The Warbler reemerged from its fold, and Isabella breathed a sigh of relief. The debris hadn’t been consistent with what she’d expect if the gunboat had been destroyed in the battle, but her Starfighter didn’t have any real sensors package.
She reached across the cockpit, keying the main engine back online. The last model of starfighter that had seem large production numbers had been the Tachyon-C, twenty years ago. The MSSF she flew now had been completely designed from the ground up in the space of less than two years to be able to act as an R-bomb delivery platform, and they were still ironing out the fine details—or rather, they had been.
She reached across the cockpit, keying the main engine back online. The last model of starfighter that had seem large production numbers had been the Tachyon-C, twenty years ago. The MSSF she flew now had been completely designed from the ground up in the space of less than two years to be able to act as an R-bomb delivery platform, and they were still ironing out the fine details—or rather, they had been.
Isabella had flown drones before, and flying the MSSF wasn’t that different—it was just more intense. The g-forces a pilot experienced were diminished in a Console, and there was more space. It was easier to stay level-headed when one was safe aboard a massive Carrier then when one was buzzing the side of a Capital Ship in a capsule less than thirty feet long.
There really was, under normal circumstances, any good reason to risk pilots like that.
The static on the radio picked up slightly, and Isabella could swear that she could hear words. Shan had been right about one thing—that Fold had given them a ridiculous amount of delta-v. Isa knew that Red was probably already in control of the situation and turning the ship around, but it was still not amusing to be in the cockpit for a yet longer period of time.
She idly wondered how much temporal dilation the Warbler had experienced due to folding that close to an R-bomb detonation, then realized that it was entirely possible that the little ship had experienced decades or centuries of dilation, leaving it flying off to the edge of the universe, leaving her stuck in a prototype starfighter with no Ansible and no way to contact anyone.
Her radio crackled again, and she could make out the voice this time, faint and scratchy. That was a major downside of the MSSF—all its communications were, by necessity, affected by speed-of-light delays, and used actual radio waves.
“UTFS Warbler to unidentified starfighter in the blind, we are picking up your position via FTL scan.” The person at the other end of the line followed with a set of bearings, velocities, and coordinates, which, once Isa plugged them into the MSSF’s computer, indicated that the ship was well outside the range she could even hope for her fighter’s comms to be able to cover. The MSSF had a top-of-the-line radio transmission suite of course, but there was only so much you could do with technology that had been ancient well before anyone even knew what the Ansible Field was.
She glanced back to the life support display. The MSSF was supposed to support a pilot for up to three days, complete with food. She could get out of the chair and move around in the null gravity, to access a small head and set of cabinets, but both were unpleasant to use. None of that mattered anyway, because it had been launched totally unprepared—they hadn’t been prepped for long-duration flight when the Fata Morgana had been attacked, and she hadn’t exactly had time to do the full pre-flight routine. The ship did have onboard air recycling, so she wasn’t in any immediate danger.
She rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well in days, since the attack on the Fata. Somehow hiding in the bridge hadn’t exactly been particularly comfortable. The MSSF was built to accommodate a sleeping pilot though, so she lay the seat back—it reclined an absolutely luxurious fifteen degrees. She made a mental note to never get into an MSSF again.
She wondered what it had been like for Red, being modified like he or she or it was, to be that close to the detonation of an R-bomb like that. Isa realized, in the back of her mind, that this was inadvertently becoming one of those days when she asked questions about Agent Red, an activity that had never yielded anything good in the past. She had seen the forbidden experiments in human genetic and cybernetic modification that had taken place deep beneath the sands of the Arabian Desert, in the facility known as ‘Blackacre’. She had read the files on her grandfather, Jafan, and the experiments that he had had—fully synthesized sentients. Quentin Mers and his brothers had eventually killed Jafan, and at least one of them had escaped. It was supposedly still out there, but the stories devolved into ghost stories about a planet named Rama where dead flesh walked and it rained blood.
