Randolph Lalonde - Spinward Fringe Broadcast 08 - Renegades (41 page)

I can only say that I
was misled, and I hope my death provides some comfort to the people I
have wronged. Thank you for listening.”

The image disappeared
and Ayan stood silently, surrounded by the sounds of rain and a
pristinely kept room. Her head throbbed under the pressure of her
fury at the man. “Coward,” she spat at the ashen-faced corpse of
Sunny Zinnes before turning on her heel and leaving the room.

“Lock this room
down,” Ayan said. “Only commanders and higher ranks can enter
until one of us releases the scene. When that time comes, bag the
body, his possessions, and transport them to the British Alliance,”
she told the guard.

“Is it true?” Lacey
asked, her expression fraught with worry.

“He betrayed us. If
it weren’t for him, we could have negotiated with the Carthans.
This may have never happened. This is all done now,” Ayan said with
a glance at the door closing behind her. “We have more important
work to do.”

Enemy Sighted

Alice could never
decide what her favourite simulation type was. In fact, it was
difficult for her to find one she didn’t like. They were still all
new to her. Even the fuzzy memories of her time travelling aboard the
Clever Dream couldn’t shed light on the topic. Even then her tastes
were always all over the place. The only sims she seemed to avoid
were based in social drama.

What Alice loved most
about the few simulations she’d had time for on the Warlord and in
Haven Shore was that there was no end of players to enjoy them with.
Whether they be combat based, historical, scripted, or awe-groove
oriented, if the simulation allowed her to be herself and there were
enough players around, almost any sim had the promise of becoming an
incredible experience. Many of the Warlord crew had earned their way
into unlocking the level one entertainment simulations, and Alice was
one of the first in. She let the computer choose which simulation she
tried next and was dropped into one called “Uxxa Crisis” and
several crewmembers she didn’t know followed her in.

“Welcome to Uxxa
Station,” said a disembodied, garbled voice. It sounded like an
alien who had never heard humans speak tried to create an
announcement system that could communicate in English. ‘Welcome’
sounded more like ‘Wee-lum’ and ‘Station’ sounded more like
‘Shay-shun.’ The voice continued on, its intonation building to a
gleeful climax towards the end. “It brings us sorrow to announce
the usage and expenditure of all escape vessels. The administration
has been killed and feasted, the station is abandoned, and you should
flee for your own safety. Advisory: you are biologically unsuited to
the environment outside the station. Have a good cycle!”

“Great, the Edxians
have landed, eaten the staff, and good luck finding a ride out, have
a good year. Something tells me this is a horror sim,” Alice
cracked as she checked her surroundings. The corridor looked old,
pitted by corrosion and scarred by errant disruptor rounds. “Oh,
yeah,” she said to herself with a nod.

Remmy appeared behind
her, a late entry into the sim. “We got teamed up,” he said. “You
wouldn’t happen to have a weapon?”

It had been only a
short time since she realized that Remmy wasn’t stalking her but
reciprocating her perceived interest. The realization was still a
little too fresh, and she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed at her
mistake, even though she knew he probably had no idea she’d made
it. “Huh?”

“I don’t have so
much as a slingshot,” one of the new Warlord crewmembers said as
they appeared behind her. “Cool sim though, wow, the resolution is
so high I can smell the mould spores.”

Alice realized then
that she wasn’t wearing anything she would call protection under
the heavy cloth coat her avatar was wearing. She pulled the top of
the coat open to reveal luxury pyjamas that were modest, but as
useless as they were embarrassing, covered with sleeping cartoon pink
bunnies. The closest thing she had to a weapon was a self-heating
curling iron in a floppy coat pocket.

Remmy wasn’t as
lucky. He was assigned the role of a human spa-goer from a
neighbouring building, and wore bathing trunks. One of the other new
crewmembers was dressed similarly, and the pair behind her were in
some sort of leisure climbing gear. “Okay, so this could be an
elimination or an escape sim.”

“Won’t know until
we open the door,” said one of the crewmembers, Oscilla, from
maintenance.

Alice braced herself
and pressed the button beside the door. It slid to the side to reveal
a lounging area. A sizable transparent dome enclosed the area,
decorated with soft seating for fifty bipeds. Through the dome they
could see a lake of molten lead with rust coloured hills beyond. The
remnants of dozens of humans were strewn across the room, torn and
gnawed to pieces. The dim yellow light and long shadows only made the
scene look more foreboding. “Cheery,” Remmy quipped.

