Tales from the Service: A Mercenary's Way

2947-10-08 – Tales from the Service: A Mercenary's Way

With this week’s loss of contact with the fleet’s forward outposts and scouting forces on the Sagittarius Frontier, I fear that Captain Samuel Bosch and his light squadron – deployed to that area several months ago – may be beyond the Navy’s ability to help. Last we heard on this side of the Gap, a string of Tyrant squadron raids on the poorly-defended and partially constructed outpost at Sagittarius Gate had been beaten back with heavy losses, and all the Navy forces in the region were being recalled to that system.

My sources indicate that the lack of contact is not due to the destruction of the Navy’s presence at Sagittarius Gate, but instead a raid on the chain of specially-designed Hypercast relays which connect the far side of the Gap with the rest of the Reach. By the time the Navy repairs the relays, however, I fear Sagittarius Gate – far too distant to be reinforced effectively – will have fallen.

Bosch’s ships are of course only one of the formations deployed to that region to protect the few civilian interests which set themselves up in Sagittarius before hostilities began. Many lives will be lost there – such is war, to be sure, but I do hope this audience keeps the officers and crews of those ships in their prayers in the coming weeks. The Navy’s light patrol and scout squadrons have a reputation for resourcefulness and pluck, but it will take more than that to withstand what is undoubtedly descending on them now.

This week’s entry comes to us from a person who has appeared in this space before – Jacob Borisov, captain of the mercenary carrier Taavi Bancroft. His command has, as with most mercenary companies in good standing with the Confederated Navy, relocated to the Coreward Frontier, chasing the safe paycheck and generous terms of a Navy patrol contract. Like other mercenaries we’ve seen in this space, the Bancroft company has been hit by saboteurs – Ladeonist or Incarnation, he couldn’t say – but has managed to prevent their doing any major damage to ship or crew. Unlike the other companies we've seen here, the Bancroft crew has yet to secure a proper Navy wartime contract.

Jacob sent in this story form the Matusalemme system. In case you don’t know the system by name, its only major inhabited world is Adimari Valis, well known for the extensive Xenarch ruins found deep underground not far from the main spaceport. Since over a dozen university networks from the rest of the Reach have missions on Adimari Valis, the Navy has hired several mercenary crews to keep the system well-patrolled, and several wealthy patrons have funded additional mercenary companies. Though the Navy does not have a permanent garrison of the system, Matusalemme is one of the better-protected systems on the Coreward Frontier.

Our source wishes to brag that he leveraged this situation into a more efficient – and profitable – use of his mercenaries, allowing his company to be paid twice for the same tour of duty. In the process, he provided an interesting look into the disadvantages of the Navy's heavy use of mercenaries in this conflict. To be sure, Captain Borisov does not appear to have done anything wrong, but like most mercenaries he has no motivation to do anything right either, unless he's paid.

My only curiosity (which he specifically left un-satisfied in his message) is what exactly the local government paid him with, other than credits. On a world known for its Xenarch ruins, I have to guess it was some piece of valuable hardware salvaged still-functional from an archaeological site. I'll admit I didn't know if private transfers of Xenarch relics was illegal - Nojus helpfully told me it is legal, but only barely so.

Jacob paced up and down the hallway outside his temporary groundside tenement, hand cupped to his right ear to drown out all sound from that direction that didn’t come from his comm earpiece. Though it felt like two hours, the signal-response delay to Taavi Bancroft was only twenty seconds – twenty seconds of a shooting war where anything, including the total loss of his ship with all hands, might happen.

The pinch-faced little man acting as his local guide stood mutely off to one side, but Jacob knew better than to expect the Adimari local to tune out his guest’s conversation. Fully sixteen mercenary ships prowled the star system, and none of them including Jacob’s own could be bothered to inform the system authority or the planetary government whenever something happened. Mercenaries, though only too happy to swap intelligence with co-belligerent outfits, usually only reported activity to their paymasters, which the locals weren’t. Adimari Valis’s ample archaeological treasures never had translated into actual treasure with which the system could buy its own protection.

Finally, the comm circuit came to life with a reply from Lestat Pain, the newly-promoted Bancroft executive officer. “I confirm previous report, skipper. Two Tyrant cruisers on planetary intercept course.”

