Susan walked through the corridor with Corporal Shen at her side, feeling a mix of both fury and triumph.
The ambush had been waiting for her, just as she had expected. Twelve enemy escorts and at least two squadrons of rigs, right in the path that her reinforcements for Gabriel would have taken. Had she obeyed that first instinctive reaction to send out the CTRs alone, nearly her entire rig force would have been decimated—and then she would have had to watch Gabriel die, anyway.
Instead, the cruisers had smashed through the ambushers with a devastating application of plasma fire. At least seven of the escort craft her people had started labeling ‘Axeheads’ had been carved into scrap and shrapnel, leaving the remnants to flee in panic. She could only imagine that the enemy commander was not best pleased to have such results. It hadn’t stopped them from following up the ambush with another wave of missile attacks that the escorts and CTRs had easily stopped, but Susan had been more than pleased with the engagement.
At least she had until Gabriel’s survivors had limped back to the Concord. The man appeared to be entirely incapable of avoiding near-death experiences lately. She would need to address that with him, but at least he wouldn’t be able to do it again until his rig was repaired. Of course, the fact that he’d managed to rescue one of the strangers and salvage a few other bits and pieces had gone some way towards redeeming the entire exercise, but not entirely.
Susan shook her head, attempting to dismiss those thoughts. They were an aftereffect of the difficult choices she’d been forced to make, but the tactician inside of her knew that if she had to, she would make the same choice to send him out. He’d gone out, and he’d recovered something that might lead to the salvation of the fleet. Even if she hadn’t fought off the ambush, or if he hadn’t come back alive, she would have needed to make the same decision. Pretending otherwise was entertaining, but an admiral needed to be realistic.
Besides, she could ill-afford such distractions when she had a crucial task ahead of her. Just as the battle had been winding down, and the ships and rigs had come home, Captain Wong had sent a request to see her. Perhaps her work there had finally borne fruit.
She reached the conference room where Wong had been kept onboard the Concord, and Corporal Shen nodded to the soldiers on either side of the door. The bodyguard stepped up to them, exchanging a few quiet words, and then triggered the door controls. He proceeded inside, clearly unwilling to let her risk another private conversation. Susan took a deep breath and followed him.
Captain Wong was not alone this time. The woman who had been his second-in-command, a Commander Hummel, was also sitting with him. Both Directorate officers stood as she entered, and she waved for them to regain their seats. Corporal Shen faded into the background, taking up a position by the door, and she took the chair across from both of them. “Captain Wong, Commander Hummel. You requested a meeting?”
Commander Hummel opened her mouth, but Wong made a subtle gesture. His subordinate settled back into her chair. “I did, Admiral Delacourt. We need to speak.”
Susan felt a sudden burst of hope ran through her, but she suppressed any sign of it from showing in her face. “Have you rethought the possibility of helping us, Captain?”
Wong glanced at Commander Hummel. Then he sat back slightly, and the professional mask suddenly fell away. He seemed tired now, worn out by whatever choices he had debated. “I have, Admiral. Unfortunately, we may require something from you in return.”
She blinked in surprise. If he had still been defiant, she would have expected that same, burning contempt for her. Yet it did not seem as if he was ready to hand over the information he knew, either. “What do you mean, Captain? Do I need to remind you that helping me will benefit your personnel already?”
“With all due respect, sir, I am well aware of the problems you face. At the moment, you could say that I know far better than you what you need.” Wong met her stare without flinching. Then he grinned, a shockingly unexpected sight. “I may be your prisoner, sir, but I am not under your command. Allow me the chance to revel in that newfound sense of freedom.”
Despite herself, Susan allowed a small snort to escape her. “Fine then. If you’re inclined to be rebellious, I suppose this will be the gentlest way to act out.” She leaned back in her chair. “Tell me what you want.”
Hummel leaned forward before Wong could speak. “Captain Wong needs to be officially reinstated as commander of the Directorate prisoners, and our ships need to become part of your fleet. An armed part. We’ll follow all your orders, but discipline and organization comes from Captain Wong. Sir.”
Wong gave his former subordinate a stern look, and Hummel shrugged. “She’s not going to trust us, sir, not unless she sees what we’re getting out of the arrangement. You can offer her what you know for free, but we’re all better off if she thinks a bit more authority is the reason you’re doing it.”
Susan looked at Wong, and he shrugged uncomfortably. The grief and pain which had always haunted him was lurking in the edges of his expression. “Commander, I doubt they’d accept me back, not after the disaster I led them into. I don’t have the right to ask for it, anyway.”
