Chapter 20: Fighting Blackbirds

The dogfight took us a little over 400,000 kilometers from the Space Station, which the command staff witnessed on their sensors in real time. The station was equipped with a squadron of fighters, and they were dispatched to intervene, but by the time they got to us, the fight was over.

The loud pops and crackles of static came over the comm system indicating that it was being forced to receive and then a voice came over it. “Unidentified craft, this is Lt. Commander Fisher of the Alliance Station D-102. Power your systems down and identify yourself.”

I looked around for the communication control, and Jess pointed to a switch practically under my nose. Turning it on I replied, “This is Lieutenant…” I was about to say Reilly as my heart was pounding so hard I could hardly think straight, but I stopped myself and used my undercover name, “...O’Brien. I’m one of your new engineers. We will stand down and comply to your orders, Commander.”

“Very good,” he replied. “Follow us back to the station and land that thing in Hanger Bravo. Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged,” I replied and then turned to Jess. “You heard the man.”

She didn’t say anything and I looked over at her as she was pulling her helmet off. Her face was white as a ghost and she was breathing hard. Her body was full of so much adrenaline I could see the veins on her arms and neck bulging. With as cool as she had seemed during the entire engagement, I hadn’t realized just how scared she had been.

“Hey, you still with me?” I asked.

Jerking her head hard to look at me like she had been in a trance, she then answered, “Yes, Sir.”

Gently I said, “You did great. Now, all we have to do is follow them back, land the bird, and then you can take the rest of the day off. I promise.”

She nodded, put her hands back onto the controls and then matched her speed with the lead fighter. I could tell just how hard she was trying to hold her nerves together as she sucked in a deep lungful of air and held it. The station was slowly growing from a dot in space to a small and recognizable shape before us. If I could have taken the controls and given her a break I would have, but I didn’t have a clue how to land such a ship. If she couldn’t hold it together for the next few minutes we were both screwed.

~~~

When we landed there were two station security officers waiting for us. As we walked down the ramp and onto the deck of the hanger bay, I became acutely aware that we were still both only dressed in our shorts and t-shirts.

The two security men flanked us, and the taller of the two said in an all business voice, “Follow us.”

“Petty Officer, if you don’t mind, I think we should stop by our quarters to retrieve the proper uniforms before we report back to Commander Harrington.”

“We’re not taking you to see Commander Harrington. And no, Sir, you may not stop by your quarters first.”

Now an enlisted man would never talk to an officer that way unless the officer was in trouble and the enlisted man was following an order from a higher source. So I nodded and followed him as his subordinate took up the rear. Jess and I were marched through the bay to the lifts that took us halfway up the station to the main concourse that contained most of the common spaces like laundry, mess hall, recreation facilities and the such. There were probably over a hundred people who watched with interest as we were escorted through the open space between the various shops and facilities to the center lifts that would take us up to the command deck.

Once in the operation center, we were directed to just outside the Station Commander’s office. The door opened, and a woman’s voice called out, “I’ll speak with the Ensign first.”

Jess looked over at me with panic in her eyes.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said to her. “Just tell them the truth. Which includes the fact that everything you did was in the course of following my orders. Okay?”

She nodded, faced forward and walked in. I stood there, trying not to shiver as the cold deck plating was like ice under sock covered feet. The operations deck was an oval layout with windows and view screens all around it. The idea being that they needed a full 360 view of space around them, even though their sensors would tell them all they needed to know about the space around them long before anything would come into visual range. Nearly two dozen people populated the ops center, which oversaw everything from docking ships to recycling controls. Every single system was monitored from this room, and each individual had to be on their best game each and every day because the loss of just one system at the wrong time could cost lives. I could see people glancing at me with little subtlety and some whispering to the persons next to them.

There are a number of projected time displays around the deck, so I knew less than five minutes had passed, but it felt like a lot longer. The two Petty Officers had stayed with me on the outside of the door. They each looked up, and I could tell that someone was talking in their ears with a comm. The door opened, and Jess walked out. She looked a little shaken, but then looked at me, smiled and said, “See you at work tomorrow.” Then she walked off towards the lift without an escort.

“Come in,” a familiar female voice said. I walked in and saw Captain Shelby sitting behind his desk and Mitchell standing next to it in her fleet uniform. It still seemed odd to me to see her in it as for the last year I had only seen her in Marine attire.

Once I was in the center of the room, I stood at attention.

“At ease, Lieutenant,” Mitchell said harshly. I changed my posture to my feet apart and my hands behind me, but still looking straight ahead like a good soldier. Mitchell was playing her part, and I needed to play mine. It was clear that the station commander was going to let his new first officer control the disciplinary action and he was only there to observe.

Mitchell walked up to me, faced me and stood just off to my right so I couldn’t look directly at her. Something they actually teach you in command school to keep a subordinate off balance when you are dressing them down. “What the hell did you think you were doing, Lieutenant?” she asked, nearly in a shout.

“I perceived a threat to the station, and I took action,” I said, keeping my eyes forward and my head still.

“Are you trying to tell me that you knew those attack ships were on the cargo freighter?”

“No, Commander,” I answered. “The threat was from the enemy commandos that we observed the crew of the cargo ship chasing when we arrived. I was concerned that the civilian crew might not be capable of handling the invaders who appeared to be of higher caliber than typical pirates. My intent was to assist the crew to take them down before anyone else was hurt. It wasn’t until we caught up with the ship's officers that we discovered what the invaders were after. We tried to stop them from taking the two ships but were only able to secure one of them. We then gave chase and destroyed the other preventing an Alliance asset from falling into an unknown enemy's hands.”

Mitchell looked back at Captain Shelby who gave her a nod. Mitchell then turned back to me. “You did this despite the fact that Commander Harrington gave you direct orders to stay where you were?”

“Commander Harrington was unaware of the situation at that point, and I was unable to reach him on comms,” I answered. That last part was a bit of a lie as I had chosen not to inform my superior officer of what I was doing because I knew he would tell me not to do it. Mitchell knew me well enough to see the subtle twitch in my left eye that I get when I deviate from the truth. Yet, she also knew that I would have to muddy the truth to maintain my cover.

“Lieutenant, the chain of command is imperative to everyone serving out in space, would you not agree?”

I let my eyes dart to hers for just a moment as I felt she was laying it on a little thick. I quickly moved my eyes straight ahead before the station commander noticed and answered, “Yes, Commander.”

“Now we do appreciate that you were acting in the best interest of the Alliance so this will not be a formal reprimand, however, it is also important that we do not undermine Commander Harrington by not addressing the fact that you did not make every effort to communicate with him before you acted on your own. Therefore you will work an additional shift tomorrow where you will check the communication systems in each and every pressure suit, environmental suit and maintenance pod on the station, and you will continue to do double shifts until the task is complete. Understood, Lieutenant?”

“Yes, Commander,” I responded.

“Dismissed,” she said.

I saluted. She returned the salute and then I walked out of the office and kept walking until I was back in my quarters.