“Damn.” Jacob keyed the reply control. “As we discussed at the conference, Lestat. Captain Accorsi on Dervish has theater control. Keep your tac-feed open to my ship.”

Jacob doubted even a swarm of sixteen mercenary ships could pose a threat against two heavy cruisers. Most of the mercs in the system operated strike squadrons out of the converted cargo bays of lumbering hauler-carriers, and while that many carrier elements could give Nate strike squadrons heartburn, they lacked the munitions to do serious damage to the Tyrant cruisers themselves. The two antiquated frigates and one obsolescent destroyer of Accorsi’s formation theoretically could do more, but these fragile vessels would never survive a close-range slugging match with the raiders long enough to do so.

“Mr. Borisov, would you prefer to postpone your meeting? The governor will be waiting.”

Jacob whirled on the guide, fixing him with a glare capable of melting green recruits into quivering sludge, but which the dour local seemed immune to. “Postpone?” The attack had come at the worst possible time, with Jacob and a platoon of muscle ground-side in hopes of negotiating a side-contract with the planetary government. The troopers would be little use in a fleet action, even a haphazard mercenary fleet action, but Jacob hated being sidelined while most of his employees went into battle. “I’m not doing anything else. Let’s go.”

To be sure, Bancroft was probably the least likely ship to suffer serious damage, but Jacob’s squadrons would go into the fray with the rest – squadrons he couldn’t replace, since Bancroft didn’t have a sweetheart contract with the Navy like some of the other crews. On a Navy contract, operational losses would be replaced by newer and more capable tech from the fleet’s ample logistics train; Jacob’s employer was a civilian research consortium which had no such resources.

Following the guide to his small aircar, Jacob listened to the occasional status report from Bancroft on the brief flight to the planet’s modest administrative complex. The city below him, though extensive, was a ragtag and mismatched affair which still reminded him of the dusty colonial outposts on newly-settled worlds. Adimari Valis was a treasure-hunter’s wet dream; a whole poorly-explored planet of unclaimed terrain, on which at least one massive Xenarch ruin had been unearthed. The possibilities lurking below its pebbly soil and beyond thickets of spine-throwing pincushion trees had drawn in many of the Frontier’s most reckless fortune-seekers even before the war, though few had yet made more than a modest fortune prospecting for unclaimed Xenarch artifacts.

After landing on the administrative center’s roof, Jacob allowed the guide to lead him below, into the air-conditioned bustle at whose heart lurked Governor Yamaguchi. The brooding, overworked and under-paid administrator had reached out to Jacob almost as soon as his ship had nosed up to the orbital refueling docks, and it was only too consistent with Jacob’s luck that his careful nursing of this connection over five weeks in-system would be jeopardized by a Nate attack.

The guide stopped in front of a door and ushered Jacob inside, and he stomped in without delay. The governor’s office was smaller than he expected, but clean and well-appointed. Yamaguchi stood and offered a quick bow and handshake, sealed the door, and pointed Jacob to a seat.

“Good to finally meet you, Governor.” Jacob said, turning the gain on his earpiece down as far as he dared while he settled into the offered chair.

Yamaguchi, in no mood to talk around matters, leaned forward in his oversized chair. “Is it true? The foe attacks us now?”

Jacob shrugged. He was in no mood to give away intelligence for free, even as agitated as he was. “I heard some rumors on the way over.”

The governor scowled, resistant to the idea of paying for information a Navy garrison might have given him for free. “If the Incarnation has come to Matusalemma at last, I may need to act quickly to save lives.”

“That’s true.” A corner of Jacob’s mind processed a status report from his executive officer, twenty seconds delayed, and knew that the opposing forces above had not yet clashed. He had plenty of time to spar with this new potential client. “As it turns out, my company has experience with groundside disaster relief and-”

“Mr. Borisov.” Yamaguchi’s interruption, though quiet, was iron-firm. “Even with lives at stake, you play the salesman?”

Jacob did his best to look hurt. He knew how valuable the face-saving game of shaming mercenaries for needing to be paid shortly before negotiating the terms of employment was to the social orders which got themselves into enough trouble to need mercenaries in the first place. “Governor, I sympathize with your plight, but you know I have investors and creditors. We run tight margins, as I’m sure you know. If I took a pro-bono contract and it went bad, Taavi Bancroft would be bankrupt.”