“That’s why you’re not, sir. I am.” Hummel turned back to Susan. “He doesn’t know it, but a lot of the other officers would be relieved if he was back in a position to crack down on troublemakers. It might help reassure them we won’t just be abandoned here—and I’m sure you could put us to at least as much use as those mercs.”
Susan tilted her head to the side. Hummel had a point—trained, disciplined Directorate personnel couldn’t be a bad thing at the moment, especially with the losses her rig forces had taken. The prospect of having Ajax, Odysseus, and Antiphus come back to full operational status would be a godsend as well. “That can be arranged—given that your information is helpful enough. Are the instructions for the Directorate response to the Wild Colonies that extensive?”
Wong shook his head. “I wish I knew, Admiral. Unfortunately, those instructions have gone missing.”
Surprised, Susan tilted her head to the other side. “Missing, Captain?”
The Directorate officer nodded slowly. “Yes, sir.” He gestured to Commander Hummel. “After our last conversation, I sent orders to Commander Hummel to retrieve the instructions from where they were hidden. I had given her the copy that we had maintained onboard the Imperious.”
He looked to Hummel, who shifted her shoulders uncomfortably. “When the Captain’s orders came, I was confused. I thought he knew I had already given those instructions to another person. Someone that had come aboard from Admiral Nevlin. A man named Mr. Grey.”
Something about that name made Susan frown. Her finger idly tapped the table in front of her. “And where is this Mr. Grey?”
“Unknown, Admiral.” Hummel looked at Wong for a moment, and her normally impassive expression betrayed a shocking amount of uncertainty. “I’ve searched for him and ordered the rest of our people to locate him. He isn’t among the prisoners on Achilles. He also hasn’t been reported among the casualties.”
Her mind went back to when the OMNI began to report enemy infiltration. “So he has managed to escape confinement.”
The two Directorate officers exchanged a look. Wong spoke carefully, as if trying to hedge his words. “It is possible. There was a lot of chaos during the surrender.”
“Understandable.” She hesitated over her next words, wanting them to be understood precisely. “Given the timing, I have to assume that this Mr. Grey is an agent from the Wild Colonies. The information that you worried would reach your enemies is already in their hands.”
There was a moment of shock on Hummel’s face, but Wong simply gave her a slow nod. “I…suspected that might be the case. Admiral Nevlin left Mr. Grey with us, but the man had never been given an actual place in our command structure. He did not have a rank, either, and the fact that he went to such lengths to steal the information we would have needed to fight the Wild Colonies…”
Susan nodded. “It suggests that the Wild Colonies have already infiltrated parts of the Directorate. And that they are already working to neutralize any measures that could be taken against them.”
Hummel still looked stunned. “If that’s the case, then the Directorate is already compromised. Grey was onboard a Special Operations ship; they have most of our secrets on ships like that.”
“It’s worse than that, Commander.” Wong met Susan’s eyes, and they shared a grim moment of understanding. “Admiral Nevlin introduced Grey as a confidant of sorts. The fact that a Wild Colony spy had managed to obtain the trust of a highly placed officer suggests they have done so elsewhere. The entire central command of the Directorate could have already been suborned.”
Wong’s expression grew solemn. “I had already suspected that we had no home to return to. This confirms it. If the Wild Colonies are already infiltrating the Directorate, they would be more than happy to help destroy us should we attempt to return.”
Susan nodded slowly. “You are correct, Captain. Admiral Nevlin would have attempted to do it anyway, but if you returned home, knowing what you know, you would be a threat to their plans. I doubt they would let any of you survive.”
He studied her for a moment. “I believe you, Admiral. Whatever Nevlin said you were, I know you to be true to your word.” Hummel shifted in her seat, but Wong silenced her with a glance. The commander turned her gaze to the nearest wall. “Yet there is still something I can offer you. If you would allow us to become part of your fleet.”
Susan blinked. She glanced at Shen, who seemed to be doing his best to keep any reaction from showing on his face. “As I said, while your efforts might prove crucial, there is an element of trust that must be addressed. After the conflict between us, it would be difficult for the Wayfarers to rely on you.”
Wong shrugged. “And yet, what are your long-term plans for us? You cannot send us back, not unless you intend returning the Concord to the Known Worlds. Given the dangers you have faced with an entire fleet, it would be unwise to consider that plan an option. Aside from that, do you plan on keeping all of us prisoner forever? How long do you intend to leave us aboard our ships, under your watchful eyes?”
