I promise I will explain my reasoning for the decisions regarding this reveal in my notes for next chapter, but for now, I am not sorry for this cliffhanger.
Chapter 24: Full Circle:
Kerberos
March 24th, 2841
Keith shivered as he sat in the cargo hold of the shuttle that would take them from Kerberos out to where the 11th Fleet of Pluto patrolled the far edge of the Kuiper Belt to protect the solar system from extraterrestrial incursions. It hadn't taken them long after arriving to find what they were looking for. Once again, Cassius au Bellona's intel checked out. The ships responsible for providing food and other critical supplies to the Classis Plutus were always unmarked, and Nexiti had confirmed the shuttle's flight logs in the spaceport records listed its destination and cargo as classified.
They had spent less than a day on Kerberos after Keith had found a place to hide the ship. He could imagine how bizarre it must be for Shiro to come back to the moon where Zarkon's forces had abducted him, only to find a bustling spaceport instead of an icy wasteland. They had kept themselves hidden under ghostCloaks as they made their way to the spaceport and smuggled themselves aboard the five Society ships. Evey and Fenix each took a fifth of the strike team with them as the group split up. Shiro had figured that if the whole unit was discovered on one shuttle, it would be too easy for the Classis Plutus to destroy their ship and protect the other four. Spreading the group out into as many ships as possible reduced the risk of failing the entire mission.
The shuttles came on rotation, each specific ship using a different transponder code each time it came into port. But since Bellona had provided them with the files, they knew exactly which ship to board. The 11th Fleet's protocols were like clockwork. Every other month, five cargo shuttles would land on Kerberos and load up with food, spaceship parts, and other equipment that had been delivered to the frozen moon by modified and cloaked cosmosHaulers during the off months. From there, they would ferry their cargo out to the edge of the Kuiper Asteroid belt that stretched from Neptune past Pluto's orbit to the edge of the solar system. From the 11th Fleet's flagship, the supplies would be redistributed according to whichever ship needed them.
It was an efficient system, and the fact that the Board of Quality Control office on Pluto was authorized to make anyone who asked too many questions disappear without a trace was what lead him and Shiro to the one bit of intel the Olympic Knights weren't privy to. Namely, how the fleet maintained its crew size over the centuries. Unlike other ships throughout the solar system, who were permitted shore leave while docked in spaceports, the crew of the Classis Plutus wasn't allowed to leave the fleet. Their only chance off the ship they were born on was to request transfer to another warship. Entire generations were born, lived, and died without ever seeing the world beyond the hull of their ship.
The downside to that was this left very limited options when it came to dating and having kids. To rectify this, the Board of Quality Control sent along a fresh batch of conscripts, specialists of all colors who were quietly made to disappear and shuttled out to the 11th fleet for the sole purpose of diversifying the gene pool. Nexiti had managed to hack into this shuttle's cargo manifest, and the fact that the conscripts were referred to as being "for breeding purposes" disgusted Keith, along with Shiro and everyone else on their strike team.
So, for now, they were sitting in the cargo hold with the fleet's latest delivery of food. They hid among boxes and crates of vacuum-sealed protofiber meals. Finally, they felt the floor shudder beneath their feet, and Keith looked at Shiro, who looked to Nexiti, who nodded in confirmation that the ship was taking off. For a few minutes, they simply sat in silence as they felt the ship glide out of the spaceport hangar and out into the darkness of space. Static crackled before the ship's intercom announced the shuttle's departure from Frontier Interplanetary Spaceport. Keith looked to his left to see Shiro, face pale and breathing hard, as leaving Kerberos behind was bringing back memories of his initial capture and all the trauma associated with it.
Keith turned and put a hand on Shiro's shoulder, Tactus taking the Black Paladin's hand.
"It's all in the past," Keith whispered as he and Shiro's boyfriend worked to help him through the panic attack. "You're safe here. The Empire doesn't know we're here. They can't hurt you anymore" While the second part was true, Keith and Tactus both knew that the first and last parts were outright lies. They wouldn't be safe until they either took control of the 11th fleet or returned to friendly territory. And the lingering questions of Shiro being captured by the empire a second time still simmered at the back of his mind, despite his efforts to avoid thinking about it. Nevertheless, his words seemed to do the trick. Shiro's breathing slowed, and his eyes lost their wild, panicked look as he finally calmed down. The Black Paladin looked at the two men on either side of him and blushed sheepishly. Shiro was about to open his mouth when Tactus cut in.
"Darling, if you try to apologize for having a perfectly human reaction to something that triggered a reminder of past trauma," the Gold interjected. "I will dye your hair and armor Pink for a month." Shiro laughed a little harder than his boyfriend's attempt at humor probably deserved, but Keith couldn't help but chuckle at Tactus' little moment of levity. It wasn't a particularly creative threat, but it did serve its purpose to lighten the mood. A few of the rebels with them snickered as they rode along in silence.
After about fifteen minutes into the shuttle's estimated one-hour flight time, Cylax si Nexiti turned to Shiro and nodded his head. Keith glanced at his friend, who nodded as he mouthed "it's time" before climbing down off the crate of food he'd been sitting on with Tactus. Keith turned on his mask and turned to follow, the purple highlights of his Marmora uniform glowing softly in the dim light of the cargo hold. With Nexiti hacked into the cameras to track security guards and loop any cameras they passed, the group activated their ghostCloaks and set off towards the ship's brig.