Jacob wished this last was farther from true than it was. For several months his outfit had shambled along on small, dull contracts while he tried to arrange a big score with the Navy like so many other companies, and the bottom line showed it.

“I see.” Yamaguchi nodded slowly. “I can hardly ask you to risk bankruptcy.”

The acid tone in which these words lashed out across the governor’s desk might have demoralized a less experienced mercenary, but Jacob knew he had the governor hooked. The other outfits in orbit didn’t have sizable ground teams aboard their ships, and Jacob, after a little bit of digging, had guessed what Yamaguchi wanted, other than intelligence. He was the only company commander in the system with the ability to solve the governor’s groundside problem. He could nearly name his price, and the local administration would pay it. “My company’s standard operation pricing is easily available on the datasphere. Since this is an emergency, I’m sure your government has an emergency fund capable of absorbing our expenses.”

Yamaguchi nodded vaguely. “Do you consider… non-monetary payment?”

On a one-trick economy world like Adimari Valis, Jacob had expected this tactic, too. “You’ll have to be more specific, but usually no.”

The governor slid a data-slate across his desk. “Is this sufficiently specific?”

Jacob reached for the device, and his eyebrows went up as he read it and zoomed in on the rotating full-capture imagery. He had expected offers of the planet’s only valuable export, but nothing like what was being dangled in front of him. “I think…” It was a risk, to be sure, but as long as he took at least half the fee in hard credits… “I think we can work something out, Governor.”

For the first time, the man smiled. He thought he was in control of the negotiations – and Jacob would let him think that right up until a strategic walk-away would increase his company’s share of the local treasury. “Are you prepared to discuss terms with the… rumored trouble in the sky yet unresolved?”

Negotiating anything with the situation in orbit unresolved was a risk, but he was a mercenary – he always played the risks. “I don’t see why not.” He replied with a disinterested shrug.

At that instant, Jacob heard Pain announce the launch of his company’s entire operational strike wing against the raiders, simultaneous with launches from every other mercenary outfit in the ragged flotilla above.

Details

2947-09-24 – Tales from the Service: A Rendezvous Reconnoitered

Naval dispatches indicate that the HyperCast relay in Berkant orbit was destroyed during the battle, but information about the action in that system has yet to be released. Given that Duncan and Nojus are outside the reach of the Hypercast network, this week’s entry is one of the pieces Duncan prepared some time ago but could not post. 

His notes indicate that this story was sent in as a response to Tales from the Service: A Stowaway Saboteur some time ago. The submitter, Loretta B., is a mercenary pilot operating off the ersatz carrier Shammuramat, on contract with the Navy to patrol the outer Nye Norge systems. She found evidence there that the Incarnation is using civilian Confederated Worlds ships (crewed either by their own or by native Ladeonists) to covertly surveil the Frontier. These ships may also be the vehicle for agents like the Paz of the Stowaway Saboteur account; her nanotechnological weaponry seems beyond the capability of native Ladeonist insurgents. 

This story would have been posted immediately to the text feed, but Naval Intelligence held it up for several weeks, whereupon it went into Duncan’s steadily growing backlog of ready-to-use entries. The attack on Håkøya forecast by Loretta in her attached message never materialized, but that should not be a strike against her credibility – the enemy likely saw the arrival of the huge cruiser force based there and decided to raid softer targets in the Nye Norge. 

Loretta keyed the gunship’s personnel hatch as soon as the hangar pressurization alarm chimed, and unhooked her restraints from her flight suit. Normally, she would wait for the ship’s three gunners to squeeze out of their swivel-stabilized turret stations aft of the cockpit before she disembarked, but the flight she’d just completed had been a rare solo run. Already, the cameras and sensors that had been mounted in place of most of the Kosseler Gryphon’s armament had begun downloading their sizable recordings to the carrier’s datasphere for analysis, but she had seen plenty herself, and would need a few stiff drinks to soothe her nerves. 

“Clean run, boss.” One of the mechanics hurrying up to the ship on the hangar deck gave Loretta a friendly slap on the shoulder as she walked by.  

Normally, she was all smiles after a successful field operation, but this time, the stressful stealth run had left her wrung out in a way lethal combat never could. For six hours, she’d drifted powerless through the weapons range of three titanic Incarnation cruisers, protected only by the hope – accurate as it turned out – that their sensor technology was not much more capable than that of the Confederated Navy. 