Hummel grunted. “If you’re still going to drag us out to whatever sanctuary you find, you might as well let us help. Otherwise, we’re just going to be dead weight. We’re going to need to trust you to not abandon us, anyway, so you might as well just trust us in return.”
“I have no intention of abandoning anyone. Especially not now.” Susan looked back and forth between the two officers. “Very well. I cannot make a decision like this on my own—it is not the way among these people—but I will do what I can. I will take your request to the Council of Elders, with the recommendation that it be accepted.”
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
“Then I am sure the Elders will see the wisdom in accepting our help. I look forward to working with you, Admiral Delacourt.” Wong inclined his head slightly. He even seemed on the edge of smiling, as impossible as it seemed.
“Do not get ahead of yourselves.” Susan shook her head. “In the meantime, what other help can you give me? Do you have any clues on how to find this Mr. Grey?”
The two Directorate officers exchanged a look, and Hummel sighed. “Most of the bridge records were wiped after the battle. It seemed to be battle damage at first, but he could have accessed the computer banks here when we tried to transfer our logs from Imperious.”
“We can tell you what he looked like, however, as long as you have a sketch artist of some sort.” Wong folded his hands on the table. “Aside from that, we will continue to interrogate our personnel in order to find how he escaped custody. We will make sure that our search is kept secret.”
Susan blinked as an idea struck her. “Perhaps that is not how we should handle things, Captain.” When they both looked at her, she smiled. “Tradition among the Directorate is to keep this sort of thing secret at all costs. Many times, we concealed the truth for fear of how it would affect the rest of the Known Worlds.”
The Directorate captain nodded slowly. “It was considered standard practice, yes. To prevent panic.”
“And to conceal the occasional wrongdoing on the part of officers.” Hummel stirred slightly, but Susan ignored her and focused on Wong. “I believe we do not need to follow that policy here.”
He met her eyes. “You want us to tell the crews why we are searching for him.”
“No.” Susan smiled. “I want to tell everyone. The entire fleet.”
There was a pause, and then Hummel grinned openly. “Because if he’s hiding somewhere, there might be some Wayfarer who stumbles across him and reports it.”
“Or it will force him to do something desperate to remain hidden.” Susan tapped the table twice. “He has survived thus far by hiding in the shadows. I mean to rob him of that chance.”
“Then we will do our best to help you, Admiral.” Wong half-smiled at her. “After all, we are your fellow travelers now, and any risk to you is a risk to us all.”
Susan smiled. “I am glad to hear you acknowledge that, Captain. We will start right away.”
She looked at Corporal Shen, who nodded quietly. He turned to the side and murmured into a communicator on his wrist.
As she started to leave, however, Captain Wong stood up. “Admiral, one last thing.”
Susan turned to face him, curious. “Yes, Captain?”
Wong came around the table and stood a short distance away from her, his hands folded behind his back and his spine straight. He kept his eyes, not meeting her stare. “I need to express my gratitude to you, Admiral. The things you told me when you came here, about Riaskat…” Wong shook his head, and a moment of frustration broke through his professional demeanor. “I don’t know how to say it, but I needed to hear it. I needed to know. Thank you.”
The words had clearly not been easy for Wong, and Susan fought to keep a smile from her expression. “It is not a problem at all, Captain Wong. I am glad to have been of some help to you.” She glanced at Hummel, who was watching them both with an unreadable expression. “You are worthy of the trust and loyalty your people have in you. I know you will not do anything that will not betray them. You never betrayed them; you never could. Leave the blame to Theodore Nevlin and move on. It will get easier.”
He nodded again, though the expression on his face suggested that he was having a difficult time accepting her words. “Thank you, Admiral.” A shadow of something crossed his expression, and he stepped away from her and saluted. “Good luck, Admiral Delacourt. For all our sakes, I hope you will not need it.”
Long after she’d returned his salute and left with her guards, Susan realized that some of the sting had finally faded from her heart. Perhaps it was finally breaking through to Wong, or perhaps it was that she knew the identity of the person attacking her. Or maybe she finally knew what she had to do.
Either way, the enemy was out there—and she was going to find him.
Gabe looked across the rig bay and fumed.
He was officially overseeing the repairs to his CTR. The techs were hard at work, attempting to reverse the damage. They had plenty of work to do, with one arm missing and the armor chewed to pieces by glancing hits. He had every confidence that they would succeed in restoring the rig to functionality, though, just as they had before. At least, he hoped they would manage it before the next strike by the enemy.
