Spinward Fringe Broadcast 14 Read online

  What came next was an awkward shuffle as everyone carefully shifted, moving Theodore to the outer door, trying not to damage the airlock walls. "They don't use this thing, what's the point in being careful?" Asked Noro.

  "If we poke a hole in their airlock, they may not find it until there's an emergency and someone has to escape," Yawen replied.

  "Don't they have escape pods for that?"

  "Lewis said they only had fifteen aboard, and those were for the high-end suites," Alice replied as Theodore got into position.

  The outer door beeped loudly, then popped open, sending Theodore and Noro out into space where they drifted away slowly. "I can see the Clever Dream from here," Noro chuckled.

  The Clever Dream decelerated into view, turning so their aft section faced them as its main embarkation ramp was lowered, and Theodore led the way from the airlock. "Welcome aboard," Lewis said to Noah as soon as he set foot on the ship.

  "Thanks." The main doors closed and the cabin began to repressurize. "How are the Corsair and Elise doing?"

  "She's doing well now that I reassured her that I'd expedite your release from that junk drift the Angel's Landing staff have the nerve to call 'a station.'"

  "Who's attacking her?" Noah asked, deactivating his helmet as the green light and indication on his HUD told him it was safe. The rest of the crew did the same.

  A hologram of the Corsair, the twin of the Clever Dream, and the long, flexible docking hall affixed to its side appeared in front of them, following as Alice led the way to the bridge. Noah could see the fellow in heavy environment armour firing a drilling laser at the entrance to his ship. There was a line of other crewmen in rough armour behind him, as if they expected him to get through any minute. "There is no immediate danger to the Corsair, since Elise is reporting that the shield… oh, never mind, I'll let her tell you," Lewis said, his tone was that of someone who was giving in. "She really wants to talk to you anyway, I have her on laser-link now."

  "Like he was saying," Elise continued, her voice coming through the ship wide address system. "It'll be over nine hours before they break through, then they have to deal with my hull, so I admit I might have over reacted when I sent you that emergency transmission. Crying was definitely too much, I won't do that again."

  "Sorry, I didn't hear that," Noah said. "I think I missed a lot of your communications, whoever's jamming this area has a hell of a transmitter."

  "Oh, okay. I’m happy you heard enough to know that you should come get me. I've tried to open a dialogue using high-volume emitters in the docking tunnel, but they just laughed and kept drilling. It really looks like they think they'll get through."

  "Okay, next time someone starts trying to cut through your shielding, separate from the docking collar and fly around. Cloak if you have to."

  "I was going to do that in a few hours, when things got a little desperate, but I didn't know if you had another solution yet," Elise replied.

  Alice dropped into the pilot's seat and brought up the tactical interface. "Lewis, will there be any damage to the station if the Corsair rips free of the docking tunnel?"

  "Well, that cheap plastic docking tunnel will come apart, decompressing suddenly and sending the seven pirates into space, but I expect the station will have the tunnel replaced within the hour. My scanners picked up several backups in their storage area when we arrived. As for the pirates, well, there's a chance a few of their suits would lose integrity."

  "Your ship, your call," Alice said, looking to Noah, gesturing to the co-pilots seat.

  "Pull away from the docking collar. Use the mooring cutters and hard shield first," Noah ordered.

  "Or you could do it that way, minimizing damage and making repair even easier," Lewis commented. "It won't be as much fun, though."

  "Cutting the collar's mooring clamps and activating shield now," Elise said. The Corsair thrust away from the docking collar, which was dislodged so cleanly that they couldn't see the damage. The ship moved away horizontally so it was several metres away from the end. The plastic boarding tunnel flapped and writhed for a moment as the air inside was released in a rush, sending the pirates out of the end. All but two collided with the side of the Corsair at high speed then pinwheeled away.

  "All right, let's get out of here before Noah pisses more pirates off," Alice said. "We'll fly out of the system then cloak, listen for anyone who wants to talk to us."

