"The most efficient way to gain the intel we require is to board one of the ships in question," Lucky said. This time, Mok spit some of his drink out.
"Board them?" he asked. "That's a bit extreme isn't it?"
"Only if you prefer to sit around guessing as to what the Machine intends to do with them," Lucky countered calmly.
"I assume you have a plan to get aboard an Eshquarian warship?" Fendra asked.
"We don't like to bog ourselves down too early with the details," Jason said airily. "We'll figure it out before we get there."
"Figure it out?" Fendra repeated as if she were trying out a phrase from a foreign language for the first time.
"The more I think about this, the more inclined I am to agree with you that real-time intel is needed," Mok said. "However, I think boarding, or at least attempting to board, is an unnecessary risk."
"You are entitled to your opinion," Lucky said.
"We'll leave tomorrow," Jason said, tossing back his drink and placing the glass on the side table. "Lucky would like some time to build a new arsenal in one of your engineering shops, and I want to familiarize myself with the ship types and formations we'll be seeing out there."
"I can provide that," Fendra said before turning to Mok. "Is there any chance we could do the extraction in time for me to accompany them?"
"It's likely we'll have the deactivation codes within the next few hours, so yes," Mok said. "I have to warn you, Fendra, that this crew is a bit…unpredictable."
"I can handle it," she said. "I'd take it as a personal favor, Captain, if you would take me with you."
"Look, Mok might vouch for you, but I don't have any reason to trust some Imperial spook aboard my ship and with my crew," Jason said. "Why do you need to come along?"
"Let me reword my request," Fendra said. "Either you allow me to come along or I won't give you the location of the fleet. You could spend the rest of your natural life scouring the Concordian Cluster without ever finding them. Take me with you and we can fly straight there, avoiding most of the pirate traps along the way."
"When you put it that way…welcome aboard."
6
"Councilman Scleesz…a moment, if you would."
"Yes?"
"I thought we might have a word in private before the closed session began," Admiral Didza said. The admiral was being put in charge of the space around Eshquarian Prime, and with the high-profile assignment, he'd been granted access to the High Council at a level most flag officers only dreamed of. The Machine itself had told Scleesz to make sure that Didza was given everything he asked for.
"I suppose there's time, Admiral. My office is this way."
Once they were through the security checkpoint and made it to Scleesz's inner office, the admiral became fidgety and uncomfortable. Scleesz watched him carefully for a few long moments to see if the admiral would crack first and speak. When he didn't, Scleesz deflated the tension by gesturing to a chair while he took the one across from it.
"What can I do for you, Admiral?"
"I've been told that you're…close…to the new king maker here on Miressa Prime," Didza said, choosing his words like a man negotiating a mine field. "That you seem to know when things are about to happen before anyone else."
"I'd say that those are gross exaggerations," Scleesz said. "I have the dubious honor of serving as chair on two separate committees and am privy to levels of intelligence most aren't. It's simply a matter of access to information. As for a new king maker here in the capital…I'd be very, very careful with talk like that, Admiral. Everyone and everything listens and carries tales on Miressa."
"I don't mean to insinuate anything untoward," Didza said, his words tumbling out. "I only wanted to ask if you perhaps knew how I was given this assignment. My rank is mostly honorary, something passed down in my family thanks to political connections and wealth, and I served my entire career as a low-level bureaucrat negotiating supply contracts for the Aracoria Shipyards. Now, I'm being asked to serve in a combat capacity as commanding officer of the Miressa Home Defense Force. That's quite an…honor…being asked to head up the defense of the capital world."
"You don't feel qualified to perform your duties, Admiral?" Scleesz asked. "You don't have faith that the high admiralty knows what they're doing when they choose personnel assignments?"
"I—"
"Perhaps someone has seen something in you that you do not realize you possess," Scleesz plowed ahead, trying to keep his expression and voice neutral. How had this bumbling, timid fool been given an admiral's crest, even as a legacy rank? He had no doubt his new master had put Didza in place for a specific reason. The Machine did nothing on whim or without careful consideration. The real trick now would be to see if he could discover what that was without bringing suspicion upon himself.
"That's…possible," Didza said, apparently for the first time considering he might have some use as something other than a place holder for a family name. "I did distinguish myself as an officer that put the interests of the ConFed above all when negotiating the costs of raw ore to our processing plants."
"Yes, I have no doubt that was noticed," Scleesz deadpanned. "As you know, the ConFed is in the midst of a restructuring when it comes to how military assignments are determined. Given the tensions in the quadrant as of late, leadership has decided that our fleet's highest ranks should be determined by merit, not a prize to be bought or won by wealthy families. Rest assured, Admiral, that if you were given this assignment, it was for good cause."
"I thank you, Councilman," Didza stood and actually bowed. "I won't waste any more of your time." The admiral spun on his heel and marched out of the office. The moment the door to the outer office slid shut, Scleesz let out an explosive breath.
"What a hopeless idiot," he muttered. He was careful to say nothing else aloud as he was certain the Machine had somehow compromised the security of his office and listened to every word uttered in it.