Honestly, the real truth of Blackacre had been more disturbing than any ghost story. Sheila Hazzard, Isa’s mother, had always been a kind, wonderful mother—and an effective researcher and businesswoman. Isa had loved that about her, her ability to separate her family from the facts of life. The experimentation that had gone down at Blackacre, the twisting of human life... It had been well-intentioned, even if the fact that the previous generation of the Republic’s leadership had been obsessed with some unhealthy and ineffective military ideas.
They had always been behind the times, at least, ever since the end of the Xon War. It had taken Killian Hazzard ten years to begin assembling the Tactical Services, and it had taken her father another five to finally authorize them. She had had to fight to get them to produce the MSSF as an R-bomb delivery vehicle, even as Riya Dare had insisted that they use drones. Riya, Julian, and Killian had seen the changes that drones had made to the strategic landscape, and were unable to see that, even as times had changed to favor the drone over the starfighter decades ago, there might be a use for manned fighters now.
Eventually though, her father had signed off on both ‘Auk’ and ‘Skua’, giving both the MSSF, or Manned Space Superiority Fighter, and the FAWEKV, or Fully Autonomous Warhead-Equipped Kill Vehicle, the funds necessary to proceed. While Isabella had grudgingly had to admit that the Drone half of the project had eventually turned out something useful, the MSSF had been the clearly superior in all early tests. In a supreme act of treachery, Riya and Killian had conspired against the MSSF, cutting the three-hundred fighters that should have been built in the years before Tantaline down to exactly sixteen—not even enough to equip each Carrier Strike Group with the two-squadron minimum that was needed to enable their mission.
That act of treachery, though, hadn’t become apparent until Sol. She had watched as Killian and Riya had stood there, gambling away the future of humanity on the bridge of the Warden. That tableau still haunted her—she supposed that that had been how Riya Dare herself had felt on the original VT Day, when she had began the coup that had lead to the founding of the Republic, assuming command of the Soleon Defense Force and Terran Confederation Fleet, providing the anvil that Julian’s Fifth Expeditionary Force had smashed the Xon against. They had assumed that they could replicate the feat against the D, using Terra- and Low-Terran-Orbit-based defenses in conjunction with the Fleet itself dominating the higher orbits to force the D between two sets of guns.
They had failed. The D had accomplished what the Xon had failed to do thirty years earlier, hitting Melbourne, New York, and Cairo with Antimatter weapons. It had been a bloodbath, and Isabella’s only compensation had been that Riya and Killian had payed with their lives.
She was shaken out of her reverie by the radio crackling again.
“-to unidentified starfighter in the blind, activate your emergency distress beacon. Repeat, UTFS Warbler to unidentified starfighter in the blind, activate your emergency distress beacon.”
Isa reached over to the covered switch that activated the beacon, and opened it. She flipped it, then entered her ID number. “Three... Eight... Seven... Six... Seven... Two...” She muttered to herself as she punched it in.
“Record Message.” The computer prompted her.
“Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. This is MSSF-3, based off of the Fata Morgana, to any receiving starship. Request immediate assistance. No imminent danger, one crewmember aboard, no injury. Propulsion and life support operational.” She closed the recording, then confirmed it—what she said was irrelevant, of course, as there wasn’t anyone else for the Warbler to hear, or anyone other than the Warbler to pick her up, but she might as well adhere to form. ‘Pan-pan’ indicated a non-life threatening emergency aboard the ship.
The meter that showed the fighter’s power consumption rose slightly, and the sound of static changed slightly.
Isabella counted off the seconds until she heard from the Warbler again. It was less than three seconds of delay, so the ship was close.
“UTFS Warbler to unidentified Starfighter in the blind, we are receiving your beacon. We acknowledge, and are moving to assist. Stand by for transfer operations. ETA thirty minutes. Distance of oh-point-two-five light-seconds.”
She flipped her radio on, following the ship’s instructions. She couldn’t identify the voice, but would have to have a talk with them later about the respect due to the First Citizen.
