The Last Frontier
by: Marina Twelve and Thomas R.

 

Retribution part V

 

"Preparing to fire Quell!" A deep vibration rumbled through the ship. It rose in frequency and soon settled into a sustained whine.

Leslie pressed the red, "Quell discharge" button.

With a mighty THWUMP! A bright flash of blue shot out of the tube.

"Impact in two seconds!" Leslie shouted.

Nothing.

"Melissa, double check the range of that. . . "

For an instant, a blue fireball as large as a sun lit up the entire quadrant of the sky.

"Fields up! FIELDS UP NOW!" Zee Screamed over the com!

"SHIT!" said Leslie as she saw the THOUSANDS irregular black shapes silhouetted against the light and rapidly growing bigger.

Leslie engaged the Deflector fields without a second to spare.

The shock wave along with tons of rock fragments and planetary debris smashed into the ship. Fortunately, the deflection field protected the hull, but the ship was carried and tumbled along with the debris hundreds of clicks down range.

"What did I tell ya, Ash?" Commented Doc, as soon as Leslie managed to wrestle the ship into a stable position. " We’re lucky to be alive!."

"What the hell happened, Melissa?" Leslie exclaimed.

Melissa checked the televiewer screen. "Based on the timing of the impact, we obviously missed the target."

"We sure as hell hit SOMETHING!" Leslie shot back.--- "Oh Lord! There are no inhabited planets out there, are there?"

"Fortunately, not" Melissa replied. She looked into the televiewer again. "It seems that the planetoid, Aphria twelve no longer exists."

"Shit! How did THAT happen?"

"The aiming grid crosshairs are off in the X axis by point three five five degrees. I am making the correction"

"Are we going to get rocked like that every time we use the Quell? Leslie asked.

"Not if we carefully choose our targets. The explosion will be proportional to the mass of the object destroyed. Aphria Twelve was a fairly large object. Lucky for us, it was nearly twice as far downrange than our intended target."

Leslie cursed under her breath. "I suppose the Confederation Science Union will be looking into this. Will there be any evidence of our involvement?"

"No" said Melissa, "It will probably be written off as an asteroid collision or something of the like."

"Nevertheless," said Leslie, "we won’t be able to stay in this system much longer. If they find out we have a functional Quell, they could easily put two and two together."

The Final test would be of the "Jump Engines", perhaps the most important aspect of an interstellar craft.

Although Bill had rode in a passenger ship (for the first time) to get to the Salvage yard and the ship had to make several "jumps", this is the first time he was about to see how it was done. He was very curious. Leslie gave him a short briefing.

"Even traveling at the speed of light, it could take years just to reach the nearest stars, were it not for "Space Jump" technology" She began.

"What we perceive as "Space", or the separation between two objects or particles, however, is somewhat of an illusion. At ultimate reality levels, everything occupies the SAME space—or Singularity point. Distance or the "space" between two objects in two different places is merely the way WE, as observers, PERCEIVE certain ‘ATTRUBUTES’ of particles.

The idea was puzzling to the young man. "Attributes?"

"Yes", Leslie replied "sub atomic particles have certain wave characteristics, such as frequency, polarization, axis angles and the like. These are called the "attributes" of the particle. They determine how the observer perceives the particle.

Let’s take an apple, for example. Its skin has an attribute that reflects EM radiation of a certain frequency. We PERCEIVE that effect not as a frequency but by "seeing" the color red."

"The attributes of particles work the same way. Depending on frequencies of waves, for example, we may see the particle with a positive or negative charge, or we may see the particle as a quark or a gluon. There are even attributes that make us perceive the particle as being ‘real’ or ‘virtual’. Believe it or not, it is the wave attributes that make us perceive the particle as being located in certain co-ordinates of space."

"By suddenly directing vast amounts of energy along precise vector angles, in the vicinity of the ship, we can change the spatial attributes of the particles of a small area containing the ship to match that of another place in the universe. And thus actually BE in that space."

"Sounds almost like magic" Bill commented.

"Who knows, perhaps that’s where the concept originated." Leslie replied.

Leslie continued. "How far we jump, is limited by how much power the ship can generate and hold in the "Jump capacitors", which store the energy needed for the jump. It can take several minutes to recharge the system, before we can jump again. The big Transports sometimes take hours to recharge. We need to put in an X, Y and Z coordinate that determines where in space we will reappear."

"But how do you keep from materializing inside a star or planet, or something." Bill asked. "Seems a bit risky to me."