The plan was for them to observe the prisoners and attempt to determine if any of them were sympathetic to the Rising before recruiting them. News of what was happening in the Society was a luxury afforded only to the fleet's highColor officers. Not even the bridge crews were permitted to know what was happening in the solar system. Once aboard the flagship, Shiro planned to leak footage of the Battle of Mars, the Reaper's big speech in Agea, and Virginia's speech to the Senate on Luna to every warship in the fleet. The hope was that people who had been conscripted, or were descended from prior generations of conscripts, would be inspired to revolt against the fleet's Gold commanders and help the rebels take the ship. Keith personally doubted the efficacy of that plan, but he knew how important it was for Shiro that his friend at least make the effort of convincing people to change sides before declaring open war against the ship crews. He at least made sure that Shiro was aware and cognizant of the risks that came with the plan rather than deliberately ignoring them.
While Shiro and Tactus went to speak with the conscripts down in the brig, Keith and Nexiti camped out in a supply closet next to the communications center so that the latter could hack into the ship's com feeds. For thirty minutes, they listened through their own ear pieces to the mundane chatter of the ship's internal network. But halfway through the flight, the long range com opened up with an outgoing transmission.
"11th Fleet Garrison Dreadnaught Shirogane this is Supply Shuttle Epsilon-G57 requesting docking clearance," the shuttle's comBlue droned. "Transmitting transponder codes now."
"Shuttle Epslion-G57 this is Shirogane Flight Control docking clearance has been granted," a new voice, presumably a comBlue in the Classis Plutus, answered. "Please proceed to Hangar Bay Alpha to begin unloading cargo."
"Copy Flight Control," the comBlue for their shuttle replied. "Projected Eta in 26 Minutes, 35 Secs."
Keith bit his lip to keep from laughing loud enough to blow their cover. What are the odds? Keith thought to himself at the realization that Shiro was about to lead an attempt to hijack a spaceship that had been named after him. Wow. Keith thought I guess some of us had a bigger impact on the course of history than we thought. I'll have to see what the other ships are named. He'd never forget the look on his friend's face when Tactus used the naming to make a sex joke about docking with Shiro. It made Keith wish he had a camera so he'd have something to tease Shiro about later.
The mission to recruit the ship's conscripts had been a success. Half of them had already been held Prisoner by the Board of Quality Control and shuttled out to the Antarctica of the solar system to relieve a recent backlog in the Board's system. Whenever the Board had more prisoners than they had the resources to execute or torture, they shipped them out to the 11th fleet for conscription and the fleet's breeding program so that the Society might squeeze some use out of their bodies for a few years longer rather than simply killing them outright. None of these people had been given a choice in their recruitment, and Shiro's offer had been too tempting to resist. A few of the lowColors in the group had been wary of provoking their Golden overlords further, but most of the two dozen conscripts felt that it was worth the risk.
Keith didn't know whether it was cynical of him to feel that they wouldn't get such widespread conversion on the Shirogane and the other ships, but he doubted everyone would be fully persuaded. Many of the ships' crew members had spent their entire lives aboard their dreadnaughts. Only the conscripts had ever seen what the rest of human civilization had to offer.
With their mission accomplished, everyone had slipped back into the cargo hold. Nexiti's hacking of the ship's internal cameras meant that nobody had discovered the group was there. After another fifteen minutes of waiting, they felt the vibration of the ship's engines slow as it taxied in for a landing. A soft thump signaled that the ship had docked, and that it was time for them to get off the ship before 11th Fleet Browns and Oranges came to unload the food. There were a few close calls and near misses, but they managed to exit the cargo ship without incident.
As they moved across the hangar deck, jamFields silencing the sounds of their own footsteps, Keith turned to look outside the windows in the upper decks of the hangar and couldn't help but stop in surprise. Tactus bumped into him from behind and urged him to keep moving, but even after averting his gaze, Keith couldn't take his eyes off what he had seen. He'd managed to glimpse one of the modified dreadnaughts of the 11th fleet out the hangar's upper windows, and the ship's design aesthetic looked like a fusion of Galran and Altean.
Once they were certain that nobody had heard them, the strike team that was staying on the Shirogane ducked into a side passage in the bowels of the ship, where Golds never tread. The ceilings were low, meant for Red workers and Brown janitors. Once Nexiti swept for cameras and hacked the ones he found, everyone deactivated their ghostCloaks and leaned against the walls to catch their breath. A soft gasp jolted them out of their thoughts, and they turned to find a Red woman in what appeared to be her early forties standing there with a datapad and orange coveralls. Keith instinctively unsheathed his knife, but Shiro quickly held him back. The woman's eyes widened at the knife as she took in their cloaks and armor, clearly realizing the true purpose of the group that she had found.
Before anyone else could say or do anything, she put her finger to her lips and gestured for the strike team to follow her before turning on her heels and heading further down the cramped corridor. Everyone looked to Shiro for direction, aware that this could potentially be a trap. Shiro shrugged, as if to say that there was a chance it wasn't, and it was a risk worth taking. So they followed the Red until she lead them to an empty storage closet. Once the doors were locked and Nexiti activated a jamField.
"If you're here to take this ship," the woman finally said. "There's a good half the crew that'll support you. Everyone wishes the Goldbrows weren't in charge, but without an outside catalyst, they don't have the courage to act for themselves. You'll need to take the bridge first. It's the only way to keep them from venting us all into space if the crew revolts."
"Why are you helping us?" Keith blurted out. The woman smiled, and Nexiti looked as if he had seen a ghost.
"Been on this bloodydamn ship for almost twenty years," she answered. "Figured it was about time someone shook things up around here. Like I said, everyone here's got a beef with the Goldbrows, we just need someone to take out the venting controls on the bridge for us to have any chance of a successful rebellion."
"Well in any case, you have our thanks," Shiro commented as he shook the woman's hand. "I'm Shiro. And you are?"
"Bryn," the woman answered, the dull metal of her prosthetic a sharp contrast to the fire in her eyes that Keith found vaguely familiar. "Bryn of Cryssos."
Yes. I went there.