Tennokiken Voyagers: Nine
The Fleet's Drydock was always busy, even at this time of the night. Repair crews worked in shifts throughout the day and into the night to handle the constant stream of Fleet vessels needing urgent repair or refit. Immense quantities of supplies and materials were shipped through the station and used to restore ships or passed on to other facilities. It was a hub of this sector, serving Fleet emplacements throughout the region of space.
The office was opulant, decorated by some of the finest artifacts and art taken from old Earth itself. The desk was oak, heavy and gleaming, looking oddly out of place in such a modern place. The whole office declared the power of the inhabitant, the costs of shiping or aquiring the items all around the room almost impossible to concieve.
The lady stood at the viewport, gazing out at a clear view of deep space, unobscured by all the construction booms and other aparatus of the station. She was clearly quite a beautiful woman, with a slightly dusky skin tone, curly black hair and dark eyes, but by the look on her face Commander Victoria Donavan was not a happy woman.
"What do you mean," Victoria turned away from the view to look at her guest as she said dangerously, "you lost track of them?"
The young man gulped noisily. "They left their scheduled route," he said, light blue hair falling into his eyes, "and our stationed vessels haven't encountered them."
Victoria fought the urge to grind her teeth together, "And as long as the Venture stays off of the standard routes we won't be able to find them."
"We'll do everything we can to find them, ma'am," he squeaked.
Victoria gave him a disgusted look, knowing that it was practically impossible. "Oh, just get out of here," she waved, "before I forget that I'm a Fleet officer."
"Right," he fled.
Victoria sat down behind her desk, dark eyes narrowed in thought. She had a good handle on what was going on in this sector, over all. Certain vessels knew who's palm to grease, she had often cleared the friends of a friend for transit and she was collecting favors that would come in quite handy once she was up for her next promotion.
Some people might claim that was she was doing was dishonest or even illegal, but Victoria didn't think so. She had watched her father doing business, seen how people at that level worked. Even her enterance to Fleet had been cushioned by wealth and influence, so she had no reason to expect that things would be any different once she became an officer.
"Which is exactly why that damn Miles could be a problem," Victoria murmured, flipping open a file even as she remembered their earlier meeting.
That little prig Kelly Miles had been a science officer when Victoria first met her, back on the Isis project. The Fleet's atempt to build a artificial being was a good idea, so good that a certain company had asked her to provide them the test data then sabotage the project in exchange for a remarkable sum. Generously Victoria had tried to include Kelly, approaching her through a catspaw, but she had not only turned the offer down but had the pawn Victoria used arrested!
Victoria was quite safe, of course, she had far too much dirt on her pawn for him to risk exposing her. Still, it was an insult to Victoria, what Kelly did, and she was quite determined to see her pay for that slight. In addition to providing her employers the data Victoria had sabotaged Isis on a test run, arranging it to look like Kelly had made the error that 'killed' the artificial being. Watching Kelly frantically trying to save Isis had been a pleasure, the doubt and uncertainty that had filled the woman was more than enough to satisfy her.
"I just wish that I had known what she was going to do next," Victoria smiled to herself wryly, looking over Miles' service record.
Victoria hadn't seen much of Kelly Miles over the next few years, she had been busy enough persuing her own career. Soon she was the head of engineering on a midsized repair station when a older warship docked, the first officer coming aboard to arrange much needed repairs. Victoria had been all ready for the typical negotiations, the usual not-so-descrete offer of some under the table renumeration when the lady entered.
Kelly Miles looked good dressed in a Commander's uniform, the green eyed blonde meeting her eyes confidently. The shattered technitian of years ago was gone, replaced by a confident and capable officer on the command track. No negotiations followed, in fact Kelly and her people were all over the small repair station making sure the work was done properly. They dealt with each other in a courteous way but it was clear that Kelly didn't trust her.
Several times over the next few years they ran into each other, with Kelly quite often interfering with one of Victoria's many activities. To make it worse promotions in the battle Fleet came much faster than in engineering or sciences and soon Miles outranked her, too. It was so frustrating to be commanded by someone who had once had been her subordinate, much less having to deal with a self righteous person like her.
"So what is Miles doing out here?" Victoria wondered as she brought herself back to the present. As much as she disliked her Victoria knew Kelly was a capable commander. one that the fleet wouldn't waste sending on a fool's errand. Obviously there was something out here that the Fleet felt they needed Miles to deal with, but what?
The Raiders was the most obvious answer, and just because it was obvious didn't mean that it wasn't worth considering. According to the public parts of Miles' file she had some anti-piracy experience, helping deal with a situation where a merchantman had decided to go pirate, and there were indications she had operated undercover, too. That didn't really qualify her to go after a group like the Raiders, but it was a good start. And, Victoria called up some records to check, it didn't look like anyone else had much more experience, currently.
