Dangerous Toys (Part Fourteen)

XCC was waiting. The Director felt that that was most of his job, waiting to see if he had pushed humankind a little further into the dark or away from it. The first pebble in this particular avalanche had been the Engineers discovery of what was now just called a ‘Q’ ship, a trojan horse free to transport any damn thing it wanted right into the heart of Earth space. Now bigger rocks were starting to tumble as her report was threading its way through to mankind's assets and allies and more were being kicked over. His AI interrupted, “Director, the Dangerous Toys AI reports the detonation of a level-six response. Telemetry is clear. It appears to have been successful. The Ship reports he is about to begin running for the Wellerman Orbital immediately and will be out of communication unless intercepted.” The AI paused, “Sir, he reports twenty pursuing enemy Frigate-type vessels. Captain O’Neill has executed a Flare attack on the pursuers and has released a Testament.”

He called up the Ship on his screen. A heavy Trader, almost no weaponry and O’Neill wouldn’t have done anything about that. The engines were a different story. He sniffed to himself and muttered, “Run, you clever girl. Run.” He turned back to the AI. “Inform the Wellerman that they have incoming. I’ll see if the Fleet can help. What do you make of young Oscar?” His AI laughed, “Sir, he’s a boy playing soldiers. I have hopes for him, although I can tell you that his parents are going to be seriously unhappy with the Engineer if she doesn’t get him home safe.” The director shook his head as a new problem arose. AI’s tended to count someone as their child if they had created a thirtieth of the code. It made for a lot of displeased AI’s wanting to talk to him.

Oscar was feeling a little lost. According to his Captain and the XCC, he was doing fine and he was determined to continue. Currently, he was building his first Avatar and scanning deep ahead to find his allies. It was up to Patrica what happened next.

Patrica watched from the bridge, standing beside the Captain as the ship accelerated into the dark. She was watching the readouts as they spun up and the scanners as they reached out looking for their enemies. The Captain took a deep breath and found the crew calm and determined. Good. He turned to his Engineer but here was the problem or a least a change, “Patrica, I’m afraid you are just going to have to admit it. We can’t have any confusion when someone is trying to kill us. The humans, your HDF have made you Captain and made me exceptionally wealthy along the way. I know it’s a bit of a shock but you need to suck it up and take command. I’m a trader and I have never served a single day on a military ship. Stop trying to put a round plug in a square hole, I thought you would have learned that on your first day in engineering school. You gave me my ship back from these pirates and now I will be offered another one, but now she is yours and you need to get used to it.” He grinned a little, “and that includes sitting in the big chair and talking to the crew.”

Patrica was, she felt, having a bad day. Fighting off pirates, launching frightening death into the stars and now her Captain was handing over the hot seat with the sort of inevitable logic that she would expect from an AI. She knew he was right, it was blindingly obvious but it still sucked. /Longnose/ chided her, “The crew already know this. They are waiting for you.”

The bridge crew watched as the Captain practically pushed the Engineer to his command console and watched as she sat down and fiddled about with the screens

.

Then she lowered the height of the chair. Finally, she cleared her throat. “Attention all crew. The Dangerous Toys is now a civilian diplomatic vessel of the Human Defense Forces. As the only ranking member of that force on board, I am obliged to assume command. I believe we are being hunted by a force of twenty ships and I intend to avoid contact until our forces engage them. Those of you that wish may resign your contracts as soon as we arrive safely at our destination and you will be fully compensated for the … inconvenience. In the meantime, we may come under attack at any time and I need you to maintain your positions.”

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The Commander of the Recovery Initiative Fleet was feeling the wasted hours, chasing the ghosts of his missing ‘pirates’. His ships were now sitting in cold and very empty space. His Comms and Nav reported zero emissions. To his, admittedly incomplete, knowledge the humans had no capacity to annihilate ten of his ships without wreckage or some debris. They were simply missing. He suspected that they had decided that being a pirate fleet was now to be a career choice and not a mission, especially since their ships were supposed to die. Now he had to call Incice and inform him of his failure. The piracy route was suddenly looking quite attractive to him too. He tried to work out which of his relations he would miss if Incice was unhappy.

Incice was having his own problems. Suddenly everybody was taking an interest in his ships. Orbitals, ports, even open space was now filled with creatures taking a close look at his various fleets. Three of his mercenary vessels had been seized by humans and a fourth destroyed as it had attempted to flee an Orbital. The fate of a training ship was forgotten as his important assets began to fall. He could see nothing but destruction in front of him. Humans. He hit the Comms, “Attention all personnel, All Human vessels and people are to be regarded as hostile. You will retaliate at every available opportunity. Failure to do so will result in destructive action against your families and assets on planet.” He slammed the Comms closed and ignored the responses.

The XCC listened to his message with glee. This enemy had reached out to his entire network out of sheer rage and now they had a map. It took several minutes to identify the targets and task the HDF to go and seize them. A couple of Marine ships were tasked with the occupation of the Capital planet and the destruction of this network. The Director began writing out the explanations for the Galaxy. Frankly, he needed a nice attack on something useful like a diplomatic ship to justify this scale of response…

Someone, somewhere pinged the Dangerous Toys and lit the ship up like a firework.

The Wellerman fleet was the first to see it. If anyone had been wondering if Avatars ever cursed, well it was an education. Either someone had made a fatal mistake or they wanted the ship dead. He shouted his new orders in several languages that were mostly profanity and put his ships on course and at the fastest speed he could build up the engines. Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one to see it.

The Commander of the Recovery Initiative Fleet was still debating making the call when his Nav yelled, “Yes!” The Commander and crew turned to see what had caused the first sign of hope on the fleet. The Nav officer posted it on screen and began to explain, “Sir, someone just showed us the Dangerous Toys. Its nearly nine hours away, but the nearest Orbital is nearly twice that. Incice must have contacts somewhere that knew where it was and just painted it all over the galaxy.” The Commander nodded, slightly less impressed than his crew expected. Someone wanted the attack but he knew Incice had no contacts with the humans and that meant something else was involved. However, orders were orders, “Take us to stealth and move to the signal.” He left the bridge and moved to his quarters and sat silently for some time. Finally, he decided that he preferred his crew to his family and took a long walk down to the cargo bay. It took a while to unpack the object but eventually, he had it loaded and primed. It didn’t really launch, more like tipped out the back and tumbled in space. No need to bother anyone with silly things like alerts over something like this. He began the walk back to his quarters, lost in thought.

Patrica was stumbling through /Longnoses/ notes while he took the dogs on a peaceful walk around the decks. She was missing her department badly right now. Then it all went to hell. Something dark-burst her ship on every frequency that she could check and it was suddenly visible to anything within a thousand light-years. She didn’t waste time cursing, “Oscar, what the hell was that? Never mind, just change course towards the nearest heavy gravity object around us and get as close as you can. Also, turn off the HDF transponder. We need to lose our signature quickly.” She looked around at the shocked crew and explained, “Whoever it is looking for us is going to be faster than we can match. I need them to think we are still running. I need to get to Engineering and get our shields and gravity ready.”