Even so, an active sensor sweep by a paranoid officer on any of the three ships would have found her out immediately, and no amount of fancy flying would have saved her from concentrated point defense fire from three cruisers. Her ship had been outfitted to evade detection by civilian sensor suites, not military-grade systems. Loretta had sweated through every second of the flyby, not knowing whether it would be her last. 

Loretta staggered into the lift and punched the deck level of the pilots’ lounge. When the miners at the Axelson Industries outpost had tipped her crew off to the suspicious activities of a small-time freight hauler, she had been as eager as the other pilots to snoop on the ship as it meandered through the outer system. Everyone had hoped to find opportunistic pirates a long way from home, or a smuggler laden with contraband to earn the crew a prize-taking bonus from the Navy.  

Loretta’s ship had been hastily modified for a surveillance mission, and she had left the hangar in good spirits, chasing the suspicious hauler into the shadow of a moon only to find three towering enemy cruisers lurking there once it was too late to back out of the silent flyby. 

The lift doors opened, and Loretta all but rushed to the bar in the lounge, punching in an order for imitation rum even before she sat down. Two of the other people in the compartment – one of her own gunners and another pilot – tried to start a round of applause, but one look at her face was enough to still this good cheer. 

The rum arrived and Loretta downed it in one gulp, despite a metallic odor suggesting that the lounge’s beverage synthesizer machine was on the fritz again.  

As soon as she’d clapped the empty cup back onto the table and had begun to consider a second, one of the other pilots got up from one of the gaming tables and took the stool to her right. “Hell of a run, Loretta.” 

“That’s damned right, Jem. Hell of a run.” Loretta told the bar to send her another drink, then turned to look at her fellow pilot. Jem Williams flew an antiquated Kestrel interceptor which would have been a better choice for the mission, had it not been for the age of its computer systems. The passive surveillance modules had overloaded the dodgy, thirty-year-old datasystems of the single-seat Kestrel, so  the hangar crew had mounted it in the gun mounts of her Gryphon instead – and nobody flew Loretta’s ship except Loretta herself. “Next one’s all yours.” 

The second drink arrived, and Jem snatched it from Loretta. “You’re not trained for scout work, but you did good work out there today.” He might have downed it himself, but he seemed to think better of it once he caught a whiff of its metallic broken-synthesizer odor.  

The instant of hesitation was enough for Loretta to take it back, though not without sloshing almost a third of the precious alcohol out of the cup. Unlike him, she didn’t hesitate. How could he understand how powerless she’d been for all those hours? He was used to flying in something that had been custom modified to outrun most purpose-built racers. He would never understand how many times she had died in her mind, watching the glittering laser-lenses on three Tyrants for the first glow of a shot which would vaporize her ship. 

“Odd they’re hiding. Shammuramat is no threat to even one of them.” Jem, who had obviously heard Loretta’s trembling radio report on her return flight, seemed oblivious to how shaken his associate still was. “Must not be anything in this system worth blowing up.” 

“There isn't.” Loretta shrugged. The Navy didn’t think the outer Nye Norge systems were worth seriously protecting, so the enemy passing through the area silently was no surprise. “They’ve got bigger targets and don’t want to raise the alarm.” 

“Somewhere that hauler just visited.” Jem agreed, punching in his own drink. 

“The Axelson station boss told us where the hauler had just come from, Jem.” She turned to face the other pilot for the first time. “It was in the briefing, remember?” 

“Was it?” Jem, like most mercenary pilots, took pride in his ability to tune out briefings and still get the job done. 

“Sure was. Their last stop was the planet you want to retire to, after this is over.” 

“Damn.” Jem’s drink arrived, and this time he downed it without noticing the odor. “Now I remember. They’d come from Håkøya.”

Details

Tales from the Service: The Siege of Berkant

2947-09-17 – Tales from the Service: The Siege of Berkant 

I was expecting Saint-Lô to travel for many days before emerging at the edge of a destination system, but we made only three jumps – twenty-two hours total travel time. This being the case, and seeing that we were within only a few light-minutes of the local HyperCast relay station, I hurriedly cancelled the automatic-post story I’d prepared for our time in the dark. With the captain’s permission, I spent some time sitting as an observer in the Combat Information Center. 