"We may well be on the same side," Victoria conceded.
The Raiders had been cutting into her business of late, that was certain. The sort of people who paid not to be noticed didn't like seeing rogue military forces running through the sector. Similarly it limited her ability to sell the services of Drydock or provide materials to those who didn't want to go through channels. Yes, the Raiders were certainly becoming a problem.
Victoria stretched, her athletic body stiff from a long day's work. "But can I really bear the idea of cooperating with Miles?" she asked herself. She puffed out a sigh, "I'll just have to keep rreminding myself it's business."
Victoria called up all the available data on the Raider's, reviewing their activities. Noting there were some holes in the information she fired off several requests for aditional data to headquarters, putting together a rough profile on what they might be dealing with. She noted the screen blurring under her gaze and wiped at her eyes, noticing how late it was.
"Time to get to bed, I think." Victoria got up and left her office, as always remembering to lock the door behind her.
It took a few days for the other shoe to drop. A wailing alarm jerked Victoria away from her paperwork and sent her hurrying to the command center, studying readouts until she found out the problem. A back-up fusion core in the station was malfunctioning and unless carefully nursed along into shutdown it could suffer a overload.
"Damn," Victoria muttered.
Rounding up one of her best techs Victoria headed down there, silently wishing that fusion reaction physics wasn't one of her specialties. If she hadn't that training she could be on a shuttle away from Drydock, not rushing towards a potentially dangerous situation. She stopped them at the door to use sensors to check the section for radiation, then they went in.
Victoria headed to the console, calling up status reports before blinking in surprise. "Telltales are all green?" she asked in surprise.
"Sorry about this, ma'am," the tech said, holding a pistol on her. Maya didn't look all that apologetic about it, actually, the brown haired girl watching her like a hawk.
"What's this about, Maya?" Victoria leaned casually against the console, watching the girl warily for some kind of opening.
"You shouldn't have sent that information request," Maya said quite seriously, "it attracted the wrong kind of attention."
"There's a leak at headquarters," Victoria realized.
Maya nodded just slightly. "Please cooperate and come with me," she said, "or I'll just have to shoot you here then overload the core to cover it up."
Victoria studied her. "I won't make this easier for you," she finally said.
"Then we'll just do this the hard way," Maya raised her gun.
The sound of the weapon going off was loud in the little chamber and Maya's eyes widened in surprise. She swayed for a moment then Maya crumpled, revealing the young woman who had silently entered the room a few moments earlier.
"Very well done," Victoria complimented Alielle as she knelt down beside Maya.
"Is she dead?" Alielle asked, the black haired girl sliding her pistol away.
"I hope not," Victoria calmly checked for a pulse as she continued on, "I want to try to get some answers from her."
To be continued...
Tennokiken Voyagers: Ten
Siobhan Ward smiled as they watched the three Raiders scatter, clearly surprised to see two military grade ships appear on their scanners. The black haired woman leaned forward, "Let's do this by the numbers, people."
Shane manned his station, the brown haired helmsmen smoothly echoing the course of the Venture to swing them each to one side of the ships. "We aren't going to be able to pin them down much with only two ships," he cautioned as he worked.
"How's the link to Venture's targeting systems?" Siobhan asked.
From her position at sciences Sylvie checked the boards. "Link is green," the silver haired woman agreed with a grin.
"Put Kelly on," Siobhan continued, "and let's get this show on the road."
Isis sounded amused from the tactical station, "Don't you mean Miles, captain?"
"She grows on you," was Siobhan's answer.
On a bottom corner of the main viewscreen an image of the bridge of the Venture appeared, Kelly Miles sitting in the captain's chair in the middle. "So, are you ready to spring our little surprise?" Kelly asked them with a smile.
"Oh yes," Siobhan said with a feral grin.
Smoothly and without warning both vessels fired their missile batteries, targeting with unearthly precision on one of the decommissioned battlecruisers the Raiders liked to use. The blocky, wedge shaped military craft's shields gradually dissipated under multiple strikes from the gravimetric missiles, then they broke through.
"Scratch one," Siobhan grinned.
The command datalink system was an new combat system, only that the most recent ships like the Venture had. Interlinking two or more warships with a secure data transfer, it allowed them to unleash coordinated barrages like the one they had just unleashed, powerful attacks that no enemy ship could easily withstand.
"The other battlecruiser and a armed freighter are attempting to flee the system," Isis reported as she quickly sorted all the combat data that coming in to tactical, "the damaged cruiser is launching life pods to the other ships."
"Do you want to pursue them?" Siobhan offered the choice to Kelly, feeling a sudden flash of irritation on the surprise on Rio's face. 'Does she think I want to run things,' she thought angrily, 'I'm an engineer, damn it.'
