Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades Read online

  SPINWARD FRINGE

  BROADCAST 8

  RENEGADES

  RANDOLPH LALONDE

  Copyright © 2014 by Randolph Lalonde

  Spinward Fringe is a Registered Trademark of Randolph Lalonde

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher, Randolph Lalonde.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Images sourced from NASA / JPL, with licensed 3D art rendered in the foreground.

  Cover titling and other design by Randolph Lalonde.

  Ebook formatting by Jesse Gordon.

  Print ISBN: 978-0-9937398-1-1

  EBook ISBN: 978-0-9937398-0-4

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue: The Hell Shrike

  Chapter 1: A Beautiful Day

  Chapter 2: One Strange Night

  Chapter 3: Perspective

  Chapter 4: Haven Shore

  Chapter 5: Bargaining

  Chapter 6: A Disturbance In The Council Chambers

  Chapter 7: Over Issel Gulch

  Chapter 8: The Last Garrison

  Chapter 9: Dinner

  Chapter 10: Predators

  Chapter 11: Dirty Tricks

  Chapter 12: Birds

  Chapter 13: An Unexpected Match

  Chapter 14: Uncertain Turnabout

  Chapter 15: Broken Things

  Chapter 16: Repercussions

  Chapter 17: Pondering Escalation

  Chapter 18: Looking Back, Walking Forward

  Chapter 19: Loot

  Chapter 20: Reunited

  Chapter 21: Shozo Of House Fallen Star

  Chapter 22: Two Captains

  Chapter 23: Family Reunion

  Chapter 24: Eavesdropping

  Chapter 25: Fluid Thinking

  Chapter 26: Reassignment

  Chapter 27: War Wounds

  Chapter 28: The Overlord

  Chapter 29: Course Correction

  Chapter 30: The Next Step

  Chapter 31: The Decks Have Ears

  Chapter 32: Unsettled Settlement

  Chapter 33: Training

  Chapter 34: Taking Control

  Chapter 35: Rattling Sabres

  Chapter 36: Shadow and Fire

  Chapter 37: The Triton Engages

  Chapter 38: Farewell

  Chapter 39: Enemy Sighted

  Chapter 40: One Ship

  Chapter 41: Alice’s Battle

  Chapter 42: Prepped

  Chapter 43: All Or Nothing

  Chapter 44: Quick Communications

  Chapter 45: Placement and Progression

  Chapter 46: Wheeler Interrupted

  Chapter 47: The Rush

  Chapter 48: The Taking of the Sunny Shifter

  Chapter 49: Iron Head Nebula Departure

  Chapter 50: Strange Travellers

  Chapter 51: The Cargo

  Chapter 52: Her Reluctant Majesty

  Chapter 53: A Loaner

  Chapter 54: The Loathing Of Beasts

  Chapter 55: Warlord Triumphant

  Chapter 56: Homecoming

  Epilogue: The Last Two

  OTHER BOOKS BY RANDOLPH LALONDE

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 0: Origins

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 1 and 2:

  Resurrection and Awakening

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 3: Triton

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 4: Frontline

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 5: Fracture

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments

  The Expendable Few – A Spinward Fringe Novel

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework

  Dark Arts (Coming sometime in or after 2014)

  Brightwill (Coming sometime in or after 2014)

  Spinward Fringe Broadcast 9

  (Coming sometime in or after 2014)

  For other books by Randolph Lalonde visit:

  RandolphLalonde.com

  facebook.com/groups/spinwardfringe/

  PROLOGUE

  The Hell Shrike

  “Captain McFadden,” crackled First Officer Eily Hogan’s voice from the communicator. She was excited about something, usually a bad sign. “We’ve been spotted by an Order patrol, corvette class. No fighter cover in range.”

