“Teeg! I’m picking up a ship’s signature on the long-range navigational sensors.”
Tegan Mallory woke instantly from the light, meditative sleep she used during the longer, routine trips. She should’ve been able to sleep through the entire trip to the Gravel Fields asteroid belt and this made her more than a little irritable. “Cloak!” she barked a little more forcefully than she meant to, “and come out of hyperspace. There shouldn’t be any ships out here. I want to see what we’re dealing with.”
~/~
The soothing sounds of the waterfall had little effect on Kat’s nerves. She usually loved waterfalls, but, at the moment, she was in a righteous anger.
“I already know what you’re going to say,” came the familiar voice, “but it was the logical thing to do.”
Kat stood with her arms akimbo as she turned and faced Cel. “Logical, my eema! What the frell were you thinking? You sent Issa and the others against Tegan Mallory of all people! Have you lost your frelling mind?!”
“Shhh! Keep it down, Kat. Those freq scramblers will mask us from listening devices, but it won’t mask your shouting.”
Kat hissed in response. “Ok. Is this better? How ’bout I quietly kick your ass now?”
Cel simply stood there, all cool reserve. “You can try, if it’ll make you feel better, but I doubt it would. Now, you want to waste our precious time or hear me out? I’ll let you decide.”
Kat hated when Cel was like this. Deep down, she knew she was right. Fighting would accomplish little, except fill in the blanks that Kat’s organization had in Cel’s file. Kat didn’t know how much martial training Cel had received throughout her career, but this certainly wasn’t the way to find that out. So, it would be plan B. “Go on,” she said.
“In order to get close to Relia, Issabella and the others will need a ship that will allow them to do that. Solara knows all the ships that we have at our disposal. If any similar ones show up in proximity to the cruiser, it would just be blown to bits and we’d lose Issa and the others. Tegan’s spec forces transport fits the bill. It’s armed, it has a cloaking device, it’s hyperspace-capable, it has hidden storage compartments and it doesn’t need a large crew.”
“And Tegan Mallory is a rival,” Kat continued for her, “and the Dragonthorn is Tegan’s pride and joy and you owe her one from that incident on Valeria-III. Tell me, does that scar still itch?”
Cel’s features darkened. Some scars never truly heal. Levelly, she explained, “Yes, Tegan Mallory is a rival. So what? Am I to overlook the fact that she is sailing nearby without the rest of her fleet in a ship that is perfect for our needs? If we had had the time to pick and choose, I suppose we could have picked an easier target. Unfortunately, we have to play the hand we’re dealt. So, Tegan it is.”
“And at the end of everything, you have one less rival to deal with,” Kat accused.
Cel replied, “Kat, if Relia isn’t stopped, it won’t matter. It will be the end of everything.”
~/~
“Any life signs, Shara?” Tegan asked as she watched the battered transport drift in the void. More than once, she’d turned a few of these into a debris field, but seeing a whole ship drift in the expanse between the stars made the hairs on her neck stand up. She fought the urge to launch a drone or two at it, just to ease her mind.
“None. The power signature seems to indicate that the life support system is still in operation, though, powered by an automated fusion reactor. It also appears to be unarmed and the main engines are cold. It’s definitely an old hulk.”
Tegan pulled a gold-plated century coin from her pocket and twirled it between her fingers. “And the transponders?”
“Faint. The data signature is a mess.” Shara paused, then suggested, “We could go in closer. That would help.”
I’m sure it would, Tegan thought to herself. But who? What are you doing out here, little ship? Who are you hiding from? Or rather, who were you hiding from? “Kenna?” Tegan said after tapping a comm-link, “what’s the status on the assault pod recovery system?”
A synthesized voice answered, “It’s still off-line. There’s no way I can fix it out here. We need to get back to base asap.”
“Ok, Kenna, do what you can in the meantime.” What to do? Destroy the transport and any free cargo worth salvaging or get a transponder id and see if the dataheads can find an old manifest somewhere. Or perhaps an old smuggler’s story. Even smugglers lamented lost cargo.
“Shara, arm a couple of drones and take us in closer. Also, wake the rest of the crew and get them ready. Free cargo always seems to have a price to pay.”
~/~
“Anything, Shara?” Tegan asked.
Shara didn’t respond immediately, engrossed as she was in the readouts before her. “Got it! It’s the Percival, a Lancelot-class courier transport. The Lancelots were flashy kit sold to governments and such about 100 or so years ago. They were sold to private interests after their normal life spans. Several were used by smugglers due to their size, fast engines and assorted weapons packages. They were quite suited to field customizations.