The orbital mechanics of two ships rendezvousing were highly counter-intuitive. The Warbler had shed several thousand miles per second via a fold, which had dropped it out at a high orbit of a nearby gas giant. This had put them just over a light-second behind the fighter, so they had dropped the ship into a lower, Tridentine-centric orbit, then burned prograde. The net effect was to put the Warbler on an actual intercept course with the fighter.
Of course, the Tactical Agent that was perpetually leaning over her shoulder, demanding to know why they were making burns that seemed the opposite of what was intended. Kim got a smug sense of satisfaction out of that—while Agents such as Red might be incredibly capable in infantry and airborne situations, their training apparently didn’t extend to the operation of starships. She assumed that, if one of the Fata Morgana’s engineers had survived that they’d have known these things, but they hadn’t.
“No, this isn’t a Hohmann Transfer.” Kim heard Ervin repeat to the Agent for what seemed like the fifth time. “A Hohmann is not just a term for the easiest way to do something—it’s a specific maneuver where you make only a pair of burns to move you between two orbits. This is not that. We just adjusted our velocity slightly to put us on an intercept.”
“And what’s that called?” The Agent asked.
“No. It’s not. It has no name, that’s like asking... It’s like asking what changing lanes in a groundcar is called. It’s just ‘changing lanes’.”
The Agent shook its head. “You seem to be competent enough.” It said. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
Kim glanced to Ervin.
“Finally.” He said after the Agent had closed the door. “I swear, if he had stayed in here for five more minutes, I would have had to throw it out.”
Kim nodded. “Just... Please don’t. I really, really can’t deal with tension between our crew and the Fata’s one.”
“Does this have anything to do with picking up the First Citizen?” Ervin asked. “And hell, why is she the one in the fighter?”
Kim sighed. “I have no idea. She shouldn’t have been, but...” Kim hesitated for a moment. “Ervin, you know I’m implanted, right?” She tapped the side of her head.
He frowned. “Cybernetically?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged. “Alright. Does this tie into anything important, or is it just a random fact?”
Now it was her turn to frown. “They’re illegal under Canon Law. It incurs automatic excommunication to be voluntarily implanted. They’re highly regulated under Republic law too. Not to mention, there’s a social stigma, due to the fact that some of the early ones had a habit of exacerbating existing or enabling the development of latent mental disorders.”
Once again, Ervin shrugged. “I’m not an Ecumenical. I couldn’t care less about what the Patriarchate has to say about what people put in their heads. The mental health risks have always been exaggerated anyway. I don’t have the chip, but I’ve got nothing against it.”
She nodded. “The thing is though... When we were departing, I swear, I heard someone in my head. Not like a ‘voice in the back of my mind’ type of way, but real, tangible. I swear this was real.” Kim was fully aware how insane she must have sounded.
Ervin raised his eyebrows. “Are you attempting to convince me that you have a mental disorder, ma’am?”
“Possibly, yes. Ervin, if I start to act irrationally... Don’t let Isabella take command of the ship.”
“Why?”
“Ervin, she’s dangerous. She’s unpredictable—one moment, she’ll be treating you like the most important person in Terran Space, and the next your life and the lives of everyone around you isn’t worth the dust on her boots. She’s not insane, Ervin. She just doesn’t care about people.”
Ervin nodded. “If I see that, ma’am, I’ll act to help stop it.”
“No. You need to promise me straight-up that she won’t ever have the command of my crew.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think I can do that. She’s the First Citizen, and has the lawful authority to issue orders to any personnel of any rank in the United Terran Republic Armed Forces.”
“Ervin, we’re still belaboring this point. Why the hell are we still acting like there’s a Republic? What’s the point? It’s gone—tens or hundreds of billions of people are dead. There is no ‘Republic’, because Terran Space now consists of the ninety-foot-long tin can that we live in now.”
“Ma’am, we agreed at the start of this mission that we were going to continue to act with military decorum, because if we don’t do that, what do we have left? If it’s the end of the universe, what do we have left other than to live by the ideals that we swore to uphold?”
