“She changed your
mind, too,” Ayan said, “forced the rebuilt parts of your brain to
be rewritten in a sequence that resembled an average human mind,
ignoring the pattern you had as a framework.”
“I know,” Jake
said. “I was too paranoid not to look at how I was put back
together. I’ve even seen parts of the operation footage.”
“No,” Ayan gasped.
“She restricts tactical data and news but lets you in on your whole
medical file? I couldn’t watch more than a few seconds of your
operation.”
“I guess she knew I’d
notice that parts of my file were missing. Besides, I couldn’t
watch much of the operation either. I didn’t think I had a
squeamish bone in my body until I was a few minutes in, then I had to
call it quits. I went back and looked at what I wanted to see later.”
“What parts did you
have to see?” Ayan asked.
“Mostly the later
parts of reconstruction, when they were putting the new legs and
parts of my lower torso together. I just had to see if the trouble I
was having in recovery had anything to do with my new factory
installed parts.”
“And?”
“The comparisons to
the kind of thing nature builds are almost perfect, and the
differences are all minor improvements anyway.”
“Improvements like?”
Ayan asked with a teasing smile.
Jake laughed and shook
his head. “Nothing to get excited about.”
“Really? Maybe we
should do a comparison scan.”
“No scans on the
first date,” Jake said sternly.
Ayan rolled over and
slowly stood up. “Something to look forward to,” she said. “We
should get off the deck though.”
Jake wouldn’t have
admitted it while Ayan was still atop him, but his shoulders and head
were getting sore from being on the hard surface. “I don’t think
the deck is as good a friend as I thought.” He rolled over and
carefully got to his feet, something that was impossible for him
weeks before. Every time he stood on his own it was still a small
victory. “Extra gravity,” he muttered. “Can’t wait to see
what its like to try to walk in a normal environment.”
Ayan put his arm around
her shoulders. He looked down at her and smiled. “Where to now?”
she asked.
His gaze wandered from
her eyes, and eventually answered, “the guest lounge?”
“Good idea,” Ayan
said with a raised eyebrow. “Enjoying the view?”
Jake nodded, “Very
distracting, you could be impeding my recovery.”
“Oh, I can adjust the
pattern,” Ayan said, bringing an image of her dress up on her bulky
command bracelet.
“That’s all right,
I think it’s having the opposite effect, actually. I feel better
already,” Jake said in a rush.
“If you say so,”
Ayan replied. “But eyes front, soldier. I don’t want you tripping
on my watch.”
“Aye,” Jake
replied.
“Besides, there’s
something I have to tell you about tomorrow morning.”
“Oh?”
“There may be just a
few people waiting for you when you arrive aboard the Triton. There
are a few Captains who have been looking forward to meeting you.”
“How many Captains?”
Jake asked.
“Twenty eight, I
think. The fleet is a little bigger than you remember,” Ayan said.
“Something else Doctor Messana thought might be distracting, news
of new people in the fleet.”
“Catch me up?” Jake
asked.
“It’ll be my
pleasure,” Ayan replied.
The gathering the night
before hadn’t kept Minh-Chu up for as long as he expected. Finn and
Agameg brought a few new faces from the Warlord with them, unaware
that the hostess wasn’t going to be there. Ayan’s absence made
Lacey the hostess and centre of attention, and people were curious
about the tall, dark British woman who had been at Ayan’s side for
months. She warmed to the attention, and was soon exchanging
questions with Triton and Warlord crewmembers. She was curious about
military life, and many of them were curious about Haven Shore, and
her very political existence.
There were no
arguments, even though politics, especially the recently rocky kind
that were happening on Haven Shore could have been a minefield. Lacey
was a born diplomat, and Minh-Chu was amazed at how she could turn
conversation in a fairly harmless direction.
It wasn’t a party
where a lot of imbibing took place, though, more of a gathering where
people exchanged scuttlebutt and shared what they brought. When it
started getting late, the party broke up pleasantly, but calmly.
Minh-Chu missed Ayan’s
return to the apartment much later in the evening, but things must
have gone well, since Jake indicated that he’d be at her place
later that day through Crewcast. Minh-Chu looked forward to visiting,
so did Ashley, he just had to get through his patrol in one piece.