The fact that the relay is still active is strange, but I’m not about to miss the opportunity to do what I came aboard this ship to do – namely, cover the war effort. You would think that an aggressor planning to stay in-system for a sustained assault would slag the thing to prevent Fifth Fleet high command from gaining intelligence about their actions in the clear, but the Incarnation left it alone for at least two full days. 

As the title of this feed item implies, our short trip took us to Berkant, a rather underpopulated but biologically fertile Frontier world which has graced this feed before, most notably as the site of several stories about Faye and Junia (not real names) and their odd xenosapient friend Sapphire. 

Captain Liao watched as the system resolved in his combat information center’s room-scale holo-display. In the middle, directly above the floor projector lens, the system’s white-dwarf primary shone brighter than the overhead lighting, with the faint dotted lines of the three planets’ orbits extending halfway to the outer walls of the vast compartment. The first planet of the system was a “hot Jupiter” hell-sphere of tortured clouds and burning cyclones, and the third a frozen ice-ball in a steeply elliptical orbit, but the second – the world Berkant from which the system derived its name – carried life, including two million citizens of the Confederated Worlds. 

Reports were still coming in from the situation around the life-bearing world, but Liao already could see the outlines of the situation. Sparkling shards of debris in three distinct rings had been identified around the planet, and he knew better than to hope that even one of them was the result of disaster befalling one of the five Tyrant cruisers which had been reported in the system. Other than a single aging destroyer and a mercenary strike carrier, Berkant had been defenseless when the Incarnation had showed up with plans to stay. 

“We are in contact with groundside system authority.” The comms chief’s voice carried into CIC though she was two hundred meters away at the forward communications annex. “Transmission delay, twenty-nine minutes one way. They confirm that Olvir Zdrakov was destroyed in orbit after a short exchange. The merc carrier launched its birds and then left orbit. They lost tracking on its drive signature a few hours later.” 

“Thank you, Commander.” Liao watched the hashed-blue “unknown” symbols on the asset board to his left switch to black. The two garrison ships were of dubious value to his force in any case, but the loss of perhaps one hundred twenty brave spacers still stung. “Sensors, where is Nate?” 

The sensor-systems chief had no answers, but he did his best. “Still putting the pieces together, Captain. Wherever they are, their drives are not burning.” 

Five cruisers – Nate's biggest attack force to date – didn't just vanish, and Liao knew they hadn’t had time since last being spotted in planetary orbit to reach the hyper limit. “Probably hiding in those debris rings. Any idea what those were?” 

“Planetside data payload reports them as Zdrakov, their main orbital station, and a hauler who had a very bad day. Most of the lesser infrastructure is still intact.” 

One hundred twenty was likely an underestimate as to the losses, then. Liao shook his head; the hauler and station had been defenseless. There had been no reason for the Incarnation cruisers to fire on them. “Time to planetary orbit?” 

“Fifty hours at full acceleration.” The navigator’s course already glowed on the display. 

Liao set his jaw and stared at the board, wondering where he’d put his ships, if he were in command of five fast, well-armed but poorly protected heavy cruisers. Without the sensor arrays on the station, the groundside spaceport couldn’t track the invaders – the enemy had almost thirty hours of free maneuver time during which the colonists on Berkant could detect their drive signatures, but not pinpoint their locations. Thirty hours was a long time; time enough for Nate to pick off every piece of orbital hardware, if destruction was their objective. 

“Re-entry fires on the planet.” The sensors station reported crisply. “Big chunks of the station, most likely.” 

Liao got the sense he was being watched, and not by the odd little datacast reporter shadowing him for the Berkant operation. “All ships, fit gunships for a system sweep and launch when ready.” Using the force’s fifty-odd strike gunships – a mix of Magpies and older Jackdaws – to sweep the system would reduce his offensive power, but he preferred to find the enemy before they got in close. Anyone who’d seen the intelligence reports about Incanration Tyrant cruisers knew they were apparently kittens in long-range slugfests, but fearsome combatants if their shorter-ranged energy weapons could be used up close. 

“Contact!” The defense-gunnery officer’s voice accompanied a new symbol on the board. “A flight of Coronachs just hot-started two thousand klicks ahead of Safira Sharma.” 