“The Percival was declared lost about 25 years ago, but it was suspected that she had disappeared some time before that. Its last known owner sold her about 20 or years before her disappearance.” Shara paused as she read on. Suddenly, she said excitedly, “The loss of the Percival is tied to several lost illicit cargos, including the plunder of a Mentath archeological site. This plunder included a metric ton of platinum and gem-encrusted figurines, whose value is priceless.”
“Calm down, Shara. We’ve dealt with both scuttlebutt and false transponder readings before.” Still, she thought to herself, there is nothing out here. Absolutely nothing. It is the perfect place to run a smuggling route, or a trap. “Do we have a visual on the probable weapons mounts?”
“Yes. I see what looks like phased laser mounts and drone pack hardpoints. The drone packs are empty. All weapons systems show significant charring.”
“Battle damage?” Tegan asked with a raised eyebrow. The coin danced among her twitching fingers.
“I don’t think so. The patterns on the laser mounts are identical. Like overload flares. The drone pack hardpoints are near the laser mounts. The overload flares could have induced a drone launch. Also, if the overload was significant enough, enough toxic gas could have entered the living quarters to kill off the entire crew.”
“And if the ship was in automated hyperspace, the crew would have been unable to react and the ship would have dropped out of hyperspace wherever it happened to be.” Tegan’s fingers tingled with excitement. She caught the coin in mid-twirl and palmed it tightly. “Threat analysis?”
Shara spun in her seat to face her captain and friend and smiled excitedly. “Zero.”
Tegan returned the smile and fingered the comm-link. “Boarding party, mount up! Full weapons load and atmo gear. Sven, you have the point. Sensors show no life signs, but be wary anyway. Secure command points first, cargo areas second. Understood?”
“Understood,” came the reply.
“Excellent. Shara? Hook us up to that beastie.”
~/~
Being dead sucked, Issabella thought. Or, perhaps, dying and going to hell sucked. She was fairly certain that hell probably felt close to what she had been feeling for the past six hours or so. Or was it six days? She made a note to punch Budo in the head when this was all over, even if her secret concoction was the sole reason behind their success. Issa wasn’t sure how this would react with Budo’s rediscovered Nipponese warrior ethos, but she knew that she didn’t care.
The antidote was just as bad. Was it supposed to feel like receiving CPR from King Kong? Each pulse felt like her heart was being squashed and inflated like a spastic athletic ball as it fought to reestablish normal cardiac rhythms. Oh yeah, Budo was going to get her ass whooped.
After she fell asleep first, of course. Issa wasn’t stupid.
The sounds of laser rifle exchanges snapped her out of her self-misery. She opened her eyes and saw Budo looking back into hers. Budo was smiling. She did that more often now, it seemed.
“Feeling better?” she asked.
“Oh yeah. Tons.” Issa replied sarcastically. As Budo was still smiling at her, she snapped, “What’s so funny?”
“You talk in your sleep. Anytime you feel the need to whoop my ass, let me know.” Budo then drew her katana. “Are you ready?”
Issabella looked around and saw that Lippy and Luthy had gone already. In the distance, she could hear the telltale sound of the plasma-sword. Issa grabbed her Stinger Stick and said, “Yeah. Let’s go!”
Issa and Budo caught up to the L-Team near the airlock. “Where’s Obielle and JK?”
Luthy jutted her chin toward the airlock gangway. Inside, JK and Obielle were dealing with three armed men in hand-to-hand combat. JK was armed with two tempered steel combat knives, while Obielle was using two vorsashi, the traditional swords wielded by Kiwalli high priestesses. Separately, each was a study in martial skill. Together, they were air and water, fire and ice, brute force and elegant menace, complementary forces working as one.
Issabella was struck dumb at the sight. At first, she watched Obielle with increasing awe, but her eyes eventually migrated over to JK. His muscular fitness coupled with the force of his parries and thrusts brought a warmth to her face and elsewhere. With a mild shock, Issabella realized how she was reacting to the sight. Guiltily, she looked around and saw Budo smiling at her. Luthy was also looking at her, but with a quizzical look on her face.
“You ok, Issa?”
Issa swallowed hard. “Yeah, I’m ok.” Looking up, she saw that the combat was finished. JK and Obielle were signaling them to come and board the enemy ship.
As they walked up the gangway tube, Budo and Lippy led the way as Luthy fell in beside Issa. “Seriously, you ok?” she asked. “You look a little flushed.”
“Yeah,” Issa answered. “I think I finally see what Obielle sees in JK.” To Luthy’s questioning look, Issa replied quietly, “Pwoar.”
~/~
“Shara! Jettison the gangway! Now!!”
Shara hit the button three times, tried a few others, then beat the console with her fist. “I can’t, Teeg! The frelling console is not responding to my commands.”
