Angeleyes - eARC (27 page)

When it was made clear that no one would bother shipping if they had to pay for the unloading, they threatened to criminally charge ships that didn’t for “war profiteering.” How were they going to identify which ships? There were probably a couple on contract schedule runs, but most were now and again, or even one-offs.

I’ve never known politicians to make sense.

After two weeks, they came around to the UN paying for the loading and unloading, but had a huge list of requirements, even more than the ones we’d had to deal with.

I could see how a handful of ships doing our kind of thing could utterly crash chunks of their economy. I just wasn’t sure that would stop them from destroying us in the process.

I said two weeks. We were around longer than that. We kept going, outsystem. I got concerned. It was quiet and dark out there, and no stations.

Fifteen-day cycles along, thrust came back online and we moved out of emgee into .5. Given the time and trajectory, we had to be well out of the gravity well of the star and in the right range for a Jump Point, but there was no way it was unguarded for us to get through.

We kept going.

No one else seemed scared, so I tried to assume they knew what they were doing. I was sure they did. I just couldn’t feel secure when I didn’t.

We had no news out here, either. No one could beamcast us, and broadcasts for local space were too weak even for the sensors on an intel boat.

It was as alone as I’ve ever been in my life. Despite the “depths” of space, most people stay near habitats or planets, or routes with regular traffic. Or else they take large survey ships in pairs. We had fifteen people in a boat the size of a ground-based house, and most of that house was engine, powerplant, sensors and oxy production.

A ten-day Freehold week after that, there was activity up front.

“Contact. Positive ID on the
Serang
.”

I recognized that. The
Serang
was one of our destroyers.

Eventually there were bumps and clangs and we were docked and attached.

I felt a lot better.

“How far out are we?” I asked.

Juan and the captain exchanged looks and shrugged before I got an answer.

The captain said, “We’re out by the astropause.”

“That’s outside the outer Halo, yes?”

“Kuiper Belt and Scattered Disk, yes. Typically it is. With the smaller star, we’re actually still within those. Slightly.”

Damn. That was actually the deepest into space I’d ever been.

It’s deeper than almost anyone got to go.

I said, “I don’t recall them updating to phase drive.”

I got no answer.

I found out much later that officially they hadn’t upgraded. Brandt had a couple of units ready to go when we got attacked, stuck them on a ship and donated them. They were concealed and dragged out of system, and then installed. The UN didn’t even know
Serang
still existed. Supply boats fed them, they fed us, and they hadn’t been in any system for the duration. They’d been astrogating in deep space, alone. That had to be a hell of a story.

They spent half a day fastening us to their superstructure. I don’t know the physics, but you can’t just tow a ship, apparently. There’s an envelope around the structural mass based on some sort of submolecular shaping of space from it. There has to be complete contact and only certain overall shapes work.

It was my first time in phase drive, and it was neat. There’s no whomp upside the head. Everything gets really fuzzy for a bit, almost like being drunk, then it fades back to normal. We were elsewhere.

Once again I found out a lot later. We were at an actual interstellar base our engineers had built. Our phase drive ships were here, dragging the others with them whenever they could.

Churchill
had been destroyed. I didn’t have any close friends who’d been aboard, but they were mostly good people and they’d fought bravely. I felt like crap for being here.

Teresa supported me again.

“Don’t feel that way. Death is something that happens, and dying there wouldn’t have allowed you to help us. You’ve done a lot more here. You couldn’t have saved the ship.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “Survivor’s guilt.”

“You have nothing to feel guilty over. It’s perfectly natural, so I’m going to offer you some medical rum and thanks, for getting us where we are.” She had a selection of bottles in her gear crate, all labeled with stock codes that declared them official issue.

I tossed the rum back and grimaced. There’s a reason I drink fruity drinks.

It didn’t help at once, but I did eventually accept it. It still sucked to know they were dead and I couldn’t have done anything.

“You couldn’t have done anything if you’d never been aboard,” she said. “They’d just be names then.”

“I can’t detach myself from people like that.”

“It’s tough. It takes time. Should I leave you alone to meditate? Or do you want company?”

I shrugged. “Hanging out is good. I won’t talk much.”

“That’s fine.”

I avoided that by thinking about what was here. Actually, the one led to the other. Our warships weren’t fighting. One on one, they could fight UN ships. What they couldn’t do was resupply. Once low on fuel or ammo, that was it, even if they didn’t lose, which they would some of the time.

