2166 - FORCE LIBERTY Page 6

"He's coming back," she insisted then. "Your father is coming back with the task force. He'll send a rescue party."

  The boy didn't venture to contradict her again. "He doesn't know my mother and I are here. Don't be mad at him. It was my idea."

  "Was it now? Tell me about that on the way up to the bridge," she said.

  In the shaft for the lift Barakat had sealed the bulkheads below them. In .22 gees it was an easy jump to get up one deck. There, she found the rest of the crew Barakat had rounded up.

  "Tomano and Boffey. You're with me. Hank," she told Ram's boy, "stay here with my redsuits and guard this lift shaft."

  After that, they had stair access to the command deck. Tomano and Boffey went first.

  Dana stopped on the landing and opened a private infrared comms channel with Ram's wife. "Where did you learn to shoot, Mrs. Devlin?" She stopped and blocked Margo's path.

  Devlin's wife must have been able to tell she wasn't going a step further until Dana got an answer. "I spent some time as a security consultant for Staas," Margo said. "You know we don't mention that sort of thing."

  "I'm grateful for your help, Mrs. Devlin, but I don't want you on this ship. And don't think for a second that I didn't notice back there when you not only disregarded my orders to fall back, but gave countermanding orders to my crew. I understand that was an emergency, but I need you to know, Commodore's wife or not, if you endanger my crew by subverting my authority again, I will be forced to lock you in a hold until we are rescued."

  Margo Devlin's thin lips curled inside her helmet. "Very, good, Captain Sellis. Our safety is your responsibility, of course." She sidestepped around Dana and continued up the stairs.

  Dana Sellis didn't know who this woman really was, but she didn't need anybody bloody reminding her whose responsibility their safety was. She was supposed to make decisions that minimized the danger to her crew. And instead, she'd played right into a Shediri trap, just like the UN Special Envoy. That's what Margo Devlin really wanted to remind her of with her last comment. You bitch. Dana stared at the back of her helmet as Margo climbed the steps in front of her.

  Through the porthole set in the hatch, the light was too dim on the command deck to see much. In the beams from her suit lights, it looked cooked-out like a carrier launch bay. The wood paneling of the passageway had been turned to ash and the belt-iron steel underneath had a rainbow sheen like it had been flash melted. "Firestorm," She said. "Like a warhead breached into the command deck or something, but it couldn't have. We would have felt that."

  It took all four of them to spin the wheel. Once they'd manhandled the hatch open, pressurized atmo rushed out of the stairwell behind her and swirled the ashes into the air. It looked like falling snow in the glow of her suit lights. After she checked right and then left, she stepped in and moved left towards the bridge as Tomano and Boffey stepped out to cover her right.

  The first bodies she saw were in the passageway. They'd curled up in the fire, and the material of their exosuits hadn't burned away completely. It had fused to the bodies, now black and crackle-skinned.

  The bridge was a charred tomb. Whatever occurred happened quickly. Reitz, Skolds, Weiss, Hillman, and a pair of Staas Guards curled on the deck like the other blackened bodies they'd seen. Those suits had been rated for a 5000 degree flash-burn. Whatever did this was hotter.

  "Over here," Tomano said. He pointed to where the planet's ugly rose light was seeping in via a breach clear through the outer and inner hulls. "Like a bullet to the head."

  The hull breach in the starboard bulkhead leading directly into the bridge was less than 20cm across and she couldn't understand what kind of a weapon could do it. She could see up the sides of the hole, too. It was all melted smooth and even. Whatever hit Taipan's bridge hadn't blasted away a crater to pierce the meters of armor protecting it. That weapon had stabbed them surgically like a needle into the brain. When it found its way in, it filled the deck with firestorm plasma.

  Her crewmen were silent.

  "I'm sorry, Captain Sellis," Devlin's wife said.

  She tore her gaze from the bodies. "The Q-link." She went to the comms station, but the console was melted. Inside, once she pried away the panel to get to it, she found the heat had boiled off and burst the actual entangled electron node of the FTL comms network. Its triple casing had blown outwards in layers like the petals of a flower.

