Major Gertrude Kintzel watched the feeds from the surveillance drones closely. She was surrounded by them, floating around her like ghostly windows looking outside of the otherwise complete darkness of her room.
She had already submitted the evidence regarding Jessica Aacen’s supposed industrial espionage to the magistrates and CommSec for review, but she was under no illusions that the warrants for her arrest would be lifted. She had thought making it to this rank in the job would give her a better opportunity to resist the political bullshit in the justice system, but it had turned out harder than she expected.
The evidence clearly showed that Johnathan Barstol had fabricated the evidence of the crime, with the assistance of someone high up at Enigma Osiris, which did not surprise me one bit. That corporation gave her the creeps, they always seemed to be hovering just on the edge of legalities.
On the drone feeds, she watched as the Giobhioni ship approached a cliffside. They had been warned that the ship was going to need to clear some space to land using weapons fire, which is what happened just then. Powerful plasma beams blasting rock and trees out of the way until there was an almost perfect landing zone. Whoever owned that particular scrap of land was going to see an increase in value. They had an already cleared landing pad.
Shortly after, she watched Thomas Aacen and the short green alien woman - draped in an hugely oversized shirt that looked absolutely comical on her - drag themselves out from a sliver of an opening at the base of the rock face and hurry to the boarding ramp of their ship.
It was at this point when something caught her eye.
Ask any one of her past love interests, and they would likely tell you that the reason for their break up was her suspicious nature. Understandable really, considering her profession. She had spent so much time learning to read body language and microexpressions, anything mismatched with what was said turned into an argument.
The point is that she rarely took things at face value, and the Giobhioni Ambassador had proven their ability to infiltrate SysSec networks. And while they had cycled their encryption, even adding more layers to ensure it didn’t happen again, Gertrude wasn’t one to rest on laurels. Along with the usual complement of drones, she had sent out a single, off the books drone equipped to feed its sensor readings directly to her office alone, using laser communications. With it being unattached to the SysSec network, she hoped it would allow her to check for altered sensor feeds.
Which paid off, it seems, because the image being sent back by that drone alone showed three more figures, two benastians and a human drag themselves out of that crack and hurry on board the ship.
“Major!” she heard one of the techs shout over the intercom,” Drone C382-v picked up movement in quadrant 36! It’s the fugitives! We’re dispatching units to pursue!”
A chuckle escaped her throat as she looked over at the specified drone’s footage. Sure enough, it saw two benastians and a human fleeing through dense forest, maybe spooked by the noise of the Giobhioni ship clearing its landing zone. Congratulations Ambassador, a well played gambit. She thought to herself, Any other SysSec commander might have fallen for it.
Reaching for the intercom, she was about to order her people to stand down and get a blockade in the air to stop the Giobhioni ship from engaging their tunnel drive, but hesitated. Those three were innocent of those crimes, and did not deserve to be locked in a cell, even for questioning. Not while the executives at Enigma Osiris were sitting back enjoying Terandian brandy or some other luxury.
So instead, when she tapped the intercom button she said, “Acknowledged, make sure you catch them so I can get the damned Prefect off my ass!”
“Roger that, Major.”
Good Luck Aacen, I hope you are long gone and dealing with that contagion before we have any proof our drones were hacked. Blasted politicians are gonna get us all killed.
Just as she was about to give the command for the laser comms drone to return, she saw text appear on its feed. “Thank you Major, I hope you don’t catch too much flak for that. I’ll be in touch.”
You cheeky little bitch!
----------------------------------------
Despite Stacy’s talk of spankings and hanky panky involving Boudya and Tratsa, the only thing I wanted to do once we were back on board the Elegance and moving at a healthy clip away from the planet, was flop down on the lounge in my quarters and relax with a mug of grapnak and just enjoy being alive, not detained by law enforcement, and knowing my sister, and my old friend were safely aboard with me.