He had great faith in
his Wingman for the patrol operation, Dent, who had five solo kills
against Order of Eden fighters, and several cooperative kills on
corvette and other classes. He was competent, believed in staying in
the present, and had a good mind for strategy.
They had one of the
long patrols, taking them to the asteroid belt slowly drifting past
the boundary of the Rega Gain solar system. “So, no British
Alliance out here?” Dent asked through their private communications
channel.
“Not so much as a
satellite, which is one of the things we’re looking for on scans,”
Minh-Chu replied.
“Oh, that wasn’t in
my briefing,” Dent replied.
“Then I was supposed
to brief you on it and forgot,” Minh-Chu replied, feeling like an
amateur.
“It’s not a big
deal, I would have noticed it on my scanner either way. Leave
anything else out?”
Minh-Chu sent his list
of objectives to Dent, “Nope, here’s the whole thing.”
“Let’s see,” Dent
said, clearing his throat. “Watch for signs of enemy activity,
report anomalous signals, forward transmission bursts, assist ships
in distress, and scan for signs of damaged vessels in the Paulo Belt,
especially the Ash Sen and the oh-seven-nine-dee-bee British Alliance
communications satellite. Above all, observe and report, do not
engage unless fired upon. Yup, you just left the search items off. My
orders don’t include those.”
“Well, now you know,”
Minh-Chu said as he began his sensor sweep of the first section of
the asteroid belt.
“The Ash Sen was a
Carthan Battlecruiser, wasn’t it?” Dent asked.
“Yup, was due in
Kambis orbit five months ago but never reported. They figure there’s
a chance it crashed somewhere in this mess.”
“On account of bad
navigation,” Dent said. “Love those Carthans, there’s nothing
like a two hundred billion Galactic Credit battlecruiser manned by a
brainwashed convict crew.”
“Did you hear that
we’ll be raising one of their battlecruisers from the surface of
Kambis and repairing it in two weeks?” Minh-Chu said.
“There’s actually a
crashed Carthan ship worth salvaging whole?” Dent said.
“There is, I couldn’t
believe it either. It’s almost spaceworthy right now, only the
reactors need to be rebuilt, and a few thrusters, and the bridge was
slagged, but overall, it’s in fair shape for a losing ship.”
“The fleet just keeps
growing,” Dent said. “Hey, I got a ping.”
Minh-Chu saw a
computerized response from a ship at the same time, a simple signal
that told his Uriel Fighter that, somewhere in the asteroid field,
there was a communications system on. “Cut power to everything but
passive sensors,” he said as he did so. “Make sure your navnet
ident is off. We don’t know what that is, so we don’t want to
broadcast what we are just yet.”
“Might be too late,”
Dent said, “I didn’t turn my ident off when we left Kambis navnet
range.”
Minh-Chu checked to see
if Dent’s fighter was still broadcasting it’s operating
identifier, and saw that it was off. “No worries, we’ll know what
kind of system just reached out to us from that asteroid group in a
moment, I think.”
They drifted in a
parallel course to the asteroid field, moving a little faster.
Minh-Chu watched his scan results, which were mostly reporting
geological data from the nearest bodies of stone, ice, and iron.
Through his display he could see the dark masses slowly tumbling
through space, there wasn’t enough light to make out most of the
individual asteroids, but he knew they weren’t as close together as
they looked. There was plenty of room for ships to hide in there.
“Got something,
Ronin!” Dent said.
Minh-Chu saw the data
stream as his wingman reported it. “Data stream, what kind?”
“It has a Regent
Galactic header,” Dent reported, “Combat group identifier.”
“All right, power
everything up, sensors first. Let’s do a deep scan for two seconds
then hit our xetima boosters home.”
As soon as Minh-Chu
powered his systems on, his computer analysed the data stream from
the asteroid field and concluded that it was from a Regent Galactic
repair drone. “This is encrypted, my computer’s working on it,”
he told Dent. “But small ships don’t carry repair drones this
big.”
“Targeting the area
with sensors, they’re going to see us as plain as day if they don’t
already know we’re here,” Dent said.
“Or you
could
do that,” Minh-Chu said.