"Yes, blind jumps ARE risky, but fortunately, stars and planets fill up a very small portion of space, the odds are in the jumper’s favor. We Do keep a log of "safe Jumps" however, well away from Stars and such objects, not to mention the traffic of other ships. The reaction engines are then used to go on to the final objective."

"All right Bainbridge!" Leslie called into the com mike. "Lets try a one parsec jump to the co-ordinates on the screen"

"Aye Captain!" The engineer replied. "ready to execute jump on your count."

"Jump in five, four, three, two, one . . ."

The Retribution vanished in a flash of blue light and reappeared in another flash an instant later, but 3.26 light years away, one parsec, in interstellar space.

Leslie checked the local co-ordinates, and was satisfied. They jumped back to the Alphran system and returned to base.

 

The next three weeks were spent taking the ship on test flights in the local vicinity and making adjustments, repairs and modifications that Leslie deemed necessary for the mission.

Doctor Havelock’s Medical equipment had also arrived.

There was a case of instruments, and examination and operating table, a monitoring machine, and a peculiar box that looked like a metal coffin.

Leslie asked about the box’s function. The dead were always "buried in space".

Doc explained. "It’s a stasis chamber, an offshoot of jump technology. If a person is injured too badly to survive for an extended duration of time, they can be put into the chamber where they are, in effect, "suspended in time" until proper medical care can be found for them.

"It would be as if the injury had just taken place, when the person is removed from the chamber. Provided we get him or her into it soon enough" Said doc. "At least it might buy ONE of us some time."

"Lets hope that we never have to use it" said Leslie.

 

Finally, the day had come. Leslie called the crew into the reception area to brief them on the first mission of the Retribution.

"The first thing we are going to do," she began, "is to hit the Syndicate where it really hurts. Their primary source of income comes from a gold and heavy mineral mining operation. The surviving members of my Proteus crew are said to be enslaved there. It’s location is unknown, but we are going to find it. WHEN we find it, we will rescue the slaves and then put the entire operation permanently out of business."

"Begging the Captain’s pardon," Doc interrupted, "but there are only SIX of us and our one small ship. Such an important site is bound to be well protected, even if we do manage to find it."

"Secret locations, more often than not, are usually lightly defended." Leslie replied. "So long as nobody knows where we are going, we should have few problems."

"I hope you are not depending upon ME to find the mine for you Leslie." Zee spoke. "I would need an object from the mine itself to ‘tune into’, in order to do a QC reading on it. Something we do not have."

"I have thought about that", said Leslie "Our plan will be to draw out and coerce a Syndicate Ship to turn over its computer log records and databases. Hopefully, we should be able to find what we are looking for when the files are analyzed."

 

"Yes, it WAS too bad about Captain Thorn." Thought Leslie as she lay back in her chair savoring the kill and reviewing the memories that had led up to this moment.

His end was too quick. She would have personally wanted to castrate him, but that would not have been a practical proposition. The best she could have hoped for was to have disemboweled his ship with the one point five and them let him slowly die as it drifted in space, but She knew that was only wishful thinking. The poor fool had panicked, forcing her to use the Quell.

Something different had to be tried next time. The threat of the Retribution wasn’t obvious enough.

"When you have a man dead to rights and staring down the barrel of your ‘greener’, it still does you no good if he doesn’t know it." Leslie observed.

If Thorn had realized that he had been looking into the mouth of death, before he foolishly trained his weapons on her ship, he might still be talking to Leslie right now, instead of floating about in a mist of leptons.

"In THIS case, Melissa, your ‘female’ approach to combat, turned out to be a bit TOO effective." said Leslie. "We certainly did attract them, but were forced into the kill."

"The approach was flawed, Leslie. Remember what I said about the display of weapons. He DID recognize the threat of the one point five and stayed out of its range, he kept his defenses up, and did not come in close enough. You HAD to use the primary weapon on him then, you had no choice."

"Well, we can’t hide the weapons, but we can change tactics. WE will have to move in closer ourselves next time." Said Leslie.

"You should take the offensive immediately. Catch them before they can react." Said Melissa.

"You mean get the drop on them?"

"You could say it like that. It is the approach an obviously armed female would take."

"But we have to flush out another one. Leslie commented. "Thorn’s was the only enforcer ship in this district."

"When Thorn doesn’t report in, they will be sending another ship out to find him. We can ambush it."

"Or they might send a fleet." Leslie Countered. "We likely cannot take on more than two ships at a time. I’m calling ZEE."