  "After hours in that bar, I could use a break," Noah said. He looked around, coming eye-to-eye with Iruuk, who looked like he was happy to see him. "Hey, man, glad you could make it."

  Iruuk gave him a big hug from behind the chair, his long arms crossing his chest and pressing him into the cushioning. "Glad you're here," he said, his low Nafalli voice rumbling. "She really missed you," Iruuk said as he let go, pointing at Alice.

  Two

  Preoccupied

  * * *

  The weight of the occupation changed everything in Haven Shore. Nigel was new to the place, he didn't know what it looked like when people were free, but he could feel discontent and worry start to turn to anger and hate faster after they pulled the statue of Ayan Anderson down. Footage of her denying that she wanted to be called Queen at all played often, it was part of the smear campaign the Order of Eden ran, but to most of the people he knew, that's what she was.

  There were people on Tamber before she and the rest of the Freeground Originals arrived. Most of them were from some other government called the Carthans, and they sounded worse than the Order. Their soldiers were serving punitive sentences, unable to disobey orders. The other residents that predated the Originals were dregs, castaways and opportunists who wanted to live in a place no one knew. It wasn't even a planet, but a moon used to test the ecosystem that was going to be reproduced to a partially hollowed giant; Kambis. If he saw it on a star chart, he wouldn't have even stopped in out of curiosity. There were some functional ruins, a few interesting wrecks, tropical areas, but there were also contaminated fields that were supposed to be terraformed but turned toxic instead. He would have definitely passed it by. Ayan was credited with bringing democracy, new progress, and some culture to the place. There were safe areas to live in, jobs, even a government that would take care of you regardless of whether you were an artist, an engineer, or soldier if they had room. Looking around at the hundreds of workers headed back to the Everin Building with him, it seemed like they'd taken a lot of people in. The picker shift he was headed back with represented less than a hundredth of people that the Order crammed into the finished buildings in Haven Shore.

  Questions were the most important thing during the occupation. You had to know when not to ask them, who you could trust for the answers, and what the most important ones were. His uncle Frost was building a resistance. It wasn't like the open one that sang songs, shouted obvious phrases of dissent like; "Order go home!" or "Hate fate!" which was his favourite useless sentiment. One of the first popular speeches given by an Order leader ended with; "It is our fate to make this life eternal. Our fate to bring this chaotic existence under control whether it's the governing of ourselves or the entire galaxy. Embrace your fate! Join the Order of Eden!"

  He'd seen that speech a dozen times, given by a little boy they called the Child Prophet who came and went before the whole financial ladder theory was big in the Order of Eden. He knew he could ask any soldier about that crap, a lot of them liked to educate the people under their control endlessly as though they were bringing literacy to the unwashed masses or something. Nigel hated every one of them but prompting them to gab about their glorious fate was better than working, it was better than getting a beating because he shot one of them a defiant look. Shouting; "Hate fate!" was a quick way to earn yourself one of those. Nigel didn't have to, though. His height earned him six or seven - he wasn't sure how many exactly - baton thrashings because he was taller than most of the soldiers.

  He tried to keep his brow high, to look friendly and harmless. It was hard to make sure he
didn't seem like he was looking over one of their heads or scowling all the time. He learned to hunch. It felt like he was giving in.

  Every picker around him had their piece of fruit. It was a reward for meeting the quota that day, something that got harder as they moved deeper into the jungle surrounding the city. They were encountering more territorial wild life. Giant cats, predator birds that would pluck you off a tree and carry you off if you were unlucky, and snakes that were so thick that they could be mistaken for fallen logs. He listened to his uncle's advice about being a picker; never go first. They weren't allowed to have weapons or more protective clothing than their flimsy jumpsuits, so the only way to make sure you didn't get killed was to be in the middle of the pack and make sure someone else got it first. He forgot sometimes and ended up climbing above the pack in a tree, or wandering, but he'd been lucky every time so far. He was saving his orange for Samantha.