Tegan Mallory leapt from her seat and ran the three steps to the auxiliary console. Quickly, she loaded in the nav/weapons profile. In the microns it took to configure itself, she opened up a storage locker behind the station and tossed Shara a phased laser pistol. “Cover the door!”
So, little spider, you think you’ve laid a beautiful web, do you? Well, this wasp still has some stingers left. Tegan armed the port side drone pack and aimed it at the transport docked alongside.
Feeling the familiar vibrations, Shara shouted, “Teeg! No!! You’ll kill us all!”
With a grim resolve, Tegan Mallory deliberately pressed the launch icon on the glass panel. In response, each of the twelve rockets hurled themselves from the pack to various structural elements of the Percival. The engines, the command module, the reactor and the airlock gangway each received some amount of attention from the projectiles.
~/~
As soon as the airlock doors had sealed behind them, the ship rocked from the concussion of several near-proximity explosions. Everyone was thrown to the deck as the ship’s horizon lurched and the gravity systems struggled to regain normal 1G operation. The lights flickered, went black and returned.
Issa shook her head to clear the cobwebs and the hissing noise in her ears. After two more shakes, it was apparent that the hissing wasn’t a hearing problem. Looking back, she saw that the airlock door had buckled inward from the force of the explosion and that the atmospheric seal had been compromised.
“Frell,” was all she could say. “Everyone alright?”
“Yar,” said Lippy.
Obielle answered as well. “I think so. A little wobbly, but ok otherwise. What the frell happened?”
Budo answered. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say that Tegan Mallory decided to kill Percival and what number of us remained aboard him.”
“Cel was right. That tralk is nuts,” JK declared angrily. “And that puts her into a whole new realm of dangerous. Her ass is mine.” JK forcefully sheathed his knives, drew his pistols and burst through the secondary hatch.
Obielle followed after him, casually remarking, “I think I’m a little jealous now.”
The others left soon after, drawn to the sounds of laser fire, with Budo and Issabella bringing up the rear.
~/~
Doctor Heronymous Thistlethwaite would be so proud of her, she thought to herself. The theory and application of electrics had not been the trump suit in her studies, in spite of the wires, conduits and circuits that made up her own body. She was much more comfortable dressed in pinafores and other frippery, taking tea and discussing poetry, flora and the intricacies of upper class social strata. Still, being a bio-mechanoid had its advantages, such as having blueprints and design documents stored in one’s memory cells.
One such document, labeled ‘Figure 147: Auxiliary Systems Console Data Relay and Power Coupling” was foremost in her mind at the moment. Even for one with such high intelligence, it always startled her that the diagrams matched the constructions before her. As she began to softly hum “I’m So Pretty”, Cyan, for the second time today, hidden among the Dragonthorn’s engineering ducts, severed a console’s data connection relays.
~/~
“Gorram it, do something!!” Tegan screamed at the console. The icons blinked and reacted to her touch, but nothing happened otherwise in response.
The bridge door suddenly opened behind her. As she whirled, an energy pulse hit her and knocked her senseless against the unresponsive console. The last thing she remembered before succumbing to the darkness were the words to an old Earth song coming up from a nearby engineering duct on the floor:
“…I feel pretty and witty and bright!
And I pity
Any girl who isn’t me tonight.”
~/~
The Dragonthorn was a small ship, but not so small that one couldn’t get separated. It was built as a special forces assault transport. It could be crewed with as little as three people, but could carry ten times that many soldiers. It carried ten assault pods and a tractor beam recovery system for retrieval and reloading. It had crew’s quarters, a large galley, engine and weapons spaces, an armory and plenty of cargo space.
It was big enough to get lost in.
Thankfully, Issa reminded herself, Tegan Mallory didn’t carry a full complement of mercenaries with her. At least, that’s what Cel had told them yesterday. Still, it was a tough enough fight.
As Budo and Issa reached an intersection, they both heard a wolf’s howl resonate through the corridor. “What the frell?”
“It came from that way,” Budo pointed. “I suspect the cargo spaces are down that way.”
“Let’s go,” Issa said and took off at a run. Budo followed and squeezed past Issa in stride to lead the way.
After another howl, Budo and Issa found its source. In one of the smaller holds, a smallish cage, toppled over by the recent destruction of Percival, contained a silver-furred wolf. The wolf stood on three of its legs and stared at them with its golden eyes. The right front leg was kept conspicuously off the floor and hung at an unnatural angle.
Issa turned to Budo and said, “That wolf looks familiar. Could it be?”
Budo simply walked forward, bent down and lasered the lock off the cage’s door. The wolf, casting a wary eye toward Issabella, limped out of the cage and nuzzled Budo’s face in greeting. Budo gave the wolf a gentle hug and stepped back.
