Fragments sf-6

  Fragments

  ( Spinward Fringe - 6 )

  Randolph Lalonde

  Randolph Lalonde

  Fragments

  Chapter 1

  Gunnery Chief Shamus Frost

  "Get these lads clear of their posts! I want this section sealed off in five minutes!" Gunnery Chief Frost ordered over his proximity radio. The gunnery deck of the Triton was a disaster. He listened to the frantic chatter of his deck crew as he inspected the heat damage that had warped the outer hull and seized several of the large overhead gunnery turrets in position. The larger, three-meter tall loader suits were working to pry gunners from their seats and remove one-ton cartridges from the railgun emplacements before real repairs could begin. Their work worsened the combat damage, but there was no other way to get the gunnery crews free.

  Past them Shamus could see the light twisting energy wall of the wormhole the Triton had used to escape the Ossimi Asteroid Ring. The damage they sustained to the aft dorsal section of the ship during their getaway was devastating. The Caran Enterprises battlecruisers had used broad particle beam pulses to superheat the hull of the Triton. Super cooled, high velocity rounds weren’t far behind, and the Gunnery Chief couldn’t remember being more frightened. Watching the outer armour of the transparent hull crack and shatter centimetre by centimetre was surreal. The memory had to be put aside. His people were at incredible risk while they worked beneath the fatigued section of hull. "How many gunnery positions do we have left, Hunsler?"

  "Thirty nine 280mm turrets and three 450mm guns. I'm trying to get two more 450’s back online; they only have fried targeting systems. We have spare modules in storage."

  "Good, get 'em running," Frost instructed as he limped out of a loading suit's way. Its plain, grey and blue armour plating and heavy gait made anyone think twice about standing near it.

  "Are we expecting more trouble?"

  "Never know. Captain's still out there somewhere, so we could be going back in it if we have to save his arse." Frost looked through the transparent hull above him as the repair crews rushed around, trying to get ammunition secured and the injured into express cars so they could be transported to medical. Only two of his team had been killed and ammunition explosions or direct heat had burnt fewer than two dozen.

  Something caught his eye as he watched one of his gunners emerge from his turret capsule. He could see three lights growing in the distorted field of stars; there was something very wrong with how they were moving. The points were growing and too steady.

  Chief Frost looked down the length of the massive main gunnery deck ceiling. It wasn't just the aft section that was busy with repairs and other operations. The whole deck was running full steam, dozens of loader suits secured ammunition and helped with repairs, mechanics climbed into the big four barrelled, ceiling mounted railgun turrets, gunners were being replaced or just getting out so they could stretch or help on deck. The controlled chaos was thanks to weeks of practice in simulations and live exercises. They'd had some seasoning thanks to a few encounters, but nothing that compared with the close call they had just seen.

  He looked back up to the three points of light and was almost certain they’d grown. I don’t care if I look like a panicky rookie, something’s not right and I’m marking them so tactical gets a better look. Frost thought as he selected the three points and suggested them as targets in the system.

  He hoped he was wrong, that it was just some odd refraction through the wormhole wall, but he wished the cleanup on deck would move faster just in case. The most damaged section of hull in the centre was a massive wound, a weak spot that left everyone vulnerable until it was sealed off. When their work was done the gunnery deck would be split in two parts that were each hundreds of square meters. Lieutenant Hunsler, the night Gunnery Deck Commander, would take charge of the aft section, while Frost would manage the larger forward segment.

  That had been more like the stories his father and grandfather would tell him about serving aboard large destroyers. Men and women all doing the best they could, standing valiantly at their posts and running the guns. Grist for the mill, his grandfather said they were called. The decks he served on were nothing like the Triton’s. His grandfather’s time in the military was served aboard the long hulled Crossbow destroyers, eventually commanding the port side gunnery decks, where three levels of turrets were crammed along the side of the ship shoulder to shoulder, one above the other. He'd seen one of the ships on a family tour with his father and remembered staring in awe at the raw mechanics of it, the sheer potential firepower.

  He felt a tingle of the same awe whenever he took a moment to look up at the ceiling of the main gunnery deck at the ninety-eight gunnery pods at his command. Not even the burning of his shin stump could diminish that feeling. He'd lost his foot and most of his shin weeks before when an Eden Fleet boarding robot, a silver killer, drilled through the hull. He stepped forward to face it in a loader suit and was rewarded with a sound beating. The memory of the limb being cut straight through still made him cringe, though he'd never admit it, especially not to Stephanie.

  Chief Frost returned his attention to the puzzling flares above them. Triton tactical hadn’t analyzed them yet. To his surprise they had grown even more. He realized he was looking almost dead aft and did some quick calculations in his head, staring at the three points unwaveringly. He came to an alarming conclusion and opened a channel to everyone on the deck. "Abandon the aft most compartment! We're sealing it now!"

  Before his eyes the wavering image of three light flares became the outlines of three ships and Frost turned to run, knowing it was too late. With a thunderous explosion against the outer hull the ship shuddered. The deck disappeared from beneath his feet. The ship had shaken so hard the artificial gravity failed. "Brace and secure!" he shouted, looking around for something to clip his safety line to. There was nothing in reach.