Instead, we had them running supplies. They were faster-than-light, go-anywhere transports that could haul multiple cargos. They moved fuel, people and intel where it could be used to strike at UN operations. I didn’t realize at the time how much influence I had. I was one small part of a team of nine, but that team reduced UN operational effectiveness by several percent in several systems. Add in the actual battles we’d fought and the skull kicking was all out of proportion to the size of the boot.

Regarding the station location, apparently, the astrogation crew had coded and locked instructions they accessed in flight, and not even the captains knew. Since there was no jump point to that station, the UN couldn’t even get there, even if someone who knew told them where it was. It was literally impenetrable until the UN finished outfitting a phase drive ship, then they’d have to either know where it was or do a lot of searching, then they’d have fewer ships for that battle than we did.

As far as the smaller ships, they couldn’t fight us if they couldn’t find us, and if they found out we were inside their borders, they still couldn’t really fight us without hurting their own people and infrastructure, though it was clear they didn’t really care about the people. All the resources they put into protecting their systems, stations, people and equipment was resources not in our system. We wanted to avoid fighting there for all those reasons.

“
Churchill
did their part by delivering you to us,” Glenn said.

I looked up. I realized I’d been muttering and blushed.

“Angie, a lot of people go through life wondering if they matter. None of us have that problem. You shouldn’t either.”

I nodded with damp eyes.

CHAPTER 33

Yet another tramp showed up, towed by another ship. This one was newer, registered out of Caledonia. It scared me how many ships with false histories and registries seemed to be floating about. It was the
Camby
.

“Are the logs correct on this one?” I asked. I didn’t want to pimp myself to a perv again.

Juan said, “They are, because several of our residents have been running it the last decade. Those residents retain Caledonian citizenship because they planned to retire to our system. They were made very comfortable in an alternate retirement.”

That sounded disturbing.

“What does that mean?”

“It means they were given a lot of money, new ID and a quiet place to live to enjoy that money. What, you think we killed them?” He gave me an odd look.

“I, uh, wasn’t sure.”

They gave me a Look.

I thought it was a fair question, but obviously I’d made a social error.

I asked, “We’re just going to do the same thing as last time?”

He said, “Not quite. We will still engage in clandestine combat as dictated by mission parameters and opportunity. However, we’re moving more toward intelligence gathering for others to use.”

I hoped that would be a lighter load than we had. A year and a half of this was wearing. Days of boredom and real work done for fake reasons, followed by segs of terror and panic and divs of fear of getting caught, rinse, repeat. We all have our limits and I was near mine.

At least there was room aboard. She wasn’t as nice as
Pieper
after upgrade, but she was better than a lot I’d served on. I had my own small bunkroom with a rolling hatch. I could be out in seconds, and private when I needed to. Talk about luxury.

I was stowing my gear when an All Hands klaxon sounded. It was a military klaxon, and I made a note to tell them to change that if this was supposed to be a civilian vessel.

I reported to the C-deck. There were MPs there. Ours.

The warrant leader in charge of the element was talking.

“Captain Gaspardeau, can you fully vet and account for your crew?”

“I can. Angie is an attached asset who’s been with us for several months, and is absolutely reliable. The rest are members of my element and we have trained as a unit since before the war, in preparation for it. We had an infiltrator whom we identified, court martialed and executed before we captured
Scrommelfenk
. What specifically are you looking for?”

“We will need to search the ship in a full showdown, sir. I apologize for the necessity.”

“Fair enough. But are you able to answer my question?”

“After we search, sir,” the warrant said.

One by one, we went to our cubbies and opened every container of everything. Teresa and I went together as chaperon for each other. I opened my roller and my bag, laid out everything down to my toothbrush and epi cream. I put my Bodybuzz on the bunk, then my wigs and dyes.

The female MP asked, “Ma’am, are the cosmetics professional or personal?”

Not “lady” but “ma’am.” She didn’t know my rank equivalent and was making sure to address me as an officer.

“I use them for both. We frequently change appearances.”

“Fair enough. Stow that and show me the bunk, please.”

I put everything away and peeled the bedding, the gel mattress, lifted the springs and opened the underbunk storage.

We swapped while they had Teresa toss her stuff. She had no cosmetics to speak of, more clothes, minimal toys.