In the blink of an eye, the wolf was gone, replaced by a broken-armed Victoria Silverwolf. “Hello, Budo. Who’s your friend? She looks familiar.”
~/~
No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Truer words were never spoken, Issabella thought to herself as she watched the remains of the Percival drift away. She was heartsick.
In her past life, Mathieu had been an avid wargamer. He had studied and simulated the world wars of Earth, the Mars conflicts and the various space battles of Earth’s formative years. While he knew that the discrete mathematical models at the heart of the simulations were no substitute for the gritty realism of actual war, as his own experience had shown again and again, the decision-making processes of playing the games were similar to the decisions faced by the actual historical commanders. You made the plans, you marshaled your forces and, at the end, you rolled the dice and left it up to the fates.
Today, the ‘Scapers needed a victory. The plan, reluctantly, called for nothing less. Instead, they rolled an exchange, a draw. Thankfully, it was only Tegan’s forces who had paid the bill with blood, but it wasn’t even supposed to go that far.
The plan had called for the Percival to draw the Dragonthorn in and surprise Tegan’s boarding party. When the inevitable hand-to-hand combat was over, Tegan and her survivors were to transfer over to Percival, while Issabella, Budo and Lippy took Dragonthorn to intercept Relia’s fleet before it reached Mentath space. JK, Luthielle and Obielle were to transfer to JK’s starfighter, the Dominator, which was sitting in hyperspace waiting for the signal for it to enter normal space. It would have been a tight fit, but doable.
The results were far less optimal. All of Tegan’s mercenaries were dead. Only Tegan herself, Shara, her second, and Kenna, her engineer, were alive. Additionally, Tegan’s launch of the port side drone pack not only wrecked the Percival beyond salvage, but the Dragonthorn was also severely damaged in the blowback. Dragonthorn’s communications were out, which meant that Dominator was trapped in hyperspace, which was probably just as well, because Cyan and Vicki, the discovery of whom was the strangest twist of fate yet, wouldn’t have fit aboard her anyway. Meanwhile, Dragonthorn’s port side engines were off-line and Percival’s fusion reactor was probably on its way to critical mass. Throw in Cyan’s sabotage of Dragonthorn’s navigation consoles and, well, it wasn’t looking good.
Issa sensed a presence behind her. “Budo?”
“Yeah.”
Issa spun around and raised an eyebrow. “Yeah? Not ‘Hai’?”
Budo raised one of hers in response. After a microt of thought, she said, “Yeah. It seems that the martial Nipponese persona is blending with the replacement persona that you all knew so well. I don’t think that possibility was foreseen.” With a sudden smile, she continued, “We live in interesting times.”
“That being a Chinese curse, I find your smile a bit unsettling.” Issa’s mood darkened again. “So, what’s the damage, as they say?”
“Hai!” After a wink, Budo made her report. “Dragonthorn is still operational, even in the state she’s in. After much coaxing from JK, Kenna is fixing the engines. She estimates that we’ll be able to jump within an arn. Tegan and Shara are proving to be more stubborn; they’re in the brig. Cyan is back in the engineering spaces, trying to undo the damage she caused. Obielle and Luthielle are helping by ferrying materials from the engineering stocks to Cyan to help with the patches. Communications are out and beyond repair. Portside weaponry is damaged beyond repair. The starboard phased laser mounts are in good shape and the drone pack is still in operation. The port side docking machinery is gone. The port side primary airlock hatch has been compromised, as we all knew, but the secondary is holding firm. The starboard side docking machinery is shot, all damaged from a prior encounter. The assault pods are operational, but the tractor-based retrieval gear is off-line and irreparable. Evidently, Dragonthorn was scheduled for a major refit. It’s a shame that Cel’s intel hadn’t known about that.”
Issa nodded. It was better than she thought. Having Kenna work on repairing the ship was an unforeseen occurrence, not the first one today. “How’s Vicki?”
“Dragonthorn’s medical systems are in excellent condition. They have a knitter on board and Vicki’s break was clean. After about a day, she’ll be as good as new. The break was due to the drone fire. According to Vicki, Tegan’s crew did not mistreat her in any way.”
Issa sniffed. “Chances are they didn’t want to damage her pelt before the sale. They probably had no idea she was a lycanthrope. Still, that’s something.” As Budo nodded, Issa asked, “How long ’til Percy’s reactor goes critical?”
Budo shrugged. “Unknown. Dragonthorn’s sensors were damaged as well, though they’ll be just fine for navigation, weaponry and rudimentary environmental use. Obviously, the simple answer is ‘hopefully not before we leave’.”
Issa nodded and looked back out the portal. She could almost feel the radiation from Percival’s reactor seep into her bones.
“So,” Budo asked, “what’s next?”
Issa let the question hang in the air. What’s next, indeed?