Tratsa had, of course, wanted to check me over to make sure the bump on the noggin I’d taken hadn’t done any damage, especially to the implant. She’d pronounced me as unbrain-damaged as I ever was - with a lopsided grin and a wink, which caused Boudya and Jesse to both laugh - and sent me hustling out of the infirmary while she examined our three newest passengers. She seemed particularly interested in the exceptionally tall and lithe Benastians.
I was, at times, starting to feel like a character from a Heinlein novel.
The mix of spicy and earthy aromas of the grapnak had finally lulled me into a relaxed meditative mental state, and my mind was drifting unabashedly towards memories of a certain naked green buttocks running full speed through dense brush as if it was nothing. I swear I was hovering somewhere in the realm between waking and sleeping, and my body appreciated it almost as much as a full body benastian massage.
Of course, it was just as I started to slip into actual sleep that the door chime for my quarters sounded, snapping me out of that precious relaxed state. “Arg,” I moaned, “Go away, can’t a guy sleep!”
“Tommy, this is important” I heard my sister call through the door. “Please let me in.”
Muttering a few choice curse words, across multiple languages - including Giobhioni - I uttered “Door, Open”, and heard the door whoosh open behind me. I still hadn’t opened my eyes, “I was almost asleep, Jesse. Was it really so important it couldn’t wait?”
I heard her plop down in the chair opposite from me, “I think it might be, yes.” She said in a very serious tone. “Considering you went through all of this to rescue me because that Barstol asshole - you really should have listened to Boudya by the way - was going to get me arrested to hurt you, even if you did what he asked, I have to tell you this because it might be important, useful, and I have to tell you now before I chicken out.”
I heard the fear in her voice and cracked one eye open to look at her. She might not have the obvious tell of expressive ears like the giobhioni, but I could still tell she was nervous as hell. “Jesse,” I said sleepily, letting out a yawn, “whatever it is, it can’t be bad enough that you need to be that scared to tell me.”
“Tommy,” she started, then took a deep breath, “The charges aren’t fake.”
I had almost drifted back into my half awake stupor before her words hit me, but then my eyes flew open and I sat straight up. “WHAT?!”
“The charges, the ones of me stealing classified Enigma Osiris files? They aren’t fake.”
“What the hell Jesse!” I growled, “I begged Boudya to pull your ass out of the fire because I thought you were in danger because of me. And you actually did steal from them? Does she know?”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Yeah, I told her on the way to Yantari.” She explained, “She was pissed as well, until she heard the rest.”
I narrowed my eyes at her, “There’s more?” I was really not in a good mood. It had been a long couple of days after all. “Did anyone tell you about the ancient fucking contagion that could, at this moment, be running rampant out there transforming anyone infected with it into the Aliens that created it? Aliens that see anything that are not them as unfit to exist? The Giobhioni took a break from hunting the source of this down to stop it so we could come get you!”
Jesse flinched, “Tommy…Thomas, listen!” she pleaded, “It’s not like that. Look, when you headed out on that job with Barstol, the charges were false! It wasn’t until later, when Boudya made contact during the extraction that they became otherwise. You don’t work for EO for any length of time without hearing rumors Tommy. They are like most of the Interstellar megacorps, they have dark secrets. The only reason I hadn’t quit was because, well, I wasn’t going to get a good paycheque anywhere that didn’t have those kinds of secrets! And I didn’t want to go back to living on a basic stipend!”
“But knowing someone was gonna frame me for stealing corporate secrets? Tommy, no amount of evidence would get EO off my back once that accusation was made. And my career would be finished, even if I was exonerated. They’d make sure of it! So before Boudya got me out, I…”
“You did just what they were setting you up for.”
She nodded, “I used a backdoor into a research drive, and data dumped the contents onto a GoDrive. Tommy, almost all of it is encrypted, Stacy is working on breaking it open now, but one file stood out in the list to me. It was named with a set of spatial coordinates.” She rattled the coordinates off to me.
“Wait, I know those coordinates. Those are…”
“The coordinates for the ship that blew up, the one Barstol tried to frame you for.”
“Enigma Osiris was involved in that?”