  "Goddammit. We're completely cut off," she said. "No way to call Hardway and the task force now."

  When she stood up, she couldn't help but stare at Reitz on the deck in front of the command chair. She'd spent hours with that man every day for months...Skolds, too...all of them. Now, they were dead because the Shediri had fooled her. She should have seen this coming.

  Her ready room hatch had been sealed. The art collection belonging to Margo Devlin was intact. The Olmec stone head had slid and crushed a framed Rembrandt drypoint, but Devlin's wife swore she'd find a way to save it. Margo's quarters and Dana's weren't even singed and somehow that made her feel sick.

  The image of the charred, curled-up bodies stayed with her all the way back to the midships ring. They haunted her after that, too, but after that, there were more bodies and more deaths to blame herself for.

  When she paused then and took stock of what happened and where she was, it was like the life drained out of her. It sapped the confidence from her to think she hadn't seen this attack coming - to think she hadn't prepared for this contingency better. She'd failed the people that trusted her. For the first time, in that moment, Captain Dana Sellis wasn't sure she should be captain.

  7

  SCS Hardway

  Entering the archipelago of the gas giant's moons...

  Ram Devlin wanted Dana returned to him more than anything else, but there was no way he was about to let Anton Cyning start a war. Thankfully, Captain Chun of UNS Guerrero couldn't be talked into engaging orbital stations that hadn't fired on them. But Cyning would still try and order Ram to use the air group. He told himself if it came to it, he'd lock the company man up in the Lancers' brig and then sort the consequences later.

  From his diplomatic console, the company man said, "The Hive Regent Kesik still refuses communication."

  Biko said, "Given what happened can we really trust those translations? This could all be a huge mistake."

  "You assume there was some tragic confusion during the meeting," Cyning said. "At first, I did as well. But I think now, perhaps the Shediri simply changed their minds and decided to remain loyal to the Imperium. Maybe they plan to give them the Taipan as a gift."

  The sulfur-tinted upper bands of the gas giant flashed continually with plasma in a state of arcing discharge. Its yellow/orange equatorial bands counter-rotated, and the immensity of them over the carrier's bow almost fooled Ram's eye into thinking the task force was steaming sideways.

  "No activity at all on our path," Biko said. "We've still got Shediri chasing us, but ahead, I think they're hiding."

  The Shediri orbital stations among the seven innermost moons of the gas giant looked like clusters of metallic fish eggs. They had hollow protrusions in places that pointed outwards like gun barrels. Cyning wanted to soften them up with a wave of torpedo junks before engaging with the carrier's railguns.

  "We can't go to war again, not like this," Ram said. The company man kept his back turned at his diplomatic console. He didn't expect Cyning to listen. It was time to stop the company man now, before Cyning got them all killed. There was no master-at-arms to call on a Privateer ship so Ram caught Biko's eye and then glanced at his XO's sidearm repeatedly, hoping Biko would get the idea it was time to draw it and point it at Anton Cyning.

  Asa Biko looked down at his exosuit and back up at Ram not guessing at all what Ram was getting at. Biko stepped back from the Ops console and silently mouthed the word 'what?' He made a brushing motion as if he's spotted something on his exosuit thigh and looked back to Ram.

  "We must show the Shediri the cost of their actions,
" Cyning said. "Then, the Hive Regent Kesik will be forced to talk. Estimated time until our railgun batteries are in effective range?"

  "A little over six minutes from now," Biko said.

  "We'll need to launch your torpedo junks soon to do this right, Devlin."

  "We need to rethink this decision, Mr. Cyning. This is how senseless wars start."

  "I must say, I rather expected more enthusiasm from you of all people."

  Now was the time to take command if he wanted to stop this before it started. "Mr Cyning, I'm going to have to ask you to step away fro-"

  "Contact, contact. Hardway, this is Hellcat 1-1, we're getting intermittent LiDAR pips in the direction of the fourth moon."

  The gas giant's fourth moon was passing to starboard now, small and invitingly green over its landmasses. He wanted a closer look at that one. That moon's sizable Shediri orbital station wasn't on their charted path of destruction on this pass. It would be safer to maintain speed to stay ahead of the ships chasing them and hit it on the way back through the gas giant’s archipelago.

