed during Marcell’s absence. The door was open, so she walked in without knocking or announcing herself. Cooper sat behind his desk, looking, as usual, childishly amused. Several other high-ranking officers sat across from him, including Reynolds.

  Poulsen came to a stop behind them, standing tall with her arms folded over her chest, and scowled. Nobody except Cooper noticed her, and he seemed to be actively ignoring her. They were laughing about something, and despite the holographic map of the Norma Empire which hovered over a corner of the desk, it sounded like more of a social gathering than a meeting of high-level officers.

  “If none of you confesses to the crime,” said Cooper in his raspy, energetic voice, “I’ll have to call in extra help. I’ll find someone to beat the truth out of you.”

  “You need outside help for that?” said Captain Pichler, XO for the asteroid base. “I thought the Gray Fleet manuals had chapters for every known interrogation technique. Or are your training policies deficient?”

  “Hey!” interjected Senior Captain Abano, Cooper’s right-hand man. “Blame the Admiral. I had planned a series of mandatory training seminars on interrogation techniques just for occasions like this, but we’re too busy looking for Earth and such.”

  “I’m sure. And I’m sure it was titled ‘Beatings 101: How to Extract Confessions From Someone Suspected of Planting Stink Bombs in a Commodore’s Suite.’ ”

  “See, Commodore? Other people do look at my training pamphlets! I told you they were worth something!”

  “He’s just deflecting,” Pichler said. “I still think Abano did it himself.”

  Poulsen rolled her eyes and shook her head. Their antics reminded her of the kinds of things that had happened among the old timers in the Hyberian Raiders. It was the same kind of foolish shenanigans they had used to amuse themselves and boost morale during downtime, or to distract themselves from the grief of losing comrades after a mission. Except back then it came from the low
-ranking officers, not those at the very top. What would it do to the Organization’s discipline if the average crewman knew what happened among the ranks of Captains and Commodores?

  Cooper caught her eye, but only for a moment, and then returned to ignoring her. “Here’s what I’m going to do. You all have five seconds to confess. If you refuse, I have a contact on standby who needs an outlet for frustration. You’ll be confessing to crimes your grandparents did.”

  Abano leaned forward in his seat. “How are you going to comm for help,” he said, “if I do this?” He suddenly reached a hand out, grasped the power cord which ran to a socket on the back of Cooper’s desk, and yanked it. The desk’s touchscreen surface went dark and the small, floating holomap of the Norma Empire instantly evaporated.

  Cooper frowned, then smiled again after a couple seconds. “This contact is so good, I don’t need a comm. I can just snap my fingers and they’ll appear. Just like a ghost.”

  “Right,” said Abano, sounding entirely unconvinced. “I’m going to have to call your bluff on that one.”

  Cooper held up his right hand, his palm facing the others, with all five fingers extended. Then he retracted his fingers one at a time in a mock countdown. He closed his hand into a fist, and then snapped the fingers of his left hand. He winked at Poulsen.

  She shook her head in annoyance. She had work to do, and her superiors were wasting her time with stupid games. But she cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Commander Amanda Poulsen of Ghost Squadron, reporting as ordered,” she said loudly. Abano nearly fell out of his chair, and the line of officers sitting across from Cooper twisted their heads around to look behind them.

  “Good! Commander Poulsen, first order of business: I’m annexing your squadron into Gray Fleet, and your orders are to detain these men and interrogate them, harshly, if necessary, until one of them confesses to stinking up my quarters.”