Cleared, we went back to the C-deck with our belongings stuffed into our luggage, while the MPs plus a ship maintenance crew started there and worked aft. I went to the galley to monitor while they pulled every pack, opened all the heaters and the fridge, everything.

It took all day.

Outside there were sounds of hull techs doing yet more searches.

It didn’t stop there. They went over the capital ships the same way. They had two crews on each checking each other. Stem to stern of every craft, then the station.

It turned out that nothing is one hundred percent secure. There were a handful of UN infiltrators who had good cameras and old-fashioned parallax gear to measure and determine the station’s location. Then either we would have a phase drive ship, or perhaps just a huge warhead or a bunch of generators to scramble space and destroy any ship trying to precipitate (as I found out the term is) there.

Two of them had been caught talking and swapping data on paper. Very secure, until someone sees it. The other two were found in the sweeps. All four were given quick but fair court martials, then shot at the base of the skull and spaced. The recovered bodies were recycled for minerals and hydrocarbons.

I guess the court martials might have been a bit abbreviated, and the UN complained about that after the war, but they were caught with the gear and enough evidence proved they were plants. And I guess we didn’t shove electrodes into them and torture them, so I wasn’t very sympathetic.

We put everything back together, and our host pulled us out. This time, phase drive went on for longer. Apparently, that’s not related to distance, but is related to some complicated energy expenditure based on the structure of space.

I still have no idea where that station is. I’m not sure anyone does. But I bet it still exists.

CHAPTER 34

When we precipitated, we were in Mtali, or near it. Far outsystem. We had an extra fuel bunker in cargo, and a feed mechanism to get it into the powerplant.

Juan said, “Now, if we’re lucky, Mtali won’t ask too many questions about why we’ve been here a month and not done anything. We have a backup plan of claiming repairs and can limp in if needed.”

Mtali runs their own point, though they have a lot of cultural arguments over who does it, so they rotate. It depends on which group you get how well they do. The Sufi and Sunni aren’t bad. The Amala and Shia are terrible. The Christian Coalition are in between. The other groups aren’t big enough to involve. Yes, they divide by religion, not nation or industry. It’s a mess.

That worked for us, though, since it was a different group on departure, and they don’t like to talk to each other, so no one questioned when we’d come in or who through. We officially came from in-system, didn’t dock, queued up and jumped.

That put us back in Alsace.

This was a station I wasn’t very familiar with. I’d been here twice about five years before. All we did was eat and sleep out, though, and pick up legit cargo.

Then we went across system to where I knew. It was the station on this side of Earth.

We were very clean. We dropped cargo there, picked some up, logged an “irregularity” in Mtali space, then jumped through to Earth.

I realize they were the enemy and our main target, but I hated being in that system, every time.

It was another old station, a long cylinder with hub and crossing center spokes. They’re not all the same or evenly spaced. They kept building off the end away from the dock, then built another dock, then added struts for volume.

We docked, and called for estimates on repair for the powerplant feed regulator management.

Glenn asked, “I know you don’t work with engines, but any idea who’s good here?”

“I’ve always heard good things about the Rocket Surgeon—Le Chirurgien de Fusée. He’s upper end, but not the most, and very professional. He provides detailed reports on his work for log.”

“Who’s good and cheap?”

“Carrie the Fixer. Avoid the Duct Tape Engineer. He’s for people who need to get to a real outfit and don’t want to spend money here, but why would you do that? I guess they’d rather get to the Freehold, but it’s a long trip with failing equipment.”

“Will any of them be able to tell we broke it?”

“I don’t know. Possibly. I guess it depends on how well you did.”

“We’ll risk it.”

They got estimates from three shops, and took the Rocket Surgeon on my recommendation. Then Juan asked if they could get a discount by not being in a hurry. Some math suggested waiting three days would save enough to justify waiting, but it meant not earning meantime. Since the money was from our government and we didn’t need a haul for income, we waited.

We actually did need regular hauls to offset expenses, but we did have some budget for military ops. The whole thing was largely self-funded, though, and there were no official records. It was brilliant. I wonder who came up with the idea originally. I’d at first figured to take ones or twos through to hide and look for intel, not to crew a ship and blow things up using the profit margin.

In the meantime we did more spying.

We split into singles and pairs, got bunkies and rooms, and split up.

I carried some sort of passive sensor around in a purse. It felt weird. I hadn’t carried a purse since tech school when I was ten. I’ve used a shoulderbag or backpack ever since, but they wanted something smaller for even better concealment.

