Spinward Fringe Broadcast 7: Framework (5 page)

“Aye,” Quiz replied.

“We have to help Skydock.”

The wormhole opened, and to Minh’s relief,
Quiz manoeuvred inside and began accelerating hard, perfectly. He
followed suit and started his systems check. It was something no
one had to do, but it was better than staring at the sensor
displays in the cockpit of his Uriel and the heads up display in
his vacsuit visor.

“That’s the real deal,” Quiz said quietly.
“Eden ships.”

Minh brought up a small window inside his
visor so he could see what Quiz was looking at. It was a digital
model of one of the drones headed for Skydock, Kambis, and possibly
the moon they called home – Tamber. “Absolutely,” Minh replied.
“You got a good scan, almost better than the ones from the
Triton.”

“The ones taken from the attack that cost
Chief Frost his leg,” Quiz said.

Minh finished checking his mini-missile
load-out and checked the transit timer. They would have to begin
decelerating in twenty-eight seconds. The enemy force would reach
Kambis orbit in one hundred five seconds.

“These drones are different,” Minh said.
“They’re the small, fighter model. Make sure your ship checks out,
we’ll be in for a fight until orbital defence can engage.”

“Almost done,” Quiz replied. “I have a
question for you, though.”

“I hope it’s a short one,” Minh replied.

“Yeah, why are we rushing to the defence? I
thought we were just being paid to patrol?”

“You didn’t read the entire contract, did
you?” Minh asked with a sigh.

“Who reads those things? I mean, they go on
forever.”

“Well, since we’ve got about forty one
seconds, I’ll explain it. We get paid a flat rate if we’re helping
with patrols. If we catch something on scanners, we’re expected to
assist with the defence. We get damage, trauma, and danger pay if
there’s a firefight.”

“Oh."

Minh watched as the engine pods of their
Uriel fighters rotated one hundred eighty degrees and fired as hard
as they did during the acceleration phase of their transit. It
wouldn’t be long before they were in immediate range of Skydock.
“Right now, I’m just looking forward to shooting something.” He
used the counting clock as a focal point as he breathed deeply,
releasing frustration, tension, and doubt with every exhale. “A
frenzied mind sees, a tranquil mind comprehends.”

“So this means a big pile of cash,” Quiz
said.

“Yes, but try to forget about everything but
surviving the next few minutes,” Minh replied during a long exhale.
“Get ready, we’re coming out.”

They emerged from the wormhole to see
Skydock. The traffic around it was dissipating as civilian ships
followed navnet directions to the opposite side of Kambis, the
massive, canyon-ridden planet ahead.

Skydock was a many-segmented station that
had been built on for centuries. The outer segments of its fifty
six kilometre length and forty eight kilometre girth were more
gracefully designed with smooth curves and complimentary angles.
The interior was a mix of square, utilitarian sections with
hundreds of docking bays and thousands of large transparesteel
windows. Minh had heard the view on the opposite side, facing the
planet, was incredible. Tamber, the moon Minh and the remaining
Triton crewmembers had come to call home, was on the opposite side
of Kambis, far from where the fighting would begin.

“This is Skydock to Ronin,” a port officer
addressed through Minh’s communicator.

“Ronin here,” Minh-Chu Buu replied. “Did you
receive our alert?”

“Yes, fighters are scrambling now, and we
have four destroyers ready to intercept. Advise on best position of
pulse barrier, please.”

Minh was surprised, the pulse barrier was
the most powerful weapon the station had at their disposal. “If
you’re asking me where to point that thing, I’d say right behind
us, just give us ten seconds to get out of the way,” Minh
replied.

“That’s in line with our thinking, you have
fourteen seconds to leave the target area.”

Minh plotted a course before navnet could
send him a similar route and he set his thrusters to maximum. Quiz
was less than a second behind.

“Are we about to see a light show, Ronin?”
Quiz asked. He sounded almost giddy.

“I think so, I didn’t think they had that
thing working, but I guess we get lucky today.” As soon as they
were clear, Minh turned his attention to the station and the area
of space the Eden ships would arrive in. Seventy metre long
emitters running along the oldest part of the station, at its
centre, began to glow red then flashed to white.

The Eden vessels emerged from the wormhole,
their engines flaring brightly as they decelerated. Several
missiles launched from the main, shining oval ship at the
centre.