~~~

As soon as I got to my room, I took a quick shower, put on a fresh uniform and then reported to Commander Harrington who was overseeing the inventory of damage to the Cargo Ship.  By that point, it had been properly secured to the station, and a boarding gate had been attached to it. When I walked up to the Commander, I stood at attention and saluted him. He looked at me like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to congratulate me on the successful outcome of stopping the pirates or punch me for making him look impotent in his command.  He made me stand there holding the salute for a minute until he finally returned it.

“Mr. O’Brian,” he said with such a growl it was almost garbled.  “Report to Lieutenant Botchie at Section F. You might as well help clean up some of the mess you made.”

“Yes, Sir,” I replied, giving a subtle frustration to my voice to imply that I was not thrilled with the assignment, but in truth, it couldn’t work out better. I wanted to have a chance to take a look around the area that had housed the classified ships, and this would give me just that chance. Yet when I got there, there wasn’t much left to see. With most of the port wall gone and exposed to space, we couldn't actually get into the compartment. When I got to the hallway outside the compartment one of the other engineers handed me a pad that was assigned to RB-D-102-19, which stood for Repair Bot of Station D-102, number 19.There were five other junior members of the repair and maintenance team standing there with pads in their hands, each monitoring and directing repair bots that were crawling on the outside of the hull, rebuilding the wall plate by plate, pulling out the five-foot octagon replacement panels and welding them in place.The bots didn’t need much direction to do such a basic job, so we were mostly just watching them work. A very mind-numbing job for an engineer, which is why the task was usually assigned to junior members and those who were being punished.

“Lieutenant, may I speak with you,” Mitchell’s voice came from up the stairwell that led down to the sections I was working in. Her tone indicated that I was about to receive yet another dressing down.I put my bot in ‘stand-by’ and then walked up the stairs. Once I was there, she turned her back to me and walked down the hallway towards the sections with crew quarters and conference rooms. I followed and if anyone was watching they would assume I was being reprimanded by the station’s executive officer.

She stepped into a conference room, and I walked in two steps behind. The moment I was inside she closed the door and a mischievous smile crept onto her face.