Truthfully, he’d come to watch two other rigs, both of which were clamped to the deck by technicians as soon as the SARs had dragged them inside. The first was Eagro’s rig, still half-shattered from the beating the stranger had taken at the guns of the enemy escort. The stranger had not made any movement; the shattered limbs had twitched slightly and leaked fluid, but nothing else. Its narrow, inhuman head had hung motionless, as if the rig was sleeping. Only one of the camera assemblies still flickered, and the blinking light was the only sign the rig still had some form of power.
The second rig was one that Hope-Ten had managed to latch onto and drag aboard, with far less fanfare. It was the plasma-cored remnants of one of the enemy rigs, with a hole burrowed through from a pair of direct hits from Angel-Four. Both shots had been dead on target, and the self-destruct device that had taken apart a lot of the others hadn’t activated. Instead, it had drifted until it had been captured and pulled aboard.
Gabe had already pored over the information the techs had taken from their initial observations. Just as IntCent had confirmed for him weeks ago, Eagro’s rig showed no signs of a pilot’s entrance or hatch. There was no sign of how to recover the pilot inside, or even if there was one.
There was a section of sealed equipment nestled in the stranger’s back, just below the tetherdrive. None of the technicians had been able to penetrate the shielding around it, but it seemed to connect directly to where a piloting chamber would have been. Scans had revealed a secondary power source inside the equipment, but it was nowhere near the level of energy that would have been required to fuel a weapon or onboard flight system. The rig’s main power supply had apparently shut down due to coolant loss, which was likely why the stranger hadn’t resisted the recovery attempt or made any movement since.
More worrisome was the fact that time was likely running out for whatever actually directed the rig into battle. There had to be a pilot somewhere in the shattered wreck, clawing for a way out. Yet they couldn’t just tear the thing open; who knew what kinds of atmosphere or gravity the pilot would be used to? He didn’t think that it would lay the best foundations for future alliances if the Wayfarers accidentally killed a captured pilot, even by accident. Yet if Eagro had been injured, or simply was running out of air…
Gabe shook his head and clenched his teeth again. If the state of Eagro’s rig was bad, the enemy rig could only make the situation worse. Just like the stranger’s rig, it had no pilot’s access, but unlike Eagro’s craft, it no longer needed one. Angel-Four’s shots had dug straight through the armor and into the pilot’s compartment, vaporizing nearly everything there.
What had been left behind, however, had been enough to set the entire Wayfarer rig force on edge. The ‘pilot’ compartment for the enemy rig had been small, too small for a human being to fit inside. There wasn’t any life support equipment, either, even though there should have been signs of it left behind by the broken remnants. It begged the question of how the things were being piloted. Were the Wild Colonies deploying some kind of AI against their enemies?
He looked back to Eagro’s rig, and a similar question ran through his mind again. Both rigs were missing pilot accesses. There was no way that Eagro was some kind of artificial being, was there? They had been allies. Could they continue to be friends with something that they had always been taught was an abomination?
Gabe shook his head again and tried to look back at the enemy rig. Its self-destruct device had already been heavily damaged, but the techs had removed it regardless, chucking it out the nearest hatch. The last thing they needed was for it to activate inside the Concord. Now they were pouring over the technology inside, probing at what was left of its circuits and systems to try to find a weakness of some sort or another. Hopefully, they would find enough to let them track the monsters down and end them.
“Is this a private sulking session, or can anyone join?”
He blinked in surprise and turned to see Derek and Ben, both watching him. His friend grinned slightly and gestured to Eagro’s rig. “He’s lucky those eyes of yours can’t produce plasma through sheer concentration. Otherwise, you’d have cut him out of there already.”
“We can’t just leave him in there. If he’s wounded…” Gabe shook his head. “There has to be some way to find out how to help him.”
“You’re assuming there’s a ‘him’ to save.” Ben held up both hands defensively when Gabe moved his glare over to him. “Hey, I’m not saying they are like those Wild Colony rigs. Maybe there’s a remote control or something in there.”
Derek shrugged. “Maybe. Seems like there would be some kind of delay that would give it away, though. Those things move too smoothly to be operated at a distance.”
“Which means he’s in there, whatever he is, and he needs help.” Gabe smacked his fist against his open palm. “We finally have one of them right where we want them, and we can’t even talk to them at all.”
“Some might say that’s a good thing, Angel Boy.” Gabe closed his eyes and groaned, but when he opened them, he could still see Nakani sauntering across the rig bay towards him. She grinned at the other rig pilots. “I figured I’d find a bunch of you here.”
