do.'
'You do?'
Randolph Lalonde
Spinward Fringe Broadcast 6: Fragments
'Jason was working with Freeground Intelligence while they were figuring it out. I got pulled in to consult a few times because of my experience with their shield tech. Most Vindyne ships keep their combat shielding up all the time because they like using flimsy materials for their ship interiors, sometimes for their hulls. As one of the experts who helped isolate unique characteristics of their shielding, I can recognize the energy barriers, including in raw data form.'
'Like the kind of data you get when you run long range scans or analyze a faster than light ship's transit trail,' Ayan grinned back.
'They're speaking a whole other language. Did you get any of that?' Victor asked Jenny.
Jenny shrugged; 'We just have to make sure they don't get shot.'
'It means we can find supply routes using the Clever Dream's wormhole generator and a bunch of micro wormholes. The hyper transmitter on the Triton could do a much better job, but if we have a place to start, the Clever Dream could do.' Laura explained. “I know it’ll work for Vindyne ships, I might be able to adapt it to Regent Galactic ships if we can get close enough to one to get a detailed scan of their emitter systems.”
'So we can start privateering as soon as you explain all this to the Captain. Sounds fun,' Jenny smiled.
'Aye. As soon as we solve the supply and landing problem.' Ayan said as she selected a seller advertising a large quantity of varied foodstuffs. She started her search in a category for sellers who had permanent landing spaces. 'Bloody hell, it looks like this one knocked over a caravan of convenience store suppliers,' she chuckled as the sheet erupted in brand names.
There were twenty-one matches, all of them offering not only a massive variety of captured goods, but had landing slips to lease. Many of them claimed to have purchased the land before the Carthan Government took over, others offered space to land and security for an extra fee. None of them quoted prices for the landing space, or mentioned how much space they had available.
Ayan and Laura browsed for several minutes, sampling prices from different vendors, until they finally settled on one in particular. The prices were irresistibly low for food stuffs, and the explanation behind the acquisition of their goods simply said; SUCCESSFUL PRIVATEER. Under the land lease section of their profile it simply claimed; LONG TIME OWNER, WILL BARTER, SERIOUS INQUIRIES ONLY.
'Wow. I wonder if he has any real food,' Laura chuckled. 'Looks like mostly meal replacements, candy and inebriants. Best prices and they've got a lot of good feedback from past customers.'
'I'm good with that kind of diet,' Jenny grinned. 'As long as he throws in a case of fitness supplements.'
'Beggars can't be choosers. Looks like they're one of the best and they have land. Let's find a taxi stand and get to his slip before he sells out.' Ayan said as she rolled the advertisement up and tucked it into her thigh pocket.
Chapter 22
The rattle and pound of Sgt Cumberland's pulse rifle had become so familiar it was like a second, frantic heart beat. The curving halls and inclines of Triton made it feel like the great corpse of some living creature as he and his Unit ran for their lives, trying to get behind cover only to find themselves under attack at every turn.
It was the issyrian. He hadn’t seen it, but it was definitely his men and women leading the charge in their thin, sealed suits. Their rifles showed signs of overuse, the charging chambers at the top of the weapons had burned wide open. When they fired, they were bathed with the mad strobe of white light from the loud, crackling power coursing through their rifles. It was as if that was all they were, a man or woman wearing a suit that barely protected them and a rifle. No matter how many Cumberland’s men injured or killed, they just kept coming, rushing, firing.
It was as though the issyrian was waiting for them to finish repairing the lift and move. Somehow he knew exactly which floor he’d come up on, and when they arrived, the nightmare began. They didn’t fire into the express car, they waited. His people had crawled into maintenance hatches, waited inside crew quarters, and around corners. When they were all out of the car and down the first stretch of hallway, the attack came. From behind, the sides, and from one of the hallways ahead; they were forced down a specific hall, where there was no visible resistance, and he’d lost four of his people in that initial attack.
Major Cumberland almost wished he was fighting the cloak suited horrors that caught the boarding parties in the quiet places, it would almost be better than the relentless assault and the constant effort it took to keep from being outflanked. It took every ounce of his skill and experience to manoeuvre his people through the long hallways and be wary of traps.
At every turn they had the advantage. There was no time to find out how the other squadrons were doing in detail. He knew they were winning on the command deck, and that a unit had just entered through the upper mooring points, but he didn't have time to find out the details or review the short reports each Sergeant filed as they moved through the ship and entered one engagement after another.
That damned issyrian had them running frantically, with few choices. Just moments before Major Cumberland had lost three of his men when they took a left into a hallway that had been supercharged with a bare power feed. Where the issyrian had gotten a live line, he'd never guess, and his lead tech didn't have time to answer either.
They were forced into a broad concourse that slowly curved upwards from deck to deck. Even as he was under fire he wished that the ships he served on were designed so well. They tried to take cover in one of the larger crew quarters but found the door rigged to three arc charges, grenades that unleashed a massive amount of power in one burst, it was like touching ball lightening. Two more men, dead the instant the door opened.
The next hall was sealed. None of the doors would open but they finally got a chance to rest and create cover with portable barriers. “Who the hell are these people? We’ve killed at least a dozen and put down twice as many, but they just keep coming,” remarked Sergeant Loman, still out of breath from the long, backward run. He was leaning on the stock of his rifle, using it like a short cane.
“There are hundreds of them, gotta be,” agreed Private Voleman.
“Tracker says we’ve killed seventeen, disabled thirty eight,” Cumberland said, knowing that the auto tracker hadn’t been accurate since they had to remove the operations AI from the system. “We’ve only lost six, I’d say we’re up.”
“Yeah, right, got ‘em right where we want ‘em,” commented Private Baram sarcastically between gulps of air.
Cumberland didn’t have the energy to shut her up. Normally he’d put her in her place, find some way of reprimanding her while reassuring everyone else, but the long engagement was taking its toll. He flipped his wrist display open and checked their orders. They were simple; ‘Proceed to the rear cargo elevator, take it to deck 21, Section A1.’ He double-checked the rudimentary map of the deck they were on, deck 19, right below the hottest fighting on the Command level, and found that they were close.
“Command still silencing unit to unit communications sir?” asked Sergeant Loman.
“We have our objective. We don’t need to know what everyone else us up to in order to accomplish it.”
“Not a good sign though.”
“It’s not our job to interpret signs,” Cumberland replied. “But I do know a pretty convincing fortune teller on Srak-Tam.”
“Srak-Tam, sir?”
“It’s an old drift, orbits a binary star in the Tisch system.”
“So it’s true you led the team that put down the Human Supremacist uprising.” Said Private Shir.
“I was there. That was a complicated engagement, all compartment to compartment and corridor fighting.” Admitted Cumberland.