“I am so glad you survived out there,” she said, “Because I would not want to be the one to tell Kayla that you were found in a secret little ship, naked, with the prettiest young Ensign.”

“We weren’t naked,” I said.

That enlisted a little laugh from Mitchell. “Okay,” she said, still amused with the little nugget of potential future teasing. She walked around to the other side of the conference table and took a chair. “So, do you think these ships have anything to do with what we are investigating, or have we stumbled onto a whole new conspiracy?”

“I don’t know,” I said taking a seat at one of the half-dozen chairs in the room. “Those two ships are definitely in violation of the Alliance Accords.”

“Definitely,” she said. “But equipment designed for covert operations often are. Their existence isn’t much of a conspiracy.”

“No, but the fact that someone outside of Military Intelligence knew about them is a significant problem.” I pointed out.

She nodded in agreement before saying, “For now we’ll treat this incident as separate from our initial investigation. I’m certain someone from either the G.I.A, Military intelligence, or some other black ops group that we don’t officially know anything about, will show up and order us to erase all record of the birds and threaten us so that we don’t ever talk about what we knew.”

“That is if they don’t order us to have our memories wiped of the last 24 hours,” I added, not joking.

She looked at me as if she was going to argue, but instead sat back and said, “Another violation of the Alliance Accords and Military Code of Conduct, but I honestly wouldn’t put it past any of those organizations.”

“Regardless, as soon as there’s a visible investigation in play the people we’re after will go so far underground we won't find anything, so we’ll have to move up our timetable.”

“Agreed,” she said. “And I have some thoughts about that.”

~~~

We spent the next 20 minutes outlining our plan but cut the conversation short as we were both concerned about keeping me away from my duties too long. It might create suspicion from those we were looking for and could also start rumors about us that would only complicate things when we were trying to keep a low profile. Not that I was doing a very good job of that so far.

I went back to work and finished my shift, and she reported back to the operations center. With nothing that required her immediate attention in her role as first officer, she let her subordinate take the watch and stated she would be in her office to catch up on some data work. That gave her the chance to get into the stations database and do some more research.

After my shift, I returned to my quarters, showered, changed into some clean fatigues and then headed to the mess hall for dinner. Despite my little adventure with the covert ship and the shootout on the cargo ship, I was still like a shadow on the wall. The rumor mill on a station with over 2000 people on it hadn’t saturated the story through too much of the population as of yet, and those who did know were probably keeping their distance as I had been reprimanded for my actions and probably didn’t want the association with me. So I sat alone and tried not to notice the occasional glances and whispers at my expense.

Once I was finished, I then headed down to the hangar deck as if I was reporting for my punishment duty of checking all the comm systems in all the environmental and pressure suits. When I got there, I told the officer of the deck that I was going to start with the suits stored in the shuttles in the reserve shuttle storage bay. That was Mitchell’s plan all along when she dished out the punishment to me.

Now at that point, I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but we had both agreed that the best place to start was the shuttles. Our assumption was that they had a plan for the shuttle that had unexpectedly been sent and left on New Harmony and they would have most likely used, or planned to use, another shuttle from the station.It was a blind shot in the dark considering we weren’t certain of what their plot was, or what their objectives were, or even who “they” were.

It was the beginning of third shift, so there wasn’t anyone in the bay which was dark aside from a couple of overhead lights that provided just enough light to not trip over anything. Picking the first shuttle in the first row of five rows, I opened the side hatch and walked inside. Starting with a DNA scan with my palm computer, it didn’t tell me much as a straight surface scan of the main compartment found over 30 individuals had been in there.So then I did a maintenance scan to see if there was anything odd with anything associated with the craft or the equipment within it. Aside from normal age and wear and tear I didn’t find anything. Then I checked the computer logs and found them wiped, which was actually to be expected. Once a craft is pulled out of a rotation it’s database is uploaded to the stations main computer and then wiped except for its basic operation functions. I moved on to the next three shuttles to find a lot of the same. There were a total of 20 shuttles in the reserve bay and another 40 in active rotation. It had taken me over an hour to get through four of them. If I had a week, I might be able to get through them all. I needed to find a way to inspect them all faster. The station was equipped with internal sensors that could run full energy, light wave, radiation, sonic and gravimetric scans. Combine them with a powerful enough computer brain, and you could inventory every microband particle on the station. But that is not something I could just do. Aside from the fact that it would use an enormous amount of energy and computer space that would affect nearly every station in ops, there were also regulations limiting their use because it could be used to invade people's privacy. If I had a better idea of what I was looking for, I might be able to do a low-level scan, and that was something I could justify with a creative enough excuse.

The faint sound of voices caught my attention. Quickly I moved over to the aft of the compartment and pulled open the hatch that contained the pressure suits just in case it was someone coming to check up on my progress.The voices were low like they were trying to be quiet, but the vacant space of the storage bay reflected sound like a sheer-faced canyon. I couldn’t tell what they were saying, but it was clear they were trying to be secretive in whatever they were doing.

Peeking my head out of the main side hatch of the shuttle I could tell that there were at least two men on the other side of the next stored craft. Quietly I stepped out and onto the floor, careful not to be seen or heard. Moving around the side of the next shuttle I got close enough to hear the men.

“It’s too risky,” one of the men said in a harsh whisper.

“We don’t have a choice,” the other one snapped trying to keep his voice low under his stress. “Mr. Black sent word that we need to get it off the station and to a secured place tonight.”

“Why don’t we just take the shuttle?” the first man asked.

The other man opened the access hatch to the main engine that was on the underside of the rear section. “We don’t know if this thing would actually work on a shuttle. It’s probably too big. It’s better to break it down into small parts and smuggle it off.” I could tell by the sounds that he was crawling under the engine assembly to get at something, but I dared not peek around the corner. Yet I needed to see for myself what they were talking about. Stepping back the way I came I sent a text message to Mitchell. ‘I need a distraction. A fire drill will do.’ I typed. After a few moments alarms started going off all around the station as Mitchell had ordered a surprise battle-stations drill. The lights popped on in the storage bay along with red flashing lights and the squeak of the alarm indicating that everyone had to report to their assigned stations. The two men jumped up, secured the access hatch on the shuttle and ran off. I tried to get a look at who they were, but their backs were to me by the time I got a clear view. As quick as I could, I opened the same hatch they had and crawled under and into the pipes, and components that made up the shuttles main engine. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking at. Everything was there that was supposed to be there, but there were five additional components attached to the power supply, computer interface, shield generator, and secondary thruster junction. Taking out my palm computer I took several pictures from as many different angles as I could reach so I could construct a 3D image later. Then I crawled out, closed the hatch and ran hard to my emergency duty station seven decks up.

The alarms shut off the moment I reached my post, at which point I and a handful of other new arrivals who didn’t get to their post in time got a dressing down from Commander Harrington and then released to go back to our normal duty stations. I headed back out the way I came, but then made my way back to my quarters where I linked my palm computer with the wall screen. I had it construct a 3D image of the shuttle’s engine compartment that showed everything. I then had it grey down the parts that were supposed to be there so I could take a closer look at the mystery parts. It took me a few minutes and checking a couple of technical manuals, but once I was certain of what I was looking at I sent Mitchell a message with a brief explanation of what I had witnessed and asked her to meet me in the same conference room where we had talked earlier that day.