“Okay, so we won’t
be escaping on foot, that atmosphere isn’t breathable, and judging
from that lake, it’s a little too hot,” Oscilla said.

“I don’t think this
is an escape map,” Alice said. “This is what I get for letting
the computer select a random scenario.”

“I think it’s a
re-enactment,” Oscilla said as she gingerly walked into the room,
her oversized plush puppy slippers flapping their dog ears as she
walked.

The sound of her
shuffling feet set Alice on edge. “Stop moving, that noise may as
well be a dinner bell.”

“Whatever came here
moved on a while ago,” she replied, kneeling down to inspect what
was left of a torso. “These bite marks are actually pretty small, I
don’t-“

Creatures with long
legs leapt from every shadow and crevasse to grasp and bite Oscilla,
pinning her to the floor. Their sleek, furred bodies twitched
excitedly as they tore at her with long fingers and sharp claws.

Alice and her leftover
comrades ran back through the door, closing it behind and running
without thinking for the length of the corridor. “More evidence
that humans are just soft and slow food without our technology. I get
the feeling that this is gonna end quick,” Remmy said. “Might be
one of those sims we have to play half a dozen times before we learn
how to beat it. Those things weren’t Edxi though, I’m going to
have to look them up. I figure they were about thirty-five, forty
kilos, maybe five feet long from tail to nose?”

“I’d say between
four and six.” Alice was absolutely thrilled; she hadn’t been
frightened in a sim since she could remember. “I’ll be ba-“ the
sim closed down unceremoniously and she received an alert message
from the bridge. All leisure sims were suspended. “The worst
timing!” she screeched as she kicked her feet against her bunk
mattress.

“Shh! Use your
privacy curtain!” whispered Tamera, a woman barely out of her teens
in the bunk across the aisle from her. She closed her curtain with a
jerk.

“Sorry,” Alice
replied. She put on the armour under-layer of her vacsuit, the
form-fitted suit that her metal emitter armour would fit to, much
like her father’s only more modern, and dropped quietly from the
top bunk. “Something’s up, just checking it out.”

“See if you can get
the sims back,” Wilda said from the bunk below hers. “I was just
starting to have fun in an anon-date room.”

“Sure,” Alice said,
rolling her eyes. Anon-date rooms were supposedly one of the ways
around the no fraternizing rule on most ships. There was no such rule
on the Warlord, though it was frowned upon to date up and down the
ranks, so Alice didn’t get the point of a simulation that let
people take on a different appearance to anonymously date other
crewmembers, when they wouldn’t be able to carry a good match into
the real world. It was like baiting yourself for trouble. “It’s
just weird that the sims are closed even though we’re not on
alert.”

“You go check in with
daddy,” Wilda said. Alice would change bunk mates if she could;
Wilda was already annoying, with lips that looked too big for her
face and a tendency to remind everyone around that Alice’s father
was the captain. The support systems technician had become a thorn in
Alice’s side in a matter of days, and she spent every spare second
in her bunk, so it seemed like she was always there. “Run along
now,” Wilda said.

Alice did her best not
to react and left berthing L3, which stood for Ladies Bunkroom Three.
There were twenty bunks in each compartment, which made things
interesting when two thirds of the privacy curtains weren’t working
properly yet, including hers. They were supposed to cancel out noise,
so the only snoring you heard was your own, but they were finicky to
set up, and it would take days or weeks longer for the facilities
team to fix all of them. Alice promised herself that she’d take a
look at fixing hers on her own when she got back to her bunk, not
that she could break out the tools and get to work right then. Too
many people were trying to sleep, and if she woke them all at once
her sin would be remembered for days.

It didn’t take her
long to get to the bridge. The watchman nodded at her, suppressing a
yawn. “I’m clear?” Alice asked.

“Yeah, Commander Buu
is in the hot seat, busy for third watch,” the tall watchman said.
He was an older member of Stephanie’s boarding team, with broad
shoulders, a powerfully muscled chest and grey mixed in with his
blonde hair.

“Thanks, Denver,”
she replied.

“Call me Den,” he
told her.