  “Run out the guns,” Captain Moira McFadden ordered as she put the paper book she was reading down beside her on her bed and stood up. “Angle deflection shields, watch for surprises. Looks like we’ll have to finish our repairs in hyperspace.” She took her mid-length heavy jacket from a metal chair, slipped into it and then clipped on her gun belt. She couldn’t help recalling a descriptive passage from the book she was just reading that described Cathryn, one of the Irish Union founders, strapping a pistol on overtop a dress. The thought of wearing a heavy skirt and a gun belt made her smile. Fat chance anyone will get me in a dress unless it’s my own funeral, she thought.

  The pair of pistols was a welcome weight, like the old armoured jacket she wore adorned in the colours of the Irish Union flag – green, black, and orange. These were most of her surviving possessions, and she kept them with her always. Underneath she wore the simple uniform of an Irish Union naval captain, a black and grey fitted suit with practical pockets, and three thin red lines that ran from the shoulders, down over her knees to the feet. The flexible armour pads had already saved her life several times, even though the uniform was relatively new to her.

  The captain’s quarters were basic, with a double bed, a desk, a wardrobe cupboard, overhead storage, and a beverage dispenser that hadn’t worked since she was given command. The hatchway opened with a clink, the door swung with a screech but she ignored both. The surfacing on the floors and walls had been polished away decades before by the hands of hundreds of crewmembers, leaving the bare metal to shine dark silver. She could see her reflection in her decks and walls.

  The two muscled guards on watch at the entrance to the bridge snapped her a salute as she passed. Their fibre-mesh plate armour and general condition was picture perfect, and they had a pride Moira hoped would hold through the coming months, when she wouldn’t be around to maintain order. She returned their salute as an ensign pushed the bridge hatch open for her. Feeling a little out of order after seeing the crisp condition of the guards, she rolled and tucked her shoulder-length brown hair into a bun.

  “Update,” she ordered as she dropped into the battered captain’s seat.

  “The corvette is biding her time,” replied First Officer Hogan. “Firing beam weapons, testing our shields. They’re not getting past our sensor or communications jamming.”

  “Any transmissions get through before we were spotted?” Captain McFadden asked, checking the tactical and operational panel attached to her seat.

  “We saw them because they transmitted,” came the reply from Michael Durst, her communications officer. “Almost missed the signal, looked like noise, but I traced it back.”

  “Good work as usual, Mister Durst,” Captain McFadden said. The Hell Shrike was handling herself well. Her shields were regenerating fast enough to keep up with the beam weapons raking her port side. The black and green hull of the Order of Eden corvette looked fresh, intact – a tempting target. She looked at their location on the sector map and shook her head.

  “We’ve got boarding teams
at the ready,” advised her tactical officer, Tawnee Rickard.

  “We’re still too far behind enemy lines,” Captain McFadden replied. She couldn’t help but consider that they were also protecting a full hold of captured supplies and hauling four containers under their energy shields, but she didn’t share the thought. There was no need to justify her decisions; she was well past that point with the crew of the Hell Shrike. “Be a shame to get jumped by a destroyer this close to breaking free of Order space,” she muttered to herself.

  The beam fire intensified, focusing on one section of the Hell Shrike’s shields. Three exterior doors began to slide open on the enemy corvette, and Captain McFadden knew what that meant: missile batteries. Her energy shielding would have to spread out; the beam weapons would start getting through and her ship was still undergoing repairs to her outer hull. “Slag this bugger. Fire all guns, load secondary gun magazines with bursters so we can get through her shields. Missile batteries one and three, load fusion warheads and hold for my order. Come about one sixty, mark, point five.” She set up the ship’s course on her console and sent it to the helm. “Navigation, start calculating our final course to Rega Gain.”

  The seven-station bridge was busy as they carried out her orders. Several missiles broke through the Hell Shrike’s shields, sending white-hot shrapnel and explosive charges down the length of their port side. “Breaches?”

  “Nay. We have weakened plating, though,” replied Tactical Officer Rickard.