~~~

Mitchell had reached the conference room before me and confirmed again that there was no active listening devices within. As soon as I walked in, I secured the door and put the image of the shuttle engine on the screen.

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

“At least two things that shouldn’t exist,” I answered. Standing next to the image I pointed to each as I identified their function. This is a remote computer interface. They’re commonly used when you want to add something to a ship’s systems on the fly. Otherwise, you have to cut into the computer, comm and navigation systems and splice them in by hand.Not a quick and easy task when dealing with the small craft that has to maintain air pressure in space. This looks like a micro QSG system here, but it’s about a third of the size of one you might find on a rescue shuttle or fighter craft.”

“Do you think it's a more advanced version of the QSG?” she asked.

“No,” I said looking back at it and using my hand to grab the image and pull on it to make it bigger. “This is the generator part of the QSG. That’s what generates the field that makes the tube. The field has to be at a precise frequency to work. This part right here creates a counter-vibration to the ships normal vibration, in a sense making it very still. Otherwise, the tube would collapse. Now for that to be effective a ship mass has to be consistent and balanced. So even rescue shuttles and fighters have membranes of micro hydro containers that can be filled or drained of water by independent computer and sensor systems. Which is not here.”

“So this shuttle could never achieve QSG speeds,” she said.

“Right,” I answered.

“Then they were using the shuttle to hide these parts that they took from something else.”