"No, let's get aboard the crippled Raider," Miles answered crisply, "if we can override any self destruct charges we might be able to extract some useful data from the systems."
"We'll meet you aboard," Siobhan agreed with a grin as they cut the connection.
"You're going aboard?" Sylvie asked.
"Of course," Siobhan grinned, her eyes sweeping the cramped bridge as she continued, "Isis, Sylvie, you're with me. Shane, mind the store while we're gone."
"Yo," Shane waved with a wry smile. "Everybody be careful, please," he added as they all quickly left the bridge.
In only a few minutes they were in the shuttle, speeding towards the now listing battlecruiser. Almost at the same time a second shuttle launched from the Venture even as the larger vessel took up a sentry position a short distance away. It was cramped in there, but they weren't going to be dealing with it too long.
"We're going to be docking soon," Sylvie said from the pilot's seat, the young woman a bit nervous in handling the small craft.
Siobhan winced at the thump when they docked, Isis running the sensors until she gave the all clear. They filed inside with the Venture's team right beside them, Kelly striding forward to join them. Behind her Rio looked around suspiciously while Jesse hefted a engineer's tool kit.
"The demolition charges in a ship like this are usually located in the engineering section," Miles said briskly, "we should get a team down there as soon as possible."
Siobhan shook her head, "Hold on a moment, Captain." She looked to Isis, "Find a terminal and get us any information on self destruct systems."
"Ma'am," Isis pulled a connector from her wrist then plugged into a nearby wall screen, eyes looking off to the distance as she rapidly scrolled through internal schematics.
"You think they added some nasty surprises?" Rio asked, the tactical officer unconsciously resting a hand on the pistol at her side.
"I would," Siobhan said dryly.
"Standard demolition charges are counting down in the engineering department," Isis calmly reported, "but a secondary device is in place beneath the command bridge, and the weapons locker has been primed to detonate as well."
"Time to detonation?" Kelly prompted.
"All three charges are tied together," Isis said after a moment's data search, "we have less than twenty minutes before they all blow."
Siobhan only took a second to come to a decision, giving orders smoothly, "Jesse, take Sylvie and handle Engineering, Miles, you and Isis head for the bridge. Rio and I will go for the weapons locker and see if we can defuse whatever's there."
"Sounds good," Kelly agreed, "but why you and Rio on the weapons locker?"
"If they've jury-rigged something with the weapons system," Rio quickly realized, "we're going to need an engineer and a weapon's expert to handle it."
"Bingo," Siobhan grabbed her spare tool kit and nearly ran out of the room, Rio following close behind her.
"Think we can disarm all three devices in the time we have?" Rio asked, the two jumping into a drop chute, following the standard route designed in all ships of this class.
"I'd say we have to," Siobhan answered as they reached the right level, charging down the hall to the weapons locker.
Rio grabbed the door and yanked before growling, "Jammed."
"Move back," Siobhan ordered as she braced herself, grabbing the handle with her cybernetic arm. In one smooth motion she tore the door from it's moorings and cast it aside, visibly wincing in pain as she did so.
"Are you...." Rio started to ask.
"Later," Siobhan limped a bit as they headed inside, "we've got work to do."
Energy rifles and sidearms were stacked along one wall, small explosives charges and other weapons stored around the room. In unspoken agreement Rio took one side and Siobhan the other, efficiently searching for any sign of the explosive device intended to destroy the weapons and much of the vessel around it.
"Oh hell," Rio's voice came from the other side of the room, then the other woman began to swear violently.
Siobhan joined her, examining the box that Rio had just opened. Her voice was unnaturally calm as she recognized it, "A missile's gravimetric charge that's been reconfigured to scuttle the ship, very clever."
"Don't waste time admiring their work," Rio growled, "can you disarm this?"
"Let's find out," Siobhan answered, setting her toolkit beside her then popping it open to reveal a eclectic mix of items. "Check the rest of the room," she added as she began to carefully remove the casing, "in case they left any more surprises."
Rio nervously circled the remaining section of the room, examining objects carefully even as the seconds ticked past into minutes. Finally Siobhan pulled a module out and set it aside, puffing out a breath in relief. "Is that...?" Rio had to ask.
"Yup," Siobhan looked very satisfied as she said, "the trigger is out, it's disarmed."
Rio activated her communicator and reported, "Jesse, Kelly, the weapons locker has been disarmed, what's your status?"
"Engineering is clear," Jesse answered smugly.
"The Bridge has been dealt with," Kelly said, "thanks in large part to Isis's assistance. Everyone meet up here, we've got more work to do."
"No rest for the wicked," Siobhan chuckled as Rio signed off.
"Hey, Siobhan?" Rio said. As the other woman looked up Rio smiled slightly, "Nice job."
"Thanks," Siobhan smiled back.
To be continued....