  “Roll the ship to compensate, we don’t want another hit on that section,” Captain McFadden ordered, aware that there wasn’t much undamaged hull left.

  The twenty-four railgun turrets running along the rounded sides of the ship fired with deadly precision, pounding away at the enemy’s shields. The corvette was starting to accelerate away, firing everything it had as its shield energy diminished. “Ready to fire, Missile Room,” Captain McFadden said.

  “Missile Room reports: ready to fire,” replied Rickard.

  Captain McFadden waited a moment, watching as the enemy corvette let loose with a battery of missiles and intensified beam fire, breaking through the Hell Shrike’s shields and through her outer hull. Moira didn’t flinch, even though three gunnery positions were immediately marked as destroyed. The enemy missiles struck right behind the beam weapons, liquefying metres of the Hell Shrike’s hull. It wasn’t time to fire her own missiles yet. “Helm, full thrust, set your course opposite to the corvette’s. We need a little more room.”

  The corvette’s shields were almost completely depleted, and railgun rounds were breaking through, raking the enemy’s pristine hull. “Gunnery, switch to explosive rounds on even positions, flak on odd.”

  “We’re out of flak rounds,” reported the other tactical officer, Trevor Walsh.

  “Then load junk rounds. Fire at will,” Captain McFadden replied. “Missile Room, hold.”

  “Aye, Missile Room holding,” replied Tactical Officer Rickard.

  Captain McFadden modified the shield systems’ energy profile herself, running the remaining shield emitters past their safety limits to keep the Hell Shrike from taking more damage from the enemy’s beam weapons. They had to last just long enough to get out of their effective range, and the corvette was coming about, giving chase as the Hell Shrike retreated, interpreting the retreat as a lack of resolve. “Surprise, you Order of Eden bastards, I’m getting ready to finish you off,” she muttered with a smile. “All guns, focus on the nose of that ship. I want all our non-nuclear missiles to fire on the same area, now.”

  The crew was well practiced, resolute, and steady on their triggers. A hail of railgun rounds and slower missiles rained down on the enemy ship’s narrow nose, battering its hull inward and forcing the air out of her forward compartments. “Major damage to the corvette, Ma’am,” reported Tactical Officer Rickard. “We have her.”

  “Now we slag her,” Captain McFadden said. “All gun and missile positions, cease fire.” She pressed her thumb onto her command panel for DNA verification, making her fusion missiles available to fire. “Fire one fusion missile.”

  The crew of the Hell Shrike watched as a fusion missile crossed the distance between it and the enemy corvette-class ship in under three seconds and exploded in a bloom of light. Radiological alarms went off momentarily across the ship, and there was minor aft hull damage, but the Hell Shrike was whole enough.

  There was nothing but a cooling hunk of metal left of the enemy corvette. “Helm, it’s time for us to finish this trip. Get us to Rega Gain – no point in hiding around here trying to make repairs.”

  “Aye, making best FTL speed to Rega Gain System,” replied the helm.

  “Treat the injured, have radiation meds passed out,” Captain McFadden said, remembering that they didn’t have enough left to go around. “Start with the higher ranks, oldest first.” She looked to the ensign standing beside the door. The blond-haired boy looked anxious; he wasn’t sure what to do with himself. With the ship three times overstaffed, there was little for him to do. “Ensign…”

  “O’Reilly, Ma’am,” he replied.

  “Fetch my book from my quarters,” she said.

  “Which one, if I may ask?”

  “Dawn’s Exodus,” Captain McFadden replied. I’d best read faster if I’m going to finish it before I give it to Shamus, she thought as she watched the ensign scurry off.

  CHAPTER 1

  A Beautiful Day

  “The emergency hatch is not made to facilitate open-air flight,” Lewis told Alice through her communicator.