Scleesz had at least been honest with the poor, clueless admiral about one thing: if he'd been chosen for that assignment, it was for a reason. What that reason could possibly be was beyond him, however. The Eshquarian situation was an unmitigated disaster. The Machine had ordered the strike through its puppets in the Military Affairs Committee, and it had been fast tracked from the council to the ruling tribunal where all five Grand Adjudicators had voted unanimously to uphold the strike order.
While the initial surprise attack had been an overwhelming success, the aftermath had been anything but. Their own fleet had failed to track down and destroy the Eshquarian military, the bulk of which escaped, and that forced them to maintain a much larger peace keeping force in Imperial space than they could afford to. The other sovereign powers, the Saabror Protectorate and Cridal Cooperative most notably, were now aware that the ConFed was no longer content being just an economic bully and intended to rule by force. Intelligence reports indicated the Cridal could be reaching out and building secret alliances in the face of this aggression.
What most people didn't know, what he himself had only recently become aware of, was that the ConFed military wasn't nearly as immense or powerful as they made others believe. It was a lot of smoke and mirrors and bluster. A good portion of their in-service hulls were obsolete classes and not being maintained very well. Centuries of being the only superpower had left the military fat and complacent, unable to meet its obligations despite the enormous percentage of the budget they absorbed. If the Eshquarian situation couldn't be resolved quickly and the modern battlegroups recalled back to the Core Worlds, he was certain that others would begin to realize they'd been cowering all this time under a threat that didn't actually exist.
This put Scleesz in a difficult position. He might have been a bit hasty when he'd agreed to join Saditava Mok's insurrection, and now his dual loyalties were racing towards a conflict with each other. Open war would be the end of the ConFed and, for some time, it would be a return to the pre-unification days where the stron
g preyed on the weak at will with no thought that someone might step in. The ConFed was corrupt beyond belief but, for the most part, it kept the peace and stopped the large-scale events like planetary genocide. If he continued to help Mok, and that crazy human, Burke, kick off a rebellion, he feared that it would lead to an even greater level of suffering than if they simply learned to exist within the new rules.
There was also the factor that he would likely not survive no matter who was eventually victorious thanks to his proximity to the Machine. He may have given the appropriate platitudes about honor and doing the right thing, but the reason he found himself in this position in the first place was because he was a being of flexible morality with a strong survival instinct. He had no doubt Burke would die for his ideals, and Mok accepted a certain level of risk tied to his own lifestyle, but Scleesz very much liked his comfortable life and had no desire for it to end. So, now, his choice was to either pick a side and commit to it, or just ignore both and continue to look out for himself above all else.
"Councilman, your presence is required in the Grand Assembly."
"Thank you, I'll be right there," Scleesz said to the AI assistant that ran his office. He went to the hidden bar and poured himself a stiff double, knocking it back in a single gulp before straightening his robes and leaving the office. On the walk from the administrative complex where the councilmembers had their offices to the Grand Assembly, the hall where the council deliberated, he realized just how much he missed the days prior to the Machine's arrival when the most pressing thing on his mind was which of his mistresses he'd be visiting that night.
"We're tracking forty-two targets on passives."
"That's all of them," Fendra said. "At least in this group. When the ConFed seized control of the ships they shuffled them around so that all the cruisers, destroyers, and the two battleships were in this formation. The frigates and support ships were moved someplace else."
"And these ships were all left with skeleton crews?" Jason asked.
"Just enough spacers left aboard each to keep the reactors in maintenance mode and the air breathable," Fendra confirmed. "No engines, no weapons, and no coms. From the power readings we're seeing here—or lack of them—I'd say that they're still in that same storage mode."
The Phoenix hung in space a few million klicks from where Fendra had promised they would find the missing Imperial fleet, and she'd delivered. Forty-two capital warships sat in interstellar space along the edge of the gaseous region that denoted one of the navigational boundaries of the Concordian Cluster. The intense white light from a nearby Type-F star lit the nebula formations up from within and gave the scene outside the canopy a surreal aspect.
"This is creepy," Twingo said. "What could possibly be the purpose of keeping these ships intact and space worthy?"
"The ConFed in planning something, but damned if I know what it is," Jason said. "Lucky, you're still sure about this?"
"The same thing that makes the ships difficult to find will be the same thing that makes them easy to approach," Lucky said. "They will have limited passive sensor coverage and no active scans running."
"It's a good thing they were too stupid to move all the ships away once they'd taken procession," Jason said.
"The only ships powered up were the ones that were moved away," Fendra said. "I agree that it is strange they left the more powerful ships here and took all the smaller support ships out of the area."
It had been an odd, seven-day flight from Mok's compound out to the Cluster with their unwanted guest. Fendra had no problem living aboard the spartan gunship, as an intelligence officer she'd likely suffered through much worse, but she was an unknown, untrusted presence within the crew's inner sanctum and that automatically created an air of tension. Jason had tried to probe around the edges a little bit and see if he could uncover a little more about Mok's past since the pair obviously knew each other, but she'd shut down those conversations whenever he'd brought it up.