The broad profile of a
Regent Galactic Carrier appeared on Minh-Chu’s screen and he hit
his solid xetima thrusters. The inertial dampers whined as they
strained to compensate for the sudden acceleration. He was relieved
to see that Dent had followed his previous instructions, firing his
thrusters at the same time. “Only have seven seconds of thrust
left,” Minh-Chu said.
“Same here, these
things don’t go long, but it’s one hell of a ride when they go
off,” Dent replied.
Minh-Chu sent his
sensor data to the British Alliance and Triton Fleet, knowing that it
would take nine hours for the transmission to reach them. He opened a
micro-wormhole to the safe deceleration area near Tamber and tried to
retransmit, but his system reported a failure. He checked his
communications system and immediately saw that the Regent Galactic
forces in the asteroid field were jamming them.
“They’re jamming
us,” Dent said over their secondary communications, a system that
used direct laser linking instead of conventional ship to ship
technology.
“I’m formulating a
plan as we speak,” Minh-Chu said as he let the micro-wormhole
close. “But I’m sure Triton Fleet caught their jamming signal and
they’ll have the origin of my wormhole calculated in a couple
minutes.
“So they’ll know
where we are and that something is stopping us from communicating,”
Dent said. “But it’ll be a bit before we see friendly support.”
“About an hour, I’m
formulating a plan,” Minh-Chu said.
The Asteroid field lit
up with live ship signals, populating Minh-Chu’s tactical display
with readouts from fighters, gunships and several destroyers. The
xetima pods burned out, their fuel exhausted, but they still had a
good lead on the enemy. “Maintain full burn for the perimeter
defence, “ Minh-Chu said.
“Roger, Ronin, full
burn to Harnen navnet space,” Dent replied. “I just hope we don’t
have to land there, I hate that place.”
“Well, that’s where
we’re going,” Minh-Chu said. “I’m calculating a wormhole
trajectory that’ll take us right into their emergency deceleration
safe zone.”
“Uh, Ronin, there’s
a bend in that trajectory,” Dent said, referring to a curve in
Minh-Chu’s wormhole path that would take them up and around one of
Harnen’s moons.
“Not so large that my
projector can’t handle it,” Minh-Chu said. “I’m using a few
tricks I picked up from Ashley, they make this kind of course a lot
easier to verify and correct.”
“You’re going to
make corrections to the navigational computers’ work?” Dent said.
Several flashes of
weapons’ fire lighted their cockpits. It wasn’t high powered, but
long range. Minh-Chu’s shield reported three minor strikes, not
enough to cause any concern, but if the ships behind them kept it up
for the whole time it took them to get to safety, there wouldn’t be
anything left of their fighters, or them.
“Carry on, Wing
Commander,” Dent said, “But if you sink us into some kind of time
compression space or something, you’ll never hear the end of it.”
“Bah, little chance
of that,” Minh-Chu said, looking over the navigation computer’s
work. “See? Nothing here but perfect transit calculations. Opening
the wormhole, follow me in.”
“Aye, Sir,” Dent
said.
The wormhole generator
and power systems whined as the space in front of him distorted. He
only had three seconds to scan it before deciding whether or not to
evade, and was relieved when he saw the other end let out to Harnen
Navnet space. “Here’s hoping they take the signal noise those
Rega Gain ships are making as our request for navnet coordinates on
the other side.” He said as his ship passed over the threshold and
began the nine second transit through the wormhole.
“What?” Dent said
as his fighter followed close behind. “Oh, God, I didn’t think of
that.”
“I’m sure we’ll
be fine,” Ronin said as he gripped the controls and glanced to his
right, nodding at a small red holographic square that activated the
emergency evasion systems in his ship. “Ready to evade standing
bodies in the Navnet pattern.” His ship crossed the far threshold,
emerging from the wormhole, and he sent his ship into a port side
turn, so Dent would be clear to emerge and pass on his starboard
side.
There were only three
large cargo ships in the area, and they were well out of the arrival
space. The old Carthan station, where imported prison workers were
programmed for service while they were still in the solar system, was
nothing more than a tiny shining shard in the distance. They were
headed in it’s general direction, and would decelerate right past
it in under a minute.