Minh targeted the missiles with six of his
own mini-rockets and fired six at each. After a brief moment they
were moving too fast to see with the naked eye. His computer
registered five hits less than four seconds later. He’d destroyed
their missiles.

“Are they going to fire that thing or what?”
Quiz asked.

“That pulse weapon is a little old,” Minh
replied. “It might have a pretty short range.” He watched the enemy
fleet approach the base, closing to ten thousand kilometres.

“A few drones are heading for us,” Quiz
said.

“Go evasive,” Minh ordered. “Split right.”
He locked on to the nearest drone with mini-missiles and
rapid-fired half a pod, twenty eight shots. Several beams swept
across his shields as he strafed. As the first drone was struck and
destroyed by his barrage of missiles, a second crossed in front of
him, and he fired his pulse guns. The little machine’s shields
shrugged the damage off, then it changed direction so quickly Minh
lost sight of it for a moment.

Minh-Chu set his guns to autofire; they
would react faster than he could to the drone if it crossed into
his firing arc. He spun his fighter around and tried to get a
missile lock, but the drone was too close, and closing quickly. He
barely had time to begin thrusting in reverse before the drone
struck him hard enough to completely deplete his forward shields
and pepper his fighter with shrapnel as it exploded.

The drone was gone. He’d taken minor damage,
but there was a bigger problem. The three remaining drones turned
on Quiz, and he was firing at one with his guns, letting himself be
guided into a slow figure eight. Two Uriel fighters emerged from
their wormholes - it was Slick and Joyboy.

“Holy hell!” shouted Slick. “You’re being
lured! Break and evade!”

“You’re gonna get slagged, man!” Joyboy
added. “Get outta there!”

In the time it took for them to comment on
the situation and start closing, Minh was able to get a missile
lock on the two drones that were positioning themselves out of
Quiz’s sight. Their cutting beams began focusing on his shields,
and if Minh’s guess was right, Quiz only had a few seconds.

Minh engaged all his thrusters, pushing them
to the limit and, when he was sure of his missile lock, he fired,
hoping the added speed from his craft’s thrust would help close the
gap faster. He changed direction to get a better angle on the
drones for guns and they autofired solid rounds as well as energy
pulses. Something under his seat started rattling, resonating with
the rattling of his solid round gun pod. “Analyze that, please,” he
told the computer as he guided his ship closer to Quiz and his
pursuers.

“Interior sensors are disabled,” replied the
passive computer voice.

The cockpit began to heat up, and Minh shut
down his guns. He’d have to make do with missiles. A collision
alarm went off, and he looked up in time to see the drone Quiz was
following had turned so his fighter was thrusting directly at
Minh.

Minh-Chu barely avoided a lethal collision
with Quiz, but one of the other drones following him slammed into
his ship from the port side. His shields began recharging from
reserve power immediately, and Minh adjusted for the damage to a
port side engine pod as he tried to get his fighter under
control.

“Sorry!” Quiz offered lamely. “I’ve almost
got this guy!”

To Minh’s relief, one of the drones Minh
targeted with his missiles exploded in a fury of shrapnel. The
other was struck by a couple of his missiles, but kept after Quiz,
staying behind him, away from his main guns.

Slick and Joyboy entered combat range and
began firing on the target Quiz chased as well as the one that
sought to pierce his shields using an intense beam. Minh stopped
his fighter from spinning just in time to see Skydock station’s
pulse weapon activate. The Eden ship and hundreds of drones were
slammed by a barrier of light and force that struck at half the
speed of light. Most of the drones were unrecognisable, while the
main ship had split into several sections that lazily drifted and
rotated away from the station.

Quiz finished off the drone he’d been
chasing for almost two minutes as Slick obliterated the one that
had been drilling into his shields.

“Not a bad day’s work, huh guys?” Quiz
asked.

Minh took a deep breath and let it out
slowly. “Let’s get back to patrolling, we have three hours left on
the shift and I’ll be stopping in to see an old friend when we’ve
finished our sweeps.”