  How could he know why she joined him to cuddle several nights ago when he was falling asleep on his bedroll? She did. He made her laugh, made her comfortable, listened to her even if he didn't completely understand some of the science at times, and that seemed to be more than enough to keep her coming back so far. He enjoyed her visits because it always felt like her attention was a gift, like she was taking time out of being smart, independent and well liked so she could be vulnerable with him.

  That orange, worth a hundred-forty-seven credits, would go to her. Seeing her smile would be the height of his day. Most of the people there would sell their fruit to someone else, often a guard. The rest would share it with their kids, but it was the best offering he could give. After moving through the jungle, climbing trees, picking fruit for sixteen hours and walking for one, he wanted to hand it to her and fall down on his bed.

  The broad doors to the Everin Building awaited, and Nigel stooped low as he passed through. They were twice his height, there was no problem there, but the line of soldiers and guards who watched the scanning stations were looking for people who stood out, and he didn't want to get picked out of the line again. He passed through, and when the crowd thinned out he had an easier time getting to the first-floor dwelling that he, his uncle and Samantha called home. All four of the others, including Tammy, had been taken. She was in isolation, but no one knew where the rest were.

  Nigel stepped through the door. "I'm home, you lucky, lucky people!" he exclaimed as the door closed behind him. Samantha, Frost and David looked up from the table, their expressions stony.

  "Come in quietly," Frost said. "We have a visitor."

  "Yeah, hey Dave," Nigel said, extending his hand.

  "Good to see you," he replied, smiling warmly. He looked more like Frost's nephew than Nigel did. They were almost equally stocky and broad shouldered.

  "No, not him," Frost said with a smirk.

  "I don't see anyone else," he said.

  A shimmer in the air preceded the appearance of Stephanie, who was standing at the opposite end of the table. "Surprise."

  He went around and hugged her. "Aunt Steph!" he said with a squeeze. "How are you doing? I didn't think we'd see you until the occupation ended."

  "I have to make some deliveries. It's good to see you," she said, tapping a finger to his earlobe lightly. "There, now we can always hear each other."

  "What?"

  "I just planted a communication device on you that's indistinguishable from skin. It uses a mesh network I made so we can communicate. You turn it on and off with a thought, it's new tech from the Fleet."

  "Cool, wouldn't they detect a mesh network, though?"

  "It works by disguising our communications so well that you can't tell the difference between them and ambient static. Their equipment can't even tell we're transmitting," Stephanie said.

  "Cool, cool," Nigel said. "Thank you, but, how are you?"

  "Good," Stephanie said, offering a rare and brief smile. "It was hard, hiding out in isolation for a while, but I've been keeping myself in a safe place. I'm hoping that the occupation will be over soon, but we still have a long way ahead of us."

  "The Order probably knows I'm here," Frost said. "This disguising tech isn't as good as we thought. That leaves you and Sam there to carry out an important part of our plan."

  "We're finally doing something?" Nigel asked, excited and afraid at the same time.

  "It's time," David said. "You're in the wrong place, we were hoping they'd put you somewhere other than on a picking crew, but Stephanie has found a way to make the plan work."

  "Good, I need to be a part of this. I've seen enough of these power tripping assholes. So, what's the plan?"

  "Well, a lot of this is going to sound like bad news," Stephanie said. "Frost is leaving."

  "I'm getting in a cloak suit, going to do some damage, then I'll be getting out. I wish I could stay, but it's only a matter of time before they pick me up and I go the way of the rest of our friends. If they haven't scanned me and seen that I'm wearing a mask yet, then it's going to happen soon."

  "He'll join me, where I'm in communication with Phase Seven, the nearest battlegroup," Stephanie said.

  "What happens to Sam, Dave and me after this plan?" Nigel asked.

  "I'd love to say that you get snatched up so you can hide out with us, but that's not certain," Stephanie replied. Her expression was darkening by the second.

  The feeling in the room was grim, it was like everyone expected to lose and it made Nigel uneasy. "So, we're not supposed to get caught. That's part of the plan."