In the vastness of even a small planetary system like Berkant, two thousand kilometers was far closer than Liao was comfortable with. If the Tyrants had appeared at that range, the lead cruiser probably would never have known what hit it. 

“They knew we’d be coming from Maribel. Probably set them across all the probable inbound vectors in case we tried a cold approach.” Liao watched the symbols boost away on a perpendicular vector. Their pilots knew only too well that the vast force would never detach a fast warship to chase four little strike interceptors, and that Magpie gunships had no hope of catching them. “With any luck, Nate has his strike elements scattered all over the system.” Even as he said it, he knew better. Incarnation ships carried vast quantities of the tiny, agile Coronachs, each piloted by a cybernetically-tweaked counterhuman literally optimized for the job. Their commander would never disperse a significant percentage of that force on picket duty just before a battle. 

“Telescopes just made one Tyrant on station at the planetary L3.” The sensors officer almost crowed his success as the red symbol appeared on the board. 

Liao frowned. He’d just concluded that the enemy would be crazy to disperse his force. Why would one of the five cruisers operate by itself? “Just one?” 

“Confirmed, Captain. One Tyrant at Berkant Lagrange Three.” 

Captain Liao frowned. The lone cruiser was one of two things – it was either bait for a trap, or it was a challenge. Of the two, his bet was on it being a challenge. “Ignore the ship at L3. Course to planetary orbit.” 

Challenge or bait, Saint-Lô and her squadron would not be able to accept either for at least thirty hours. “Maintain alert status, but rotate crews every four hours. This is going to be a long haul.” 

Details

Tales from the Service: Source Gabriel

2947-09-10 – Tales from the Service: Source Gabriel 

As some of you may know from my personal datasphere hub, a cousin of mine (the very cousin who first introduced me to Cosmic Background when I was still a student) was a crew tech aboard Reiter’s Kite, which went missing during a Silver Strand border patrol two weeks ago, and is as of yesterday presumed lost with all hands. 

Reiter’s Kite is the largest of several ships damaged or lost in the last month, as most of you well know, and my mourning is hardly unique or special. The Ladeonist insurgents attacking Navy patrols in the Strand sector have claimed the lives of almost one thousand Navy service personnel, though the Navy is giving at least as good as it’s getting in what many see as a secondary theater of the Frontier War. Unfortunately, this is not the case; Ladeonist terrorists, pirates, Rattanai imperialists, and other dangerous elements keep elements of two fleets almost constantly busy on the borders of the Reach, even in peace-time. Likely the Hegemony has a comparable amount of its navy assigned to this sort of duty on its own borders. 

I remind you all of this only to remind this audience that my extended family’s grief is neither special nor unique. I will not be taking time off covering the conflict to travel back to the Core Worlds for the memorial service, and do not wish this feed or its social media presence to focus on my (or any) personal tragedy. 

This week, we have another account provided by a semi-cooperative prisoner of war, this one housed here at Maribel in the prison ship Vibiana Kobe. While no Cosmic Background staff have talked with him, Nojus followed up with the source, a Naval Intelligence junior officer whose name we must unfortunately redact from this feed, who provided audio recordings of the interview from which it is drawn. The prisoner in question is known in Intelligence records only as Source Gabriel, and we will use his code-name here rather than his real name. Source Gabriel was captured by a mercenary outfit which engaged the enemy at Bitterweald, and he has given the Navy a large body of useful intelligence, including data about the capabilities of the Coronach strike interceptor used heavily by the Incarnation. 

The Coronach is the same interceptor which has been in this feed repeatedly misidentified as a drone; these tiny one-seat war-launches are far more maneuverable than the Navy’s workhorse Magpie gunship, but they are exceedingly fragile and carry only short-range energy cannons. 

His revelations about the hierarchy of the Incarnation’s military and their use of counterhuman tech to enhance their warfighting abilities, though general, has also been most helpful. For my part, I’m just happy he provided their names for some of their machines and systems; it makes my job a lot easier. 

He also gave some insight into the mindset of the foe; I must say it bears considerable resemblance to the beliefs of Ladeonism, at least as it first appeared shortly before the Terran-Rattanai War. 