The ancient transparent steel windows
stretching across the quiet boardroom provided Ayan with an
expansive view of the city atop Greydock. They were in one of the
upper towers, reserved for affairs of government. A Carthan
representative was behind her, reading the terms of the latest
draft of their privateering and compensation agreement. He droned
on, as drones were known to do. Jason and his wife, Laura, sat at
the table, listening quietly. Liam Grady was only an arm’s length
away, watching the city below as well.

Ayan had stopped being surprised when he
came along for the negotiations weeks before. He didn’t miss one
session, was always the last to speak, and didn’t say anything if
he didn’t have something to add. His council, and their growing
friendship, were becoming something she hoped wouldn’t end when the
negotiations ended.

She idly took in the view. The city was
still being rebuilt, but the largest of the structures atop the
Greydock tower showed no real damage. Corrosion was the enemy, and
whatever metal was used centuries before had oxidised and turned a
rich rust red.

A high wind picked up rust and concrete dust
from the street twenty stories below. A cloud of the stuff swept
down a long avenue only to split and dissipate as it collided with
the city’s high outer wall. It reminded her of the ashes she'd
poured into the wind the day before. Instead of listening to the
ongoing reading behind her, she allowed her thoughts to drift.

Everyone who could attend the funeral the
day before did so. It was held on an old stone and bioplast
boardwalk. The brown biological plastic material mixed with large
dirty purple quartz gave the weathered structure an earthly
quality. The waters were calm, the sun was rising and it would be
for hours, bathing them in a warm, golden light. Waiting for the
long dawn was an idea from Ugo Dallego, an Axionist from the
Samaritan Order who occasionally visited her, and she was glad
she'd taken his advice.

“Where is the dawn?” recited Axiologist Liam
Grady. He stood at the edge of the dock looking back at all the
crewmembers who had turned out, over nine hundred in number. The
breeze didn't stir Liam’s heavy cotton robes. People gathered to
stare at the Triton crew. All in uniform, they lined up along the
structure and the beach where it dipped and been reclaimed by the
sand. Every one of them held an urn, some held two.

Liam continued; “Timothy looked to his
brother and replied, 'It will be late today. All our fears were
justified. The leaders in the East committed to one last war. All
the great cities have been reduced to rubble, and their ashes will
fall on us in a matter of hours.'

Samuel did not believe him and said; 'No,
they were the last chance we had to stop the civil war in the West.
Someone with power must have survived.'

'Anyone left alive with the means to help
have left for Centauri Station in hopes of finding their way to one
of the new colonies.’ He considered the horizon before he spoke
again. ‘The British were right to leave when we made them
unwelcome. Now they rule the stars.’

‘There will be opposition. War will spread.
Too many leaders have left from this side of the world as well.
Without them, all the stability in the West is gone, and they’ll
make an attempt to wrest power from the new colonists.'

Timothy looked to his brother, with the love
he’d known in his heart since they were children. Samuel was well
moneyed and a patron of many frivolous pursuits, but he was not
without wisdom. 'Your face is known to most powerful men and women,
Samuel. You must join those that have ventured out into the stars
and lead who you can. Lead them to peace.’

'You’ll come with me. If we're going to
start over somewhere else, then I'll need your help,’ said
Samuel.

‘This is my place. Make sure you pass on my
message; that the meek inherited the Earth, but only after the
strong thought there was nothing left to fight over.'

'What do you think you can salvage here?
Your love of God has kept your feet on the ground your entire life,
but not even He would want you to try to resurrect his garden on a
world covered in ashes.'

'In a Kingdom of ashes the cinder is both
destroyer and king. It's time for the faithful to come together and
begin the long process of rebuilding. From death and destruction
will come the lesson, and from the lesson: hope.'” Liam Grady
cleared his throat and looked over the massive gathering. His voice
was carried to everyone on the crew through their communications
system. “That was a reading from The Book Of The Departure, as
recorded by Samuel himself on the first day of the Stellar
Calendar. He and his brother were forever separated after the
destruction of the majority of the upper Eastern continent on
Earth. Countries that we watch videos about, like Germany, Russia,
China, Korea, and England were almost completely destroyed on the
day that conversation took place, and a nuclear winter was about to
envelop the entire globe. We know that time now as the First Fall
Of Man. Axiologists know it as The Departure, when our race
divided. Some interpret that division as the materialistic-minded
leaving a ruined earth behind, so they could plunder the virgin
galaxy.