"Biotel, do you see any other ships?"

Zee adjusted her "random Field screen" and saw something. "Two Raiders bearing sixty seven on one seven five. Range, five point one two five parsecs at one twenty one on forty six.

"Not an enforcer, but better than nothing, "Leslie remarked. "Bainbridge! Can we do a five parsec jump?"

"Sure," the engineer replied, "Send me the cords."

Leslie typed the co-ordinates into the com system. "Bill! Ready on the one point five. Destroy the nearest ship! Doc! Get on the turrets! Prepare to disable the other raider!"

"Ready for jump in five, four, three, two, one . . ."

Retribution vanished in a blue flash of light and immediately re-appeared in a similar flash, not five hundred meters from the nearer of the two raiders.

Bill wasted no time. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!, five shots from the big one point five shattered the hull of the first raider. Doc’s point fives simultaneously raked the port side of the other ship. It was rocked by several internal explosions. The remaining Raider wasn’t going anywhere.

Webber hailed the ship. This time, she did not put her image on the screen.

"Are you insane!" replied the captain of the raider. "Don’t you know who we are?"

"I know very well who you are. If you want to live you WILL open your com channel and download all of your computer records. . . NOW!"

"What kind of a heist IS this?" the raider captain growled.

Leslie didn’t answer. The steering thrusters rotated the Retribution and its one point five meter photon cannon to a point blank firing position.

The data download immediately began.

Melissa casually walked over to the firing console. Like everyone else, Bill didn’t notice. He was glued to his com screen, monitoring the download.

"Download Complete," Leslie announced. "Bainbridge prepare us for another jump. I am sending you the co-ordinates."

Suddenly, the one point five roared to life! The recoil shook the ship. The crippled raider was immediately eviscerated by the blast.

"What the F . . . !" Leslie exclaimed. "Bill! I gave no order to fire!"

"It wasn’t me Captain." The young man replied.

The first officer was standing at the console. "The ship HAD to be destroyed, Captain." Said Melissa. "It was apparent that YOU were just going to leave them there."

"Of course! They gave us what we wanted. There was no need to kill them. Shooting a co-operative victim after the robbery would make us look as bad as our adversaries."

"Yes," Melissa retorted, "I suppose that what remains of your masculine ego also wanted to leave witnesses to your fighting prowess."

Melissa leaned closer. "In THIS game we MUST be just as treacherous as our enemies. They have NO scruples, follow no rules. Indeed, as a small group, with few advantages, WE must be even MORE ruthless."

Leslie was beginning to really see what Melissa had become. It wasn’t pretty.

"Once they told the Syndicate that we had taken their computer records, changes would be made, the data would be useless to us. The Syndicate would also know that someone flying a ship fitting our description was up to something. They would be on alert. At this stage of the game, we cannot afford to leave ANY witnesses."

Leslie, though unnerved, had to concur. Melissa was right----THIS time. But it disturbed her that SHE had taken the initiative and had not consulted with her first.

"What would happen if there was a true difference in opinion?" Leslie pondered. "Who would prevail? What would become of the command structure?"

Leslie straightened up and addressed first officer. "Commander Conner! I will overlook this incident, but in the future, as captain of this ship, I hereby order you to consult with me before taking any action on your own. IS THAT CLEAR"

"Understood Captain!"

Leslie hoped that she could trust her first officer to keep her word, but she could not really be sure. Was Melissa’s first loyalty to her Captain or to her own logic? "Perhaps Dr. Gorsham was right about her after all. Melissa DID have the potential to be dangerous."

Minutes later, Retribution jumped again to a safer, more remote location, far from where any Syndicate ships looking for the missing Thorn and the raiders might be encountered. There, Leslie directed all hands to scan the raider’s records in hopes of finding clues to the mining colony location.

"Why couldn’t we have just asked them to tell us where it is?" complained Bill.

"Use your head son," Replied the Doc. "If we did THAT, then the Syndicate would have known where we were headed. Besides, they would have lied to us anyway."

"Anybody find anything interesting yet?" Leslie asked.

"Its only the Raider database. " Melissa replied "I see the cargo and transporter routes and schedules, the Raider bases and positions of individual ships, but there is nothing here that seems to indicate the position of the mining colony."

"I figured as much, " Sighed Leslie. "The raiders have little or nothing to do with the mine operations. We are going to have to catch another enforcer."

"Captain," Zee reported, I have located one Enforcer near the Antarian boundary. Co-ordinates to follow."