  "If everything goes well, then you won't have to worry about that for long. The Phase Seven fleet has doubled in size and most of the command structure is in Haven Shore right now. Wheeler has moved Order Knights and several of his commanders down here because things haven't gone well since he released that footage of Ayan's apartment," Stephanie said.

  It was impossible to miss what she was talking about. When Wheeler aired the footage of soldiers finding a freakish shrine to Ayan Rice, which included her corpse, and no one believed it. Even when they let independent members of the press analyse the video and visit the site for themselves, people didn't believe it was what it seemed to be. They hated Wheeler for orchestrating the whole thing. No one liked it when someone tried to trick them, but it was even worse that he went after their queen with such grisly evidence. It was ghoulish, and residents were insulted. Nigel found himself wondering if things would have been different if Wheeler revealed the queen as some secret glutton, or as an embezzler with hidden riches, but it didn't matter. The damage was done and the citizens were starting to notice signs of Wheeler's paranoia. The shimmer of a shield around him when he appeared in public and his unwillingness to open his containment suit when he was in the open air were just a start. He'd started travelling with a crowd of soldiers and his public appearance had been rescheduled twice. "Are we finally going to kill him?" Nigel asked, everyone knew who he meant.

  "No," Stephanie replied. "We'd rather deal with a known incompetent than the commander they have in the wings. Someone new is taking control of the Cluster, and we expect the Order of Eden to start attacking the Mergillian and other free worlds within the month. If we remove Wheeler, she may come here first, and I know what I'd do if I were facing a rebellion in Haven Shore."

  "Burn it all down," Samantha said under her breath. She was still in her work uniform: dark trousers and a jacket with the markings of a Supervising Engineer. Her knowledge of manufacturing materials put her near the top of the command chain in the fabrication plant.

  "That's right. Most of the people the Haven Government and the Rangers saved then resettled have been moved here. They're all seen as sympathizers to Haven, so Wheeler has been trying to convert as many as possible to the Order way, get them climbing the ladder. It's a good way for them to keep an eye on us, too," David said.

  "And if we make too much trouble, you know, kill our mentally unbalanced overlord, we'll be easy to wipe out," Frost added. "No, we're going to make him shake a little, give him anothe
r reason to keep one eye open, but he'll be whole by the end. The real plan will use the ships we have waiting. It's something they won't expect, and it starts with these." He put a thick stack of reprogrammable communication strips on the table. There must have been a hundred of them. Soldiers gave them out to people with their ident codes on them so people could call them to borrow money or rack up charges by using them to call other people. Everyone had a couple on them, some people even used them as intended. The Order confiscated anything that could be used to reprogram them, but Stephanie had a pair of command and control bracers with her, among other things, and she scanned them. "There are three bad ones in that stack, leaving us with ninety-eight we can use. I'll reprogram these while you fill Nigel and Samantha in on what comes next."

  Nigel listened closely as a plan that eventually had him grinning was laid out in whispers by David and Frost. It would be dangerous, but it would be worth it, especially since the Merciless had returned to the Haven System, and they would not be sitting idle.

  Three

  The Tour

  * * *

  It didn't take long for the crew of the Clever Dream to find asteroids with leftover heavy metals for the Corsair to harvest so it could finish manufacturing security androids for the station and start working on Captain Majan Lor's order. It was a strange thing, not worrying about being detected. The small group of asteroids were slowly drifting away from the Doxan System, plenty of ships were passing within scanning range, and they had two military class artificial intelligences on watch using the best scanners in the solar system to see danger coming. Elise and Lewis were their first line guardians, and it didn't take much effort on their part.

  The Corsair used an advanced version of the maxjack system Frost built for the Samson to cut some of the best parts of the asteroid away, grab them, then break them down while the most useful materials were stored in an expandable compartment along the bottom of the ship. The manufacturing systems picked the material up from there, breaking it down further, refining the better substances it found then converting the remainder to bulk that would be converted into useful but lighter metals and other construction materials. Alice knew how it worked, she'd done the reading, qualified on an earlier version of the system, but it still boggled her sometimes, how rough stone and raw metals could come out minutes later as something useful. It was technological alchemy.