  Through the transparent hull he could see the stars spinning madly, the entire ship was out of control, he was turning slightly out of sync with the deck as well. He knew he'd have a lot of gunnery personnel sicking up in their suits and hoped they could let the interior waste disposal systems work while they pushed through the discomfort. Strange thought to be having while I'm spinning four meters above the deck. Worrying about how the suits handle my crewmen’s sick as the ship spins outta control, that’s one for the Officer’s lounge. He mused.

  The artificial gravity reactivated and he fell to the deck on his feet. His prosthetic foot squelched against his stump and turned awkwardly under the pressure. The fall hadn't injured him, but with his stump out of its proper place in his prosthetic, he wouldn't be walking anywhere quickly.

  He winced as he started running towards the fore of the ship, trying to get out of the aft section of the gunnery deck. "Get yer arses out of this section so we can seal it off and concentrate on giving our attackers hell!" He ordered.

  "Need a hand chief?" asked a Junior Sergeant in a loading suit as he stopped beside him.

  Frost was about to turn it down out of pride, the edge of the section was only fourteen meters away, but changed his mind when he put weight on his stump again. "Aye, give us a lift." He grabbed hold of one of the handles tucked under the smaller loading suit's shoulders and let the operator pick up his legs piggyback style.

  "Chief Frost, how long until your deck is firing again?" asked Commander McPatrick from the bridge.

  "I can have seeker rounds or H29 explosive shells tearing into anything you want gone in sixty seconds or less."

  "Start firing H29 rounds until the lead battlecruiser's lights go out then move on to the next. Question for you though, ever been knocked out of a wormhole?"

  "Never. Heard about a couple pirates that said the
y could do it, but thought they were full o' shite. We might have had some warning if the folks in tactical followed up on the targets I marked, cuff ‘em up the side o’ their heads for me. How's the bridge?"

  "It could have been worse. Get those guns firing as soon as we stop spinning Chief."

  "Aye, Commander."

  Chapter 2

  Another Man’s Eyes

  Eve watched the human named Patrick with a critical eye as he knelt down on Elbrus beach. His bare feet crushed into the white and black-grained sand. The leavings — sweat, dead skin, and oil — would interact with his environment. It was something that she still found herself questioning. Humans made the planet liveable over a century before turned it into a world of seas, islands, forests, and cities.

  Was it damage or the act of making a place that had been inert for the most part useful? Was Patrick a walking source of contamination or was he as entitled as he seemed to feel? His hand reached into the sand and came up with something. It took a moment for Eve to recognize it, and when she did she was astonished.

  A book, called The Jersey Prince, with a red cover featuring a black stocking clad female leg. She watched from the nano scale camera that had been implanted in Patrick’s eye as he turned it over, chuckled to himself. “My father would love this.”

  Patrick had been one of Eve’s unwitting tour guides for days, showing her what it was like to be human like him, to be male, without care, and pressed to the protective bosom of the Order of Eden. She looked up information on his father and found it in his personnel file. Patrick Yardley of Keats City, on Macosa moon. Patrick had paid the one hundred thousand credit fee so his father was safe from artificial intelligences infected with the Holocaust Virus, but there had been no verification that he had survived.

  Patrick hadn’t paid for anyone else to be saved, but had donated more to get into special training sessions, more detailed grading reports, and special help from West Watchers who helped him purify himself in an effort to get closer to Eden. As he moved up in the civilian ranks he became more proud, felt more entitled. He had spent everything he had. What Eve didn’t understand was the lack of remorse in Patrick for having nothing but the clothes on his back. The purification courses and grading were made to focus the followers in the Order of Eden on self-purification, environmental purification, but Eve didn’t understand why it worked so well for some people. For Patrick, the cause of purification and his social life were enough. He had forsaken material things, and obeyed every law of the Order while working, and selectively followed the path after hours. To Eve, his life seemed impossibly narrow, but he was comfortable in it, even seemed to thrive in it.

  He fulfilled what was required of him, working with clean up crews along shorelines for ten hours a day. Afterwards his attention would turn towards fraternization and sport. The Saved had a good life, and Patrick lived it to the full. Every day he sent a message to his father. He did so away from friends, away from everyone. Eve did not understand why he would hide such a thing. Did it bring him shame? Stir some kind of private remorse that he left his father behind months before? Was there an incident before he left?

  The answer to that question must have been taking an emotional toll. Patrick tried every kind of recreational substance he could find, tasted the lips of women in and outside of his camp, and played the inexpensive sports that were so common in the camps. Soccer, volleyball, foot races along the beach and through the nearby city seemed to be enough for many of the coastal workers. He was talented, and had been approached more than once to join the lowest rank of the West Keepers as an infantryman. The proposals flattered his pride, and he politely refused each one. Eve had secretly sent the offers using the chain of command, and just as quietly left instructions that another offer shouldn’t be made. She decided that, after his refusals, she’d find another way to put him to proper use.