“And how can I help you, Ms. Nakani?” Gabe tried to keep some of the edge out of his voice, but he hadn’t really succeeded. The way Ben raised his eyebrows and Derek had to hide a smirk told him that much.
Nakani was smiling as well, though it faded when she glanced at Eagro’s rig. “Well, I just wanted to let you know that we’ve each managed to cancel one of our debts. And that you don’t owe me another one for saving you this time.”
“How nice of you.”
“Not really. You picked that one off before it could get me, so we’re automatically even.” She stretched idly, closing her eyes as she twisted. Something popped in her back, and she grunted. “So that just leaves you with one left you owe me. Still no booze anywhere on this oversized cruise ship?”
Ben snorted, and Derek tried to disguise a laugh by clearing his throat. Gabe sighed. “No, Ms. Nakani. That hasn’t changed.”
“A pity.” She glanced at the damaged rigs, and her expression grew hard. “Any idea what we’re going to end up doing with either of them? I assume we want to save the guy that was helping us. What about the bug that got squashed?”
Derek spoke up before Gabe could. “They’re still going through it. Haven’t found a lot of anything useful.”
“Well, Den said he wanted a piece of it as a souvenir once you Wayfarers are done with it.” She fixed a stare on the damaged craft that could have melted another hole from sheer hate. “We owe those bugs for the ones they took from us. I mean to see them pay everything they owe.”
Ben murmured something that sounded like agreement. Gabe found himself nodding as well. The mercenaries were not the only ones who owed the enemy a debt of vengeance, though he did wonder how much more they would need to pay to see that debt settled. “We’ll do our best to see it done, Ms. Nakani.”
“Good.” Her face twisted in a smile again. “Though it would be nice to have some actual damn weapons for the next time. It was satisfying to use tethers, but a little inconvenient, you know?”
Derek burst out laughing. “I don’t know if we can go that far, but I’m betting that we’ll at least give you a front-row seat.”
Nakani gave the other pilot a measuring stare. “I’ll have to hold you to that, Wayfarer.”
Derek grinned and nodded. Gabe simply shook his head. The last thing he needed was for those two to start egging each other on. “For now, we’ll need to try to repair and recover. The enemy is still out there, and they’ll be coming for us again soon.”
The mercenary nodded. “Makes sense. So when are we powering that other rig up?”
Gabe exchanged glances with the other two Wayfarers. “Eagro’s rig? Its power core appears to have been shut down.”
“Well, yeah. That’s why we’d hook it up to an external core and get it running that way.” Nakani looked from face to face as if confused by the expressions she was seeing. “What?”
Ben snorted a second time. “Would that work?”
“Well, sure. We used to have to do that all the time with our MSSRs.” When Gabe gave her a surprised look, she shrugged. “The things didn’t always have the best power systems installed. We’d run short on juice during some of the longer patrols and have to get dragged back to base.”
Gabe looked over at Derek. “Would that work?”
Derek scratched at the side of his cheek, studying the stranger’s rig. “We don’t have any idea what their systems are like. For all we know, trying something like that might blow out something they need.”
Nakani rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right. Electricity is electricity, right? It can’t be that complicated. I mean, come on, they are even using rigs, same as us.”
Ben half-raised a hand. “What if it wakes up and doesn’t exactly like being here?” He gestured at the crippled rig. “I mean, we didn’t exactly ask permission before we pulled it inside. For all we know, it could try to go for a self-destruct, like those Wild Colony guys.”
“Even if he doesn’t, the guy might start broadcasting a distress signal or something.” Derek was studying the rig with a calculating look, however, as if he was making the objection out of habit.
Gabe turned his attention back to Eagro’s rig as well. As he watched, a technician stepped around what looked an awful lot like a power cable that was dangling from the severed leg of the machine. He tried not to sound overly enthusiastic, but it seemed like his heart was pounding hard again. “I don’t think he’d blow himself up, and if he started transmitting…well, it isn’t like the enemy has had a hard time finding us before. It might even bring the rest of his people to us, which is exactly what we want.”
Ben nodded slightly. “So the only question is if the thing’s going to blow up or not.”
“Well, we aren’t going to gain anything by waiting. He might be dying in there.” Gabe shook his head. “Might as well give it a shot.”
Nakani laughed and slapped Gabe on the shoulder. “Well, there we go! Hey, does this mean you owe me another one?”
Though he shook his head and sighed, Gabe felt himself starting to smile. Things might have started working out after all.