“We swore to uphold the Declaration of Dissent and to support the Governance Committee of the Republic, neither of which has any real authority behind them anymore.”
“They inherently have authority because we swore to uphold them when we were commissioned as Officers. That’s what you keep ignoring here!”
“And you’ve done such a good job upholding the honor or dignity or whatever that that position is worthy of, haven’t you?” She regretted the words almost instantly, and knew they were irrelevant, but they clearly hit home.
“If we’re not still following the Regulations of the Republic, why haven’t we admitted to ourselves that we’re involved together?” He shot back.
Kim forced herself to not immediately respond. “This is escalating. It needs to end. We have operations to oversee, and we have no idea how to rendezvous properly with this starfighter. This conversation is over, and we are returning to flight ops.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Isa looked the fighter over as she strapped her helmet back on. It was surprising how quickly one got sentimental about a pointless little ship like this. She pressed a button to cycle the air out of the cockpit—leaving any sort of airlock was far, far easier when it was empty.
The MSSF wasn’t coming with the Warbler, or even docking with it. While there were solutions for attaching a MSSF to one of the new Lepidae gunboats, the Icterids didn’t even have airlocks capable of accommodating docking clamps.
That meant that Isabella was going to have to make the crossing in her spacesuit. Tactical armor was airtight and pressurized, and vacuum rated for several minutes. There was also an emergency EVA Mobility Unit in the MSSF, made to be useful with both Fleet flightsuits and Tactical armor, so, if the Warbler had gotten its trajectory right, she would be entirely capable of making the jump.
“MSSF-3 to UTFS Warbler, we are ready for transfer.”
“Copy that, MSSF-3.” There was a pause, then, “Fore and Aft airlocks both ready to be cycled. You are go for transfer.”
“Copy that.” Isa sucked in a deep breath, then ejected the canopy of the cockpit. Her HUD highlighted the Warbler for her, and helped her maneuver the Mobility Unit. The Warbler was almost a minute’s flight away, as Shan hadn’t wanted to get close to the MSSF, which was probably a good plan.
The gunboat had handholds on the exterior, which honestly surprised Isa. Tactical boats had had exterior gravity for the past five or ten years—apparently the Fleet was just that far behind the technological curve. She closed the airlock behind her, and radio’d the Warbler’s SENCOM center.
“MSSF-3 Pilot to UTFS Warbler, I am aboard.”
“Copy that, MSSF-3 Pilot. We are cycling the forward airlock now.”
A moment later, she was climbing onto the deck of the Warbler, surrounded by her Agents, several crewmembers of the Warbler, and a woman holding a red-and-white Medical Kit.
“Ensign Cassidy Freeman.” The woman said, pushing her way to Isabella. “Are you injured, to the best of your knowledge?”
Isa shook her head. “I’m not injured, Ensign.”
“Excellent. You’ll come with me then.”
“I’m fine, Ensign.” She responded, a little more forcefully this time.
“Which is wonderful, First Citizen. You’ll be coming with me to the Med Bay.” As the Ensign said that, Isabella felt a tug at her mind, much like what she knew Agent Red could do.
Isabella looked towards the Agent, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
Fascinating.
The Enhanced girl poked and prodded Isabella for a good half hour before admitting that she was, in fact, perfectly fine and fit for duty. As she was finally allowed out of the Med Bay, she noticed Kimberly Shan sitting nearby. They passed each other as Shan entered.
Ignoring the brief encounter, Isabella strode up to the Weapons Control Room, and pulled aside the Deck Officer, Maria Prussin. “May I have a moment, Deck Officer Prussin?”
Looking slightly flustered, the woman nodded. “Yes, of course First Citizen.”
“I’m going to need my starfighter destroyed. It contains classified technology that the D are not able to replicate. It is of the utmost importance that it is destroyed immediately.”
Prussin frowned. “First Citizen, I’ll comply with orders of course, but... Isn’t retention of a drone or two more valuable than denying the D some new weapon? We’ve already been wiped out.”
Isabella shook her head. “This is why we have the chain