  "I have the new contacts as well," Biko said. "Solid contacts now...coming around the limb of the fourth moon. Small ships... Hundreds. No...thousands." They poured over the edge of the moon and out into the black for over five seconds before the XO said. "3289 incoming enemy ships." Biko zoomed in on them then with the composite arrays and projected them to the front of the bridge. "More small ships. All under thirty meters. All with Shediri war paint." It looked the same as the paint on the vessels chasing them, but the white between the sharp, black shapes was warmer, almost yellow.

  "I wasn't expecting a second fleet," Cyning said. "Can they catch up with us?"

  "No," Wei said, "Not according to the NAV console."

  "This is Hellcat 1-1, we have some new players in the game from the fourth moon. Please advise."

  "Are they on an intercept course? Biko?"

  "They're closing on the Shediri ships behind us, the ones that have been chasing us across the system."

  "They're doing more than closing on them!" Pardue added the contacts to her display. "The newly appeared fleet has fired a salvo of...1618 missiles at the Shediri on our tails."

  Anton Cyning's eyes narrowed as the cloud of missiles bore down on the other fleet. "Do they have enough missiles and ships to finish the job?"

  "What?"

  "The newly appeared Shediri fleet, Commodore Devlin. The one from the fourth moon. They are clearly at odds with our pursuers from the homeworld itself. Rebels maybe... Can they win this battle against the forces harassing us?"

  "The two fleets are almost the same size," Biko said. "The one from the fourth moon of the gas giant is slightly smaller."

  "But they're fresh. They're not running low on missiles," Ram said. He nodded to the tactical projections over Biko's station showing the aliens chasing them. The Shediri from the planet were turning now, like a flock turns, following the lead ships as they broke off their pursuit. They made a wide maneuver away from the incoming missiles, broke off pursuit and headed for home.

  "Full stop," Ram said. "Comms, inform Guerrero we're stopping. Mr. Cyning, I believe now would be a good time to attempt contact with Shedir 4 again. We need to negotiate a reliable ceasefire and get our people back."

  "Not yet, Mr. Devlin. This new, rebel fleet may solve our problems for us. Wait to see if they win."

  "So you can negotiate with them instead?"

  Cyning didn't answer him. His gaze was fixed on the two fleets. The distance between them was shrinking, but after Hardway, Guerrero, and the breaching ship came to a dead stop, the new alien fleet stopped as well. With the enemy on the run for home space, the fleet from the gas giant's moons and its thousands of small, war-painted craft now came about together in a wide turn and began closing on the task force.

  "Tuck the air group in tight to the carrier, Pardue."

  "But what if they launch missiles? We'll have to rely on point defense guns."

  "If these new Shediri wanted to launch more missiles at us, they already had their chance. NAV, spin us on our bow and stern thrusters and show the approaching formation our good side. Point our bow plate and railguns at the Shediri." A little over three Ks off the port bow, Guerrero spun, too. The enormous armored teardrop of her hull rotated like a slow-spinning moon.

  "Captain Chun aboard Guerrero advises you hold fire, Commodore," his comms officer reported. "He wishes to negotiate."

  "Tell Captain Chun I think that's a very good idea."

  Anton Cyning stepped to his diplomatic console then like a man inspired or at least possessed. He gestured in the air over the station's interface with rapid, backhanded dismissals while the phrases passed before him. "I'm trying to find the right words in the conceptual language matrix - there's a phrase in Shediri_C...here!"

  He transmitted it through the ship's comms array before he told anybody he'd done it. After they heard the computer generated, alien whistle, hiss, and click sounds, Cyning turned around to face the rest of the bridge looking especially pleased with himself.

  "What have you done, Mr. Cyning?"

  "I sent our new friends a message."

  "What message, goddammit?"

  "The Shediri are all coming to a stop," Biko reported from the Ops console. "They're decelerating, but...but without turning and burning for reverse thrust... How are they doing that?" The XO shook his head. "They're now holding at just under 90 Ks from the task force."