The heavy hatch slid
aside to reveal a bridge filled with the full third watch crew. These
were the least experienced, most recently qualified people aboard the
Warlord, but they seemed surprisingly competent and busy. Minh-Chu
had the holographic displays on the small bridge set up much like
they were on the Triton, only smaller, with a semicircle of command
data in front of the captain’s seat. She could immediately see that
the Warlord was tracking a pair of parallel wormholes within scanner
range, an unusual thing.

“Good morning,
Alice,” Minh-Chu said over his shoulder. “What has you up?”

“I went to bed too
early,” she replied. “A lot of people are up right now, I think
it’s going around.”

“About forty percent
of the ship,” Doctor Messana said from the operations station. It
was the first time Alice had run into the new ship doctor, a woman
who groomed herself bald, but had a fairly kindly face. It was a
surprise to see her on the bridge; Alice thought she would be busy
enough doing one-on-one check-ups with every member of the crew.
“It’s normal for people’s sleep patterns to fall in line with
the watches when they trust that the ship they’re serving on is
safe.”

“Okay, I guess,”
Alice said as she passed by and stopped to stand beside the command
seat at the centre of the bridge. “What’s with the parallels?”
she said, pointing at the wormhole trajectories marked in the
tactical hologram.

“It looks like a big
cargo train with a destroyer escort,” Minh-Chu said. “Headed to
the same section of the Iron Head Nebula we’re planning on hitting.
There’s more to it though, maybe a Corvette class following close
behind, I can’t be sure.” He turned to the tactical station.
“Engage non-energetic cloaking measures and internal scan seals.”
The sounds of heavy hatches in the exterior and interior hull closing
echoed across the ship, and the skin of the Warlord began passively
warping scanning signals and light around the vessel. Activating the
rest of the cloaking systems would interfere with the wormhole and
the exotic matter surrounding the ship, leading to a catastrophe that
would most likely kill everyone aboard, so they weren’t turned on.
“All right, if they scan us they’ll see that something is in the
middle of a deceleration cycle, but they won’t know what, or who we
are.”

Lieutenant Commander
Kadri Dunn entered the bridge and headed straight for the main
scanning console. “Okay, this was worth waking up early for,” she
said over her shoulder to Minh-Chu. “Sorry for cursing at you when
you woke me up.”

“No problem,”
Minh-Chu replied. “What do we have here?”

“Well, they can’t
change course,” Kadri replied. “And the scans you ran on their
wormhole tells me that if they fire a shot, their wormhole will
destabilize.” She looked at Alice then with a smile. “Taking a
few lessons, young one?”

If it were almost
anyone else, Alice would have taken offence, but Kadri was a mother
figure to a lot of the young women on the ship, and she extended that
warmth and friendliness to her whenever they bumped into each other.
Besides, she’d never seen anyone scan ships through wormholes.
Normally, vessels didn’t get nearly close enough for a good scan.
Space was vast, and nearby long term parallel courses were rare.
Kadri was the best scanning officer aboard, so if anyone could tell
Alice what was going on, and what would probably happen, it was she.
“You don’t mind?”

“Pull up a stump and
learn a thing,” Kadri invited, pulling a secondary seat out from
under the console. “These are definitely ships constructed by
Regent Galactic or a close ally, headed for the waypoint we’re
planning to monitor. You were right to think one is a destroyer, the
other one I’m not so sure about. Good job adjusting our scanners to
account for the warp in our wormhole, but you have to re-lens the
image.”

“I know, I don’t
even know how to do it with the new system,” Minh-Chu said.
“Neither did the scan officer on watch, we’ll have to add it to
the training.”

“I’m sorry,”
Ensign Lane Tram said. “All I know how to do is make sure we’re
not going to hit or cross high speed trajectories, so scanning
through one wormhole is as far as they taught us when I was
training.”

“Watch,” Kadri
said. “You lock the lensing you set up to clear the view up outside
our wormhole, then enlarge and start re-lensing to correct for the
wormholes we’re trying to scan through. That’s the easy bit
there,” Kadri said as a blurry image of the larger ship became
almost clear. “Relative to them, we’re decelerating a lot faster,
so you have to correct for the time differential. At these speeds,
there’s a fair difference.” She made a few calculations and
adjustments and a clear image of an Order of Eden destroyer appeared.
It’s name,
The Barricade,
was
printed clearly on the side of the hull. Power level readings,
density by compartment, weapon analysis, crew compliment, and
detailed topographical scans of the ship’s port side appeared on
the tactical display. “All right, now watch as I do the other one,”
Kadri said.