You can’t get into the government sector easily, though I knew these guys could if they had to, but there’s a passage of bonger clubs, pizza joints and soup cafes literally one frame away. We rotated through there, carrying our sensors. I had some okay clam chowder and decent garlique baguette, made with Russian wheat. That seemed weird.

I don’t know exactly what they were looking for, but I’m guessing phone signals, and possibly any kind of coding or traffic analysis from the control center. Yes, I’d started learning about types of intel. It was hard not to.

We weren’t doing any HUMINT, just hanging out, getting known and getting passive SIGINT.

Still, if you hang out, you get HUMINT. We learned who the bouncers and owners were, and we listened to people bitch about their jobs. That can tell you a lot, too. Their own security protocols were slowing people down, pissing them off, and making work harder.

I still didn’t think this would win the war, but I was sure it helped. That encouraged me.

I was out in a club, listening to Undertoad, when I got a ping.

I let the message scroll across the hat I was wearing. It had a screen on the brim.

“Emergency. Find us a place.”

That wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

I checked the time, swallowed my drink, tossed a chit at the bar, and walked out muttering, “Fuck work,” in case anyone was listening.

I was sure it was bad. I thought about places I knew here from the one time I’d been here. How old was this place? Right. So they should have engineering crawls on the outer hull, and I did mean “crawls.” What was closer? There was a large volume in Frame 60, Radius 40 that was a homeless camp. We’d have to spread out and act the part, but it could work.

I got onto a slideway heading axial north, and moved across to the express belt. Then I walked back over to the slow belt, because 60 came up faster than I expected.

They’d given me an encryption program for my phone that they said they trusted. I shot an image of the Frame Number as I reached it. I went a bit further and got off at 62. It was quiet, which wasn’t what I wanted, so I worked back on foot through stores, trying to look like I was browsing when I was trying to relocate.

At 60, I got on a local slideway and went counter. When I reached Radius 40, I sent another image. I went past and backtracked again.

The problem was, there was still a homeless camp, but it was a lot smaller than last time. It had held a couple of hundred. Now it held about thirty in eight boxes and sheets. Ten of us would show. I figured I’d stick two “couples” here, and the rest of us would go somewhere else. But where?

There was a spot at 85/26/1. Outer hull. It wouldn’t be pleasant, but we could hide.

I sent the message with first initials only. “J&T, M&M, here.” I’m sure Mo had a tarp or something they could sleep under.

As they started arriving, I made distant eye contact. Mo was first. I watched him sweep his vision across the volume, stretch and make an “ok” with his right hand. He’d take it from there.

Roger was next. I turned with a bit of emphasis and started walking. I figured the rest would follow.

I took slow slideways and stepped off early this time. It was an enclosed passage with an actual stop. We were near the industrial section for station maintenance, storage and support.

I faked it with my phone as I got closer, talking into the air with my bud in.

“I understand his schedule, but if he wants this delivered he’s got to respond. I’m going to try to get a count now, so they can be on pallet at the site when the crew arrives. We may have to bring some from the other stowage, and if there isn’t enough, there’s going to be a delay, so we need to start ASAFP.”

There was hardly anyone around, and a woman in a coverall talking about a late project was nothing anyone would pay attention to. I walked right past a lone monitor. Lone. This was a decently safe area. Though I figured the team would fix that problem in time.

There wasn’t exactly a hatch here. There was an expansion joint with a pressure curtain. The curtain closed with a magnetic airtight seal which had two gaskets that interlocked. It was cheaper and I guess easier than having a separate lock.

Behind that was dead space to the outer hull. It was pressurized, held in place with crushable columns in case of impact, and pretty much empty, because it was black, cold and had nowhere and nothing to use for shelter or concealment once inside. I’d found it when one of the maintenance guys thirty-foured me into going there. It was neat to feel warmth on one side and cold on the other, but it got unsexy as soon as the thrill ended. I didn’t know if we could stay long, or if we needed two, but Juan had said, “Now.”

I stood with my back to the curtain and waited.

Roger came up and asked, “So what’s the problem?”

I understood he was covering and said, “The pallets were short. Someone miscounted. I’ve called Mathews and told him to grab a couple of spares from stock, but we may need to pull some from the other project. This has the shorter deadline.”

While I talked I indicated, and he eyed the joint. When I finished, he said, “Yeah, we’ve got until Tuesday, right?”