Gabriel stood at attention next to his Coronach as Flight Leader Yasin conferred with the woman in red. According to the briefing-pulse, two pathetic strike carriers – converted haulers, really – were the only enemy force in the system, and the captain intended to wipe out both carriers while his own squadrons tore the defenders to pieces. 

Something had changed, however, and a new briefing-pulse had not been issued. As the eleven pilots watched Yasin stand motionless in the middle of the flight deck with the newcomer’s silver-traceried hand resting lightly on his temple, uneasy messages flickered invisibly on laser-link between one and the next. They had all seen the woman in red at least once before, and all found themselves unable to learn anything about her on the ship’s datasphere. The cruiser’s computer told them all that she did not exist, but she appeared with the captain often enough that her presence was certainly authorized. Even now, she stood in the launch hangar, in full view of perhaps a hundred security data monitors, without fear. 

Among the laser-linked messages crossing the hangar-deck, one meant for Gabriel struck his implants’ photosensors. “She’s an Immortal.” Tashi’s voice, synthesized from a text-only missive, trickled into his auditory nerves. “Did you see those traces just appear on her hand?” 

“So is the security chief. So what?” Gabriel sent back. The Incarnation’s chosen few had once seemed a sinister rarity, but their presence aboard ship had become a constant and even comforting reality since the war had begun. A few of them supposedly even mounted up with the Coronach squadrons, though none of Gabriel’s squadron-mates could be counted among the Most Fortunate Children. 

“What if she’s a Harmonizer?” Tashi’s voice carried no particular tone when synthesized from text, but Gabriel knew his friend was worried. Where Harmonizers struck, cancers were cut out of the Incarnation’s great body, and sometimes healthy tissue around the cancer also needed to be excised. “What if there’s a traitor aboard?” 

“A traitor? On this ship?” Gabriel remained still and stony-faced, but the idea was almost humorous. Who would be so catastrophically mad as to betray the cause of preserving humanity for all time, after taking an oath to carry that cause to the ends of the very universe? And if madness so wildly aberrant manifested itself among the personnel aboard a warship, how could it go undetected by security systems? 

Tashi didn’t respond before Flight Leader Yasin, released by the woman in red, staggered backward, then saluted smartly. A second later, a supplemental briefing-pulse unpacked itself into Gabriel’s memory systems. The mission had changed, but only slightly; the flight leader would mount up in a Coronach modified by the woman in red, in which he would pursue and capture particular target among the ramshackle combat launches currently attempting to intercept the ship. The rest of the flight would need to tackle the remaining enemy ships without their leader. 

“Flight, mount up.” Yasin barked the order out loud, as was traditional, and with a barked shout as one, the other eleven pilots in the flight turned on their heels and leapt into the waiting embrace of their tiny, deadly ships. Just before the Coronach’s pressure-cabin closed around him, Gabriel caught Tashi’s eye across the flight deck, and received one final message on laser-link. “Looks like you’re the Section One lead now.” 

As the clamshell cabin sealed itself, Gabriel received another briefing-pulse, opening wide the command signaling systems for a flight leader. Normally, he wouldn’t be field-promoted to flight leader unless Yasin was dead; this was a unique situation and a big responsibility. He had to make sure Tashi and Azurra made it out alive, because he would be answerable to Yasin if he lost any of them. It would be better, he knew, not to return at all, than to return without Tashi and Azurra. 

As the interceptor powered up, its hardlink connectors fixed themselves to his neckline implant jacks. In an instant, the pure darkness and silence of the cockpit suddenly vanished, replaced by the lights and sounds of the hangar outside. Instead of hands and feet, Gabriel felt the steady hum of the drive and the reassuring strength of the twin plasma lances. 

All around him, the other Coronachs, each clearly labeled in his camera-vision with its pilot, warmed up and tested their control interfaces. The last few tech-rigs trundled away, and Gabriel saw the modified Coronach just being hauled out of its enclosure. Its twin plasma lances were gone, replaced by the ill-fitting apparatus of a gravitic net. At a nod from the woman in red, Flight Leader Yasin climbed inside. 

“There are sixteen enemy strike ships, and eleven of us." Azurra observed over the Section One combat interlink. “What do you think about those odds?” 

Gabriel smiled, the sensations of tensing cheek-muscles clashing strangely with the feedback sensations of the Coronach’s systems. “These hired mercenaries are always weak. Make it fifty, then maybe we should worry.” 

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