"That will be a three Parsec jump from here, " Leslie calculated. "Bainbridge have the jump capacitors recharged?"

"We can do three parsecs, Captain!"

"Cords entered!" Said Leslie. Bill! Aim for the fire control and reaction engine coils. We want to disable, not destroy the ship." She took a quick sidelong glance at Melissa. They made eye contact.

"Aye Captain!" Replied Bill.

"Jump in five, four, three, two, one . . .

 

The enforcer looked fifty clicks away.

BAM! BAM! The one point Five fired twice. The charges were absorbed by the enforcer’s force shields.

"Shit! He’s got his fields up!" how did he know we were coming? Asked Bill.

The enforcer fired two point five volleys that passed just over the Retribution.

Leslie engaged the deflectors, just before the ship was hit by three hard impacts--- from BEHIND!

"What the F . . .!" For a second Leslie feared that she had flown into a trap. Rear sensors showed something else--- Even worse!

"HOLY SHIT!" she realized, as she saw HUNDREDS of small , bat shaped ships closing in. "REPS!"

The Enforcer ignored the Retribution as it pounded away at the attacking "Reptoid" fleet.

The Captain of the "Enforcer Three" appeared on Leslie’s com screen. She recognized him as one of the participants in the "unpleasantness" when Konstantin had captured her.

"Are you just going to sit there?" The man shouted. "They will destroy us BOTH!"

Leslie swung her ship around, facing the swarm of alien craft that was attempting to blast apart both Terran vessels.

Doc swung the point five turrets around and began to fire, Picking off the small unshielded REP ships one by one.

The Enforcer continued to fire all five of its weapons into the attackers. More and more REPs succumbed, but even more were still coming!

It was like trying to shoot at bats flying out of a cave. In this case, it was the darkness of space.

Their weapons carried the impact of point threes, enough to do real damage, but easily deflected or absorbed by most Terran force shielding systems. Still, the massed effect of the weapons could wear the defenses down, and many a Terran ship was eventually blasted apart by the relentless pounding.

Bill’s one point five was less effective than the smaller, rotatable guns. He could not maneuver the craft with the aiming jets quickly enough. A few shots did, however, hit their mark.

"Why don’t we Jump out of here/" Bill Yelled.

"Not until the Jump Capacitors recharge!" Leslie Replied. "The Enforcer appears to be in the same fix we are."

"You better do something FAST." said Zee, over the com system. "I’ve got three huge Reptoid battle cruisers approaching at three three six on eighty five degrees.

"They are still far enough away to hit with the Quell", Leslie thought. Leslie also knew that as soon as the REP threat was eliminated, she would have to deal with the enforcer. She had an idea.

"Captain!" she hailed the enforcer. " Check your long range sensors at three three six. Do you see what’s coming?"

"SHIT!" was the reply.

"I propose we concentrate out firepower in that direction. We will try to take out the lead ship as soon as it comes into your point five range."

"I concur! I will inform you when to fire." The Enforcer Captain replied."

Leslie maneuvered the Retribution closer to the enforcer. They aligned their orientation so that their weapons would be concentrated in the direction of the approaching battle cruisers.

Leslie moved in still closer to the larger ship, but keeping the one point five pointed away, towards the alien threat.

Leslie explained her next maneuver to Bill, in written text on his com screen. He signaled back that he understood.

"Bainbridge! Engage the Quell. Give us a five degree spread."

The Quell powered up.

This was it. They only had one shot. The smaller REP ships still buzzed around like predatory flies. Preparing the way for the larger craft.

Leslie pressed the Quell discharge button!

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of the small rep ships evaporated nearly instantly, looking like flashbulbs in the distance. One, Two, Three huge fireballs erupted in an overlapping explosion that lit up half the sky!"

The shock wave quickly reached the two Terran ships. Leslie had slightly adjusted the attitude of the retribution. The impact of wave swung the craft to a near vertical position.

BAM! Bill fired the one point five directly into the belly of the Enforcer. At that close range, the round had cut through their force shielding and

punched through the hull.

It’s Captain and crew never saw it coming. They had been awestruck by the unexpected destruction of the Reptoid fleet and distracted by the fireworks.

Leslie quickly recovered attitude and swung back towards the Enforcer.

She hailed the Captain.

No response.

Something was wrong.

The large craft slowly rolled over, propelled by a bluish looking jet of gas escaping from the large hole in the hull’s bottom.

"Any Life signs Zee?" Leslie asked.

"None. I fear that we de-pressurized the hull and destroyed the life support system."