“Monday.”

“Crap. Let me think.”

Then he muttered, “I guess if that’s all there is, but that’s going to be fucking cold.”

“He said fast.”

Bast arrived then, pulled out some small tools and ran them over the joint, while waving his phone around in between like he was doing some sort of inspection. I hoped he didn’t take long. We were cool for now, but eventually someone would start asking what we were doing.

He got the gap open and shimmied through. It was about a meter overlap, and there were cold breezes as he shifted. And I mean cold. Holy hell.

We kept up the chatter as Shannon, Juan and Glenn arrived. Shannon was through and Juan in the joint when that monitor came back.

The first thing he said was, “Someone better have a work order. There’s no orgies in the connectors.”

I said, “Oh, sorry. We didn’t mean any harm.”

“Messing with those is considered sabotage. Get your buddy out of there, I’m going to have to arrest you all.”

I’d never seen Glenn fight before. Glenn moved so fast I barely caught it, and kneed the guy in the chest so hard I thought his lungs were going to come out. He dropped and curled up and started twitching. He obviously couldn’t breathe.

Then he twitched a lot more. Then he stopped.

Glenn had fucking kneed him into a cardiac arrest.

“Get him in there,” Glenn said. “We’ll find his chip later.”

We stuffed a dead, oozing body into the gap, then went through behind him. There weren’t any actual smears, but there were wet streaks. Uck.

I got inside and it wasn’t quite black. Someone had a light set on a low lumen level so we could move about. I took the ladder down three steps to the outer hull, and had to get into a crawl.

The body was down here with us, stuffed against a support pillar. Someone had cut open his hand and pulled his ID tag, and then ripped open his shoulder for the monitor ID.

It was cold enough we weren’t going to smell that body for a while. I had a thin jacket in my pack, with really good insulating properties, but that meant ten degrees difference, not twenty, and it didn’t help my head, hands or feet. I huddled as best I could. I tucked my hands and shoulders up, and let my hair fall over my ears. I exhaled warm air down my collar.

Once everyone was accounted for here and above, Juan got our attention.

“UN intel caught up with us. It seems one of Chesnikov’s people informed them on our ship logs. We have a reasonable guess who, because that person was killed in a creative manner. They were given an oxygen mask and then exposed for slow vacuum trauma. So it wasn’t him, as best we can tell.”

Wow. That was worse than being spaced, and probably worse than being zapped.

“However, that let them confirm our presence in Salin. Then they must have checked out all vessels of similar size and class. They’ve seized
Camby
and you should assume anything aboard is compromised or confiscated. Which is why no one had anything of relevance to intel there, right?”

I thought about that. I had my phone. I had the chips for all my personal files. I didn’t think anything aboard had my name on it, other than initials to ID them in transit or laundry. Those were my cover initials, not real.

I shook my head, and no one confessed to anything.

“Good,” he continued. “So everyone kill your phones.”

I’d already done that as soon as everyone was accounted for.

“It’s fucking cold down here, but we need to hold out as long as we can, unless we can find somewhere else. Then we have to see about transport.”

Glenn asked, “What type of transport?”

“Anything that lets us continue the war.”

He was crazy. At this point, it was likely the next raid would ID us personally. We were going to keep at it until we died.

I realized I had signed up to save myself and others. They’d signed up to save others and themselves. It made a difference.

I really, really needed to talk to someone for emotional support. I knew the best way to survive was to win, but I wanted to fucking run. Fake another ID with their help, and just disappear, and wait for things to die down.

But we couldn’t. We had to keep the pressure up, even if we died.

I didn’t want to die.

I didn’t realize Teresa was near me.

“Scared?”

I wasn’t going to even pretend to be brave.

“Yes. Gods, yes.”

“It’s all we can do, Angie. No matter what, we need a ship.”

She was right.

“I’m not sure I can get on that ship,” I said. “I know I should. I also know I can hide pretty well here, and get onto something else later. Except I probably can’t anymore.”

“You said it yourself. If we lose, all that goes away. They’ll tag everyone everywhere, and track every movement. Everyone will be a ward of the state, working for it, not themselves. Disposable.”

I was starting to wonder if it was so bad. Earth managed with a population of billions. People survived and existed. Was it really that bad? Were we really right?

It didn’t matter.

Either I kept going until we won or died, or I gave up and I was likely to die.

I was disposable.

But not everyone had to be.