“We won’t know until Stacy has the files decrypted. She’s having to make sure to do it in isolation from any comms equipment. She spotted something early on that looked like some sort of dial home protocol. She said it was basic countermeasures, but the encryption looks heavier than anything I’ve ever seen before…”
I smiled at her, thinking of Stacy’s story of bluffing the Major and Prefect. “Jesse, Stacy is an AI residing in a space station bigger than voids damned Ceres! The amount of processing power at her disposal is genuinely frightening. I’m pretty sure she could hack EarthCore Government databases if she wanted to.”
“Pssh” Stacy chimed in, “easy peasy, pumpkin squeezy. I could probably make an insane fortune revolutionizing their encryption techniques, forget about selling their secrets to their enemies.”
Jesse’s eyes went huge. “You wouldn’t…”
“Not without Tommy-cakes giving me the go ahead, or them hurting him.” Stacy informed Jesse matter of factly. “What do I need money for anyway? We have all the access to production materials we need at this point. Did I tell you Tommy? We moved the station to a new system, one that has some really rich asteroid deposits that are completely virgin. And a few really good sources of Helium-3 and exotics. Systems will be tip top next time you swing by.”
“Sounds great Stacy!” I looked back at Jesse and was about to comment about her theft of this information when I felt the ship lurch slightly under me.
Even with top of the line grav plating and inertia control systems, if you’ve spent enough time on a starship, especially as an engineer, you start noticing the subtle course corrections that happen during a voyage. This was no simple course correction though, the Elegance seemed to be engaging in evasive maneuvers!
“What the hell?” I exclaimed, and bolted from the room, heading for the bridge.
Stepping onto the bridge was stepping into tightly controlled chaos. Jophixa was seated as usual in the command chair, but there was a holographic interface surrounding her in a sort of bubble. She was focused hard on a red marker I could see moving rapidly, while she gestured her hands rapidly, spinning the view back and forth in an attempt to keep the marker straight in front of her.
“That’s it Be’tsar!” She was saying, “Keep us moving, lets keep him from getting a fire control lock on us.”
Toftri, for his part, had the same look of concentration on his face as his hands worked the helm controls. I could feel the ship's subtle shifting around us in sync with his movements. I was no ace pilot, but the view I was seeing out the bridge viewport gave me the impression that the Elegance was moving in a dance that befitted her name.
The entire ship lurched, and I almost lost my balance. Would have, if I hadn’t been so close to the entryway bulkhead which allowed me to catch myself. “Sit down and buckle up!” Jophixa barked out, “Unless you want another head wound!”
“What’s going on? Who’s firing on us?”
“That bastard that was hiding in the polar sensor shadow.” Stacy explained, as I felt a pulse ripple through the ship, and saw a brief flash come from Jophixa’s holo-interface, “The moment we cleared orbit, it started chasing us. They sent us an automated message to power down to be boarded.”
“Pirates?”
“With your SysSec ships in orbit? Why aren’t they getting involved?” Stacy’s question was a good one. Why was this ship getting away with open hostilities with SysSec ships right there.
As if on cue, a SysSec orbital patrol ship hailed us. “Elegance of Light, this is Captain Harrison of the SysSec Defense ship Valiant, you have engaged weapon systems within protected space. Stand down!”
Jophixa growled out some choice curses and made a gesture in her control sphere, “This is Commander Throhx: In case you hadn’t noticed, Captain, there is an unidentified ship pursuing us with the intent on boarding us for unknown reasons. They have, in fact, fired the first shots. We are defending ourselves.”
“You will stand down your weapons, Elegance.” Captain Harrison declared, “And surrender yourselves to us for inspection while the unidentified ship is being dealt with. I will not ask again.”
“This ship is the sovereign territory of the Giobhioni Republic,” Jophixa growled, taking up Stacy’s earlier bluff, “Your commanding officer Major Kintzel already acknowledged this and cleared us for departing your system. Any attempt to board us, or open hostilities against us will be taken as an act of war! I suggest you report to your commanding officer before you plunge your commonwealth into war with a people you know nothing about!”
“Stacy,” I asked loudly, “can you get the Major on the comms please? I think maybe she’ll want to settle this herself.”