  His shift had ended minutes before he found the book, and without a care in the world he sat down on the sand and looked more closely at the cover. Across the bottom was a faint message;

  PLEASE RETURN TO ANY FREEGROUND DEMATERIALIZATION RECEPTICAL WHEN YOU’VE FINISHED ENJOYING THIS OBJECT. The previous owner had almost finished reading it before some mishap separated them from their antique.

  Eve instantaneously accessed the list of people from Freeground who had visited Mount Elbrus and realized that Patrick was sitting near the crash site of the Silkstream IV. The wreckage had been taken aboard the very command carrier she was sitting in. There was so little left after Terry Ozark McPatrick and Jason Everin detonated charges inside that the technicians had to intuit how it was built. They were still trying to reconstruct the slip technology that the ship proved. It was a technology that would allow a vessel to use ancient hyperspace technology inside a wormhole, multiplying the speed at which an object could travel safely.

  Patrick had finished reading the last page the previous owner of the book had touched, and seemed satisfied with it as he flipped back to the beginning. His eye settled on the first line of the first page;

  “That door slammed so damned hard the latch didn’t catch. Gertrude, my round, baby bearing sister whipped it open and stood there screaming before I hit the bottom step of the old porch. ‘You think you got trouble here in Red Bank? You’ll get into no end in New York! You just see mister!’

  ‘I’m not gonna stick around here and watch you get knocked up by any dock worker who comes along. That’s baby four, poppa three and not one’s stuck around.’

  ‘Why you sonofa-‘

  ‘I’ll take my bite of the apple, you’ll see. There won’t be a red penny for you or your bastards either. World don’t reward stupid, and you’ve got a brood there that says you’re downright batty. Maybe you should start charging for it!” I whipped the door of my green Edsel open…”

  Patrick looked up from the book as a tingle in the air announced the coming of the Child Prophet. It was why Eve was watching the young man. Not only to know what his day was like, to get a taste of his life, but to see Lister Hampon, the High Seat of the Order of Eden, through his eyes. Through the eyes of someone who had wholly invested themselves into the life of a Saved.

  Wisps of light wound down towards the distant sea, and like a spirit born of the sun the figure of the Child Prophet appeared in the distance. He walked lightly on the calm waters towards the shore, and Patrick watched the white and green robed figure stop only a meter in front of him. Wherever there was water, the Saved and the Watchers would see the ten year old figure of Lister Hampon appear. In the arid areas of Pandem he would stride along a wavering mirage.

  “You have done well. You came by the thousands, tens of thousands and Pandem is populated by the faithful, the ones who were saved and will be clean. Just as the meek inherited the Earth after it was ruined by the ambitious and greedy masses. Just as they became strong over the decades that followed, so shall the Saved become mighty.

  Thanks to you the evidence of disuse and waste are almost gone from this world. Reclamation is under way, and this world has almost earned its renaming ceremony. You will be present when the galaxy begins to recognize Pandem as New Paradise.

  You are ready to know that New Paradise has made her fate known to me. We will be the beacon that draws the greatest darkness this galaxy has ever known. Shadows will present themselves, and we will abolish them with the light we’ve brought into the galaxy.

  It has been said that prophecy should be whispered, that fates become nothing more than possibility once too many ears have heard them. There have been times of doubt, when I agreed with that kind of thinking, but not any longer. You have shown me strength, persistence, and I know that, even with your new knowledge of our fated victory over the darkness, you will continue to improve yourselves. You will continue to reach out to those who have not yet begun their pilgrimage as you have in the past.

  The good that you have done has brought us here; the work that you have done has made us luminescent and will continue to transform
this world into New Paradise. I have a request for you Patrick, one that only a few of you are being chosen for.”

  “What can I do?” Patrick must have known the Child Prophet was only a projection, but his tone was one of reverence and awe.

  “You must step through the Counting Arch and leave gifts there for those who have not had your fortune in ascending to Eden. Once you have done that you will be rewarded with three days of rest. Those who aspire to Eden from beneath your grading will serve you for that time so they may learn from your ways.”

  “I’ll get on it. Thank you, your Grace.”

  “Be mindful, how you treat your servants will be graded. It is only another part of your journey to Eden. Remember, fate smiles on us, but only if you continue ascending towards Eden, towards Eternal Paradise.” The gently smiling image of Hampon dissolved into the sunlight.

  Patrick was on his feet before the hologram was gone, and ran up the beach towards the cliff face behind him. Natural vertical wall overshadowed the beach in the morning, but was bathed by light in the afternoon. There were hundreds of Saved in reclining chairs all along the sand. Behind them was a long building that served critical rations and pleasure rations, anything you liked as long as your grading was high enough. Patrick was only graded as a nine, far lower than the lounging Saved.

  Eve could see his excitement, it was in the way his smile stretched across his face, the enthusiasm he put into running through the loose sand and in the impatience he showed when he finally stepped into line at the front of the stone cliff face. Many others were gladly stepping into line; most of them had been given a similar message by the Child Prophet. Step through the Arch, and you will be rewarded.

  “We serve Eve, the mother of preservation, the restorer of purity, the keeper of Paradise,” Muttered the women in front of him. Over and over she recited her dedication, and instead of being his usual social self, Patrick joined in.