  The wind blowing through Alice’s brown-red hair, and the view of the fresh green growth extending all around, made for a good opportunity to use a Ramiel fighter as though it were a pleasure craft. The small ship’s emergency hatch was wide open, and she was sitting up. In glider mode, strong fabric extended out from the sides and gave the craft a butterfly-like appearance. “I’ve got to throttle way down to fly at this height, I may as well take in the sights while I’m below face-stretchy speed.”

  “Are you forgetting why you’re flying so low?”

  “I know, I know,” she replied peevishly. “There could be a framework camp up ahead. I’ve got the important shielding up, don’t worry.” The rolling green landscape still smelled like freshly turned earth. The incredible pounding the planet of Tamber took during the battle of Rega Gain by countless crashed ships and bombardments had re-awakened entire continents. Old terraforming efforts and botanical systems that had been dormant for decades were active once again.

  While she trained as a ranger for two months and served for over four, Alice had watched it happen. It was beautiful, and it was making the planet a healthier place, but the overgrowth was hiding things that she was tasked to find. Most of her missions took place at night, making her job even harder. She was overjoyed to be sent out on a day mission to investigate some wreckage that was showing new activity.

  Alice spotted a large armour panel sticking out from the ground and perked up in her seat. “We’ve got to be close,” she said.

  “That matches a dorsal panel from the Idyllic,” Lewis confirmed. “It looks like your pleasure flight is coming to an end.”

  “Yeah,” she said with a sigh. Alice leaned forward into the form-fitted cockpit and the fighter’s top hatch closed. “Wish we could guard this area from higher up. How many people did that transmission say could be trapped?”

  “They claimed there could be as many as nine survivors from the crash, all recently discovered,” Lewis said. “The Carthans guess that they were trapped much further down in the ship, well underground, and have only recently made the climb closer to the surface, within scanning range.”

  “Still no word from the Carthans on their rescue team?”

  “They responded to my query fourteen minutes ago, actually,” Lewis said.

  “And?” Alice asked as she started an intensive scan.

  “They said they wouldn’t be able to approach the wreckage until
we cleared it,” Lewis replied.

  “Typical. They get their butts kicked, then stretch their resources out too thin and use British Alliance recovery money to contract out all the hard stuff,” she said.

  “I haven’t seen you stepping back from the positive attention you receive every time you succeed on a mission,” Lewis teased. “What would you do if there were not assignments from Carthan Search and Rescue?”

  “I’d probably be searching for remnants of the Order forces, or on the Leviathan picking crew.” Alice considered those alternatives for a moment. Looking for Order of Eden combatants in the wilderness when everyone knew the chances of finding any were next to nil, or guarding salvage workers as they picked through the wreck of the Leviathan were not popular assignments. “You’re right, I shouldn’t complain. Turns out I really like helping people, and at least the Carthans usually set us up with real leads.” The detailed scan of the valley ahead completed, and Alice sighed. “There are a couple of scavengers down there, but no sign of leftover framework troops. Definitely no sign of a hidden command bunker.”

  “My wager is on Remmy finding it now,” Lewis said. “He was sent after the more promising signal.”

  “Stop rubbing my nose in it,” Alice snapped. “He gets more missions, is constantly assigned to assault teams, and has seen way more of this rock than I have by now, and we entered into the service at the same grade.”

  “You’ve seen nearly four times as much of this world in square kilometres,” Lewis corrected. “He’s never assigned to a fighter because he only has basic qualifications for flight.”

  “So you’re saying I’m qualified to be his tour guide if he ever needs a lift and I’m the nearest pilot,” Alice replied. “That’s it, I’m landing.”

  “Your job is to observe, resolve crime from a distance, and report,” Lewis said. “The Carthans will send a recovery team to rescue them within twenty hours.”

  “Twenty hours, I hate that. These people have been trapped in there for months, who knows what they’ve been eating.”

  “Orders,” Lewis reminded in a singsong tone.

  Alice flipped a switch savagely, closing communications. She could have done the same with a thought, but it felt good to cut Lewis off with a gesture.