"Okay," Jason said. "Bringing up engine two in low power mode." He pushed the switch for number two up to the 'START' position and held it for a moment until he saw plasma pressure building in the injector manifold on his instruments. He released the switch and let it snap back to the 'RUN' position as the engine continued to spool up.
Since the dormant ships weren't running active tachyon scans, and even passive sensors gave off a detectable energy signature, they were going to try and push the Phoenix ahead on the thrust of a single main engine, and then shut it down to cold coast much of the way. They couldn't risk the grav-drive as that was easily detected once they got in too close, and flying in under full burn with all four main engines lit would put up a thermal bloom even the most rudimentary infrared sensor would see. So, it was a long, boring flight across a few million kilometers that would take at least another full day to complete.
"Number two is up and stable, output is choked down to twelve percent," Twingo said. "That's the lowest I can give you and still keep it lit."
"It'll have to do," Jason said executed the navigation script Kage had programmed and sent to the pilot's station. The power output of the barely-idling engine was so low there was no perception that they were even underway. Normally, the deck would vibrate and the hull would groan to let them know that they were, indeed, moving. The dead silence was a bit eerie. "When we're within a million klicks, we'll shut down and begin powering off all the non-essentials."
"Thanks for the recap of the plan we've only been talking about for the last four days straight," Crusher said over his shoulder. "Truly we would be lost without your august leadership."
"Fuck off."
"I'm still not in love with this plan, Captain," Crusher said, knocking on Jason's helmet with a knuckle.
"You're free to suit up and go in my place."
"Good luck out there," Crusher said, turning and walking out of the armory.
"I have accounted for as many variables as I could think of," Lucky said. "I believe that our chances of survival are quite good."
"Quite good is an improvement over our usual odds," Jason said. "I'll take it. How're you doing over there?"
"This isn't my first combat EVA, Captain Burke." Fendra sat on a bench, outfitted in a lightweight tactical EVA suit.
"I was more asking about how the suit fit you not your mission qualifications," Jason said.
He was decked out in the replacement powered armor graciously given to him by the Disa Arms Company when one of their suits had failed critically after taking a single hit. At first, they'd been recalcitrant, unwilling to accept that the fault had been theirs. After Jason had threatened to hit the personal residence of the sales rep that sold him the armor from orbit, however, they became much more accommodating.
The armor was a medium-duty model that gave a decent mix of protection, strength enhancement, and situational awareness without being so bulky and cumbersome he couldn't move about within the ship. He had one of his trusty railgun carbines and a high-power plasma rifle secured to the maglocks on his back as well as two sidearms affixed to each thigh. Lucky needed no external support to operate in space, of course, but he now needed to carry weaponry with him. He'd not had the time to build his own weaponry as he'd planned, so he carried a similar loadout as Jason, including one of the spare railguns with the larger grips used by the Galvetic Legions.
"We're coming up on the release point, Captain," Doc's voice came over the intercom. "Better get outside."
"Copy," Jason grunted and stood up, checking over his gear one more time. While he'd never admit it to the others, EVA operations still scared the living shit out of him no matter how many times he did them. The ones like this that were in interstellar space were even worse than the orbital ops. He hated every single minute of floating about, waiting for some incorrectly installed seal to fail and his blood to boil within his body when he lost pressurization.
The trio made their way to the port engineering bay and the airlock for access to the dorsal hull.
With Lucky going first, they took turns cycling through the hatch and getting up onto the top of the Phoenix. The gunship still hurtled towards the formation of dormant warships on a ballistic course, the ionic jets firing every so often to adjust their attitude. Jason activated the maglocks on his sabatons and clomped over to where Lucky was already inspecting the package that Twingo had prepped and mounted to the hull. Once he was close enough, the battlesynth reached out and touched his armor.
"Everything checks out, Captain," he said over the com link. "We can depart once Fendra reaches us."
"Cool trick," Jason said back, pointing at his friend's hand. Since any RF or even short-range com laser emissions might be detected, the team had to be in direct contact to communicate with each other via an inductive coupling. Lucky's old body had only been able to do this through the palm of the left hand while the new body was able to do it no matter what part was touching.
A moment later, Fendra walked smoothly over to them, pointed to the sled attached to the hull, and then made a fist indicating she was good to go. Jason nodded and gestured for Lucky to take his place. They each held on to the ungainly machine while Jason sent the command for it to detach from the hull. As soon as it cleared, it automatically fired compressed air jets to get them clear of the gunship and line them up with the preplanned approach to one of the battleships.
He fought off a wave of vertigo and the panic that hit him when he saw the Phoenix slowly drift down and away from them, quickly swallowed up by the inky blackness around them. People really had no idea just how unfathomably dark space really was until they got out of a ship and experienced it in the gaps between the stars. Jason couldn’t even see the front of the sled he was currently hanging on to, and it was barely a meter in front of him.
"How's everyone doing?" he asked, his voice transmitted to his teammates through the sled.
Omega Force: Rebellion (OF11) Page 7