  "What did you say to them, Cyning?" said Ram.

  "It translates as 'Action is truth'."

  "What the hell does that mean?"

  "It means it doesn't matter what they say to us now. It matters what they do. They know what it means." His diplomatic console lit up then with the receipt of a reply.

  "Mr. Cyning?"

  "The message uses the agreed upon conceptual language matrix protocol, but this can't be right... It says, 'You're welcome'."

  "Are we welcome to be here or is it using the idiomatic response to 'thank you'? Is it being cheeky?"

  "The conceptual matrix includes 'thank you' and 'you're welcome'. Squidy and Shediri have those constructs, too."

  "So which is it?" he said.

  The diplomatic console lit up with activity again. "New message. 'Follow'."

  The swarm of dazzle-painted Shediri warships flew off towards the gas giant's fourth moon together then. The very last of them ejected clouds of hot plasma behind it, leaving a trail.

  *

  Following the new Shediri fleet into what could be another trap was Anton Cyning's call to make. At least it didn't look like he wanted to start a war anymore.

  Closer now, the guns of the alien space station were easy to make out. The multi-barrel configuration looked odd, but they came in various sizes and showed a relative frequency of distribution just like the point defense batteries and the battleship-hulling big guns on Guerrero. That alien station was broader and more sprawling than the floating cities in Earth's orbit. It was bigger than Sagan Station even.

  The 'docks' for the small craft extended like thin fringe on all sides, giving it broken rings of a sort filled with docked craft - thousands of them. Overall, the station's wending construction looked to be dominated by a singular form, a building-block shape repeated over and over at various scales. Squished spheroids like frogs' eggs intersected to form the illusion of a bubbling skin over a 10K asteroid. Scars were everywhere on it, radial blast marks like lunar ejecta patterns and fused vape craters. This station had received weapons fire more than once.

  The trail left by the last, intentionally slowest of the small Shediri ships made a warm stream of plasma leading not to the main docks that fringed the alien station, but to another, smaller ring of docks. These encircled a large protrusion growing from the station on its own line of construction that meandered out into the blackness like a wandering river. At the very tip, on the last, smallest ring of docks, the ship that left the trail set down.

  Ram said,
"NAV, hold station at 5Ks from the end of the line. Comms, signal Guerrero and Stetson to hold position with us and standby."

  "Captain Chun wants to speak with Mr. Cyning," said the comms officer.

  The company man held his hand up in the air and made his backhanded gesture of dismissal, signaling that he didn't wish to take the communication. Ram put it through himself from the arm of the command chair.

  Captain Chun didn't waste time with niceties. "The trail terminates at what appears to be some sort of a command dock. I will venture there in a small craft."

  Cyning knew what came next. He mouthed the words as Chun spoke them.

  "I will conduct the diplomatic meeting," the UN captain said.

  The gas giant's auras wailed on the frequency for a few seconds like a wraith. "I'm afraid not," Cyning said. "According to Appendix B, Section Six of the agreement painstakingly negotiated between the UN and Staas Company, when it comes to matters diplomatic, should the UN Special Envoy not be available for any reason, I am to become the primary diplomatic contact with the Shediri."

  Captain Chun said, "That's absurd, Mr. Cyning. Like all UN captains, I'm a fully trained diplomat."

  "None the less. Check the agreement as presented in your mission briefing, you will find it to be true." Ram brought the agreement up and checked for himself. The wording was more convoluted, but incredibly enough, that's what the document said.

  A few seconds later, Chun came back on the frequency sounding stunned. "I don't understand why the Secretary General's office would agree to this. It makes no logical sense."

  "But it is as I said, is it not, Captain? Are those not the stated terms of the agreement with the Secretary General's signature on it?"

  The way the company man grinned at Ram then, he thought Cyning's game was finally clear. Apparently, Captain Chun thought so as well. "How far into the Secretary General's office have you spread your rot, Cyning? How far has it gone?"

  "I'll ignore that, Captain. The legally binding agreement in place allows you to be present at the meeting between myself and the Shediri, nothing more. You have five minutes, Captain Chun. We'll be launching from..."