“That was my first thought too, but now I’m thinking they were trying to make this work in the shuttle.” I moved over to the other side of the image so I could point out another mystery component. “The two men I overheard were talking about using the shuttle to get away, but were not sure if what they had done to it would work. So I think this might be an entirely new QSG that doesn’t need to balance the ship. But then I wondered why they thought they could get away with a QSG drive in a shuttle. We can track the tunnels, and the speed within them is a constant regardless of the size or power of the ship. Then I took a look at this item here. It’s wired directly into the ships energy shields. At first, I thought maybe it was a new way of balancing the ship for the system, but then I remembered I had seen something like it before.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“A cloaking device,” I answered.

Her face scrunched up as if I had just told a bad joke and then said, “There’s no such thing,”

“Actually they have been around for over a hundred years, it’s just that no one had ever been able to make one that was completely effective at masking anything larger than a shoe box.”

Her face went from focused on what I was saying to very concerned. “You think someone’s made a new QSG that can launch without a long prep and a cloaking device that can mask a ship?”

I looked back at the image and scratched at the stubble of my evening shadow. “I’m not sure it would work on a any ship, even one as small as a shuttle. Too many moving parts. I think we're back to the theory of the torpedo.”

“Shit,” she said under her breath. Her eyes locked onto mine as a hundred bad scenarios ran through her head. “A missile that can’t be seen, that can fly 100 times the speed of light to a range of what, 2 or 3 light years distance?”

“More like 5 to 8 light years,” I corrected.

She continued her thought, saying out loud to make sense of it to herself. “Okay, that can jump 8 light years in a matter of minutes and even if you could see the tube open near you, there would be no way to defend against the missile before it made impact?”

“It would be like turning all of space into an active minefield. Nowhere would be safe from an enemy with this type of weapon.” I said confirming her conclusion.

Mitchell turned and looked out the window at the stars. The wheels were turning, and I knew her well enough to know I needed to stay still and quiet or she would lose her train of thought. After a moment she closed her eyes, and I could see her lips move slightly as if she was talking something over with herself. Then she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“Assuming you’re right. we have critical parts to a secret military weapon being hidden by the thieves on this station and the attempted theft of secret military assault ships on their way to this station. This is a lot bigger than we thought. It can’t just be a organized criminal operation. You have to have the resources of a nation state to pull off things like this.”

“But why?” I asked aloud. “With as horrific as the Serken War was, the one positive outcome was that it forced all the worlds to cooperate and interact more than we ever had before. The government that we have now is equally represented by every race and runs as well as any bureaucracy has ever run. Who would oppose that?”

“Well, we humans did hold onto all of our military assets while a lot of the others disbanded theirs.”

“You think one of the pacifist worlds has a subculture with a backbone that wants to build up their fighting power?” I asked, grasping at any scenario that would make some sort of sense.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Here’s the thing. If I thought it was just a criminal syndicate, I would suggest finding a way of tracking the parts and seeing where they go, using it to catch the big fish. But if all of this is the actions of another world power trying to build up their own military might to be able to outgun us, then we can’t let them get anything off this station. Once they have the technology, they can replicate it without limits.”

“Huh,” I said as the thought occurred to me. “Why didn’t they just scan the components and send the data to their bosses?”

“That’s a good question,” she said.

“You know, I bet they did, and their techs couldn’t figure out how to recreate it from micro-scans. Which is why their spies are still sitting on the original parts here. They need to find a way to smuggle them off the station and to whomever their working for.”

“Micro-scans are pretty detailed,” she commented. “How would having the originals make any difference?”

I grinned as the answer came to me in a flash of a memory from my brief time in covert ops training.“You’re right, it wouldn’t make a difference. Yet, scientists and engineers who work for the Department of Military Defence are required to make dummy plans, specs and parts for all offensive weapon designs. Which is why they have to be present during all phases of testing. They’re the only ones who know how everything fits together and what parts are decoys.”

“So what they have is worthless,” she said.

“No,” I replied looking back at the images, “There's enough here for a skilled engineer to eventually figure out what’s genuine and what might be missing. It will take them some time to invent the missing components, but this would put them on the fast track to figuring it out. And if they do have some scientist picking apart scans of this, then we need to find out who this organization or government is before they make any headway.”

“Okay,” she said in that tone that indicated she had made a decision. “Let's get back down to the shuttle storage bay. If they haven't removed the parts yet, we’ll stake out the spot and catch them in the act, arrest them and try to make them talk. If they have already taken them out of the shuttle, then we’ll have to find a way to track them. Do you think you can do that?”

“Maybe,” I said. “Now that we know what we are looking for we can use the sensors to scan for them, but that would also mean revealing who we are to most of the command staff.”

“I’m not worried about that at this point. Let's go,” she said, and she followed me out the door and down to the storage bay.