A pause and then, “It seems the SysSec ship is attempting to scramble our communication attempts. I’m boosting the gain.”
Toftri threw the Elegance into another wild evasive maneuver that the inertia balance systems seemed to barely be able to compensate for. A whizzed by, barely missing us. Jophixa was holding fire, attempting to keep the SysSec captain at bay while Stacy worked on getting through to Major Kintzel.
The next couple of minutes were proof of Toftri’s skill at the helm. The dizzying maneuvers he pulled to weave us around the unidentified ship’s continuous fire. I was certain there was going to be maintenance done on the inertia control systems when we were out of danger; these maneuvers had to be pushing them to their limits.
“Stacy, if you can’t get through to the Major soon I’m going to have to resume fire!” Jophixa barked out.
“Almost….”
The ship was suddenly violently rocked, and I only stayed in my seat due to the death grip I had on the arm rests. They’d managed to get a lucky shot in, “Aft shield emitter has taken damage. Shield strength down to 30%.” Toftri reported.
“Enough of this. Weapons h..”
Just then, proximity alerts started screaming like a talosian squirrel on meth and the bridge’s viewport was filled with a massive wall of hull plating. Toftri threw us into a desperate spin to avoid collision. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the SysSec ship marker on Jophixa’s holosphere desperately shift position as well - causing me just a modicum of satisfaction.
Our unidentified aggressor echoed our own spin, but kept up its persistent weapons fire.
“Attention all vessels!” A booming voice filled with unquestioning authority resonated through our comms system, “This is Captain Andrian Fredricks of the CFS Sam Steele, the next ship to open fire will feel the full complement of this vessel's own firepower. Stand down or be fired upon.”
Jophixa immediately lowered her hands from the fire controls. “Toftri, see if you can’t put that monstrosity between us and those bastards shooting at us in case they’re stupid enough to keep firing!”
“Sepaq!”
I don’t know if you’ve ever been on a ship in the middle of a firefight or not, but for someone not combat trained, it’s one harrowing experience. The maneuver Toftri threw us into to follow Jophixa’s order was enough to cause certain parts of my anatomy to retreat internally out of sheer terror!
I was treated to the sight of the CPS Sam Steele’s hull plating out of our forward viewport so close that I could have given grades on the welds and rivets to the shipyard personnel! He was flying so close to the ship’s hull that if I reached out an open hatch along our upper keel, I could have touched it.
Energy beam fire still streaked in front of us, barely missing us. “They’re insane!” I exclaimed, “That’s a Commonwealth Cruiser out there! They’ll be blasted to…”
The Elegance’ shields lit up as multiple fragments of shrapnel collided with them. A glance at Jophixa’s control bubble showed the red marker of our hostile dance partner being largely a debris cloud now. “Holy fuck!” Jesse said from behind me, I glanced back to see her sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around a control panel strut. “They weren’t fooling around!”
“Valiant, I have a message for you from your commanding officer, since your planetside comms seem to be malfunctioning.” Captain Fredricks announced on the open channel. “Your Captain is to be placed under arrest for mutiny, and you are to report to headquarters immediately. Your job is to specifically prevent open hostilities within this system. You operated contrary to that duty. You will all be facing court martial.”
“Thank you for your assistance Captain,” Jophixa put in, “I am most relieved I was not forced to defend myself against the Valiant as well as what I can only assume were pirates of some sort.”
“Indeed,” Captain Fredricks responded, “There’s going to be some intense scrutiny as to who owned that ship, and why the Valiant was so focused on you, rather than stopping them. But that is Fleet business, for you, I have a message from Major Kintzel as well.”
“Oh?”
A brief chuckle came over the comms. “Yes. She said to tell you, ‘I apologize for the further delay in your departure, but if you would be so kind - and with all diplomatic courtesies intended - get the fuck out of my solar system?’”
“Sepaq, Captain Fredricks” She responded smiling, “May we never find ourselves on opposing sides. Be’tsar, get us the hell out of here.”
“Sepaq, Commander.”