"WOW, Talk about your lucky shots," said Bill, proud of himself.

"Shit! Now we are going to have to go over there and download the computers ourselves." Leslie replied. "Deploy the spider!"

The hollow, articulated arm swung out from beneath the belly of the Retribution. The ‘X’ shaped Hydraulic ram array at the end of the arm, dug its four metal claws into the side of the Enforcer’s hull, locking the two ships together.

The "Beak", in the center of the ‘X’ drove itself through the hull, pealing back the plates on the inside, like the petals of a flower, as its four segments opened up. Thus revealing a hole into the spider’s arm which now served as a passageway between the two ships.

Leslie, Melissa, and Bainbridge clamped the squarish looking, transparent helmets with the attached oxygen generators to their pressure suits.

The black "capistan tubes", running along their arms, legs and the sides of their bodies, inflated slightly, tightening the fit of the pressure suits even more.

They walked down the arm of the ‘Spider’ single file, and emerged into the bridge area of the Enforcer ship.

It was a horrific sight! The deck was slippery with the blood that had oozed out of the eyes, mouths and ears of the bodies of the crew who now lay in contorted positions on the floor.

Bainbridge looked as if he were going to be sick.

"You have a job to do Bainbridge!," ordered Leslie "Do IT!"

Bainbridge swallowed. He straightened up and plugged a small, silvery card into the computer console slot and began the download.

Meanwhile, Leslie walked over to the Captain’s body.

She removed his black, leather wide-brimmed hat. She looked down and saw something else. It was a GOLD nugget, suspended from a leather cord tied around his neck. She snatched it off and dropped it into the hat.

Bainbridge signaled that he had completed the download. He was afraid to speak, as he was barely in control of his body’s reflexive response to the sights around him. It was the first time that Leslie had ever seen a black man turn green.

 

Back aboard the Retribution, Leslie tossed the gold nugget to ZEE. "See what you can tell me about this."

Leslie then looked at the hat, seeing that it appeared to be about the right size, she put it on. Seeing herself in a view screen, she liked the way it looked.

"A souvenir?" Asked Melissa, "or a Trophy?"

"A little of both." Leslie replied.

Bainbridge looked a little better now. He downloaded the data into Retribution’s own system.

"BINGO!" He said as he pointed at the main com screen. "Look here. These are the routes of the ore transport ships. Apparently, they refine the gold from the ore on planets in other star systems. That way they minimize industrial activity at the mine colony that might attract unwanted attention."

"All of these flights originate in an unnamed star system, just beyond the Simeran limit." Melissa observed.

Melissa examined a couple of more data screens. "The Syndicate calls the star "Axel" The mine is on the larger

moon of the second planet, which would be Axel two."

"Lets see what Zee has to say." Said Leslie.

"You are correct, Leslie" Said Zee. "The Nugget comes from the moon of Axel two, But not from the mine itself. Apparently its former owner found it on the surface and kept it as an item of personal jewelry. He had been stationed on the moon and helped man the outer defensive perimeter of the colony."

"Unfortunately," Zee continued, "He had never been to the mine or it’s immediate vicinity. So I cannot tell you what to expect inside the outer perimeter."

"We are going to have to plan as we go along." Leslie observed. "Can we reach the moon undetected?"

"If we approach from the side that faces away from the planet. There ARE automated sensing stations on that side of the moon too, but they are spread out rather thinly. There are a few narrow gaps in their coverage. We will have to jump in fairly close to the moon itself, in between two distant stations, and follow the narrow corridor between the coverage zones to the surface."

"But that will put us thousands of clicks away from the mine area!" Leslie complained.

"Perhaps when we get a few jumps closer, I might be able to see more." said Zee. "Like you said, we will have to plan as we go along. I can guarantee nothing."

"Melissa, how many jumps will it take to get us in the vicinity of the Axel system.?" Leslie asked.

"At least four." The First officer replied.

"OK then, plot us a course. Let me know when you are ready."

Leslie took one last look at the stricken Enforcer ship, in the view screen. There was no need to finish the job. Again there were no surviving witnesses. Anyone coming across the wreckage would also note the debris from the destroyed REP ships and assume the obvious. Perhaps the crew would be declared as heroes.

The hat on her head was a trophy and symbol of the victory over at least one of her assailants. So far everything was progressing smoothly.

 

END OF PART 5

 

 

 

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© 2001 by Marina Twelve. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, compilation design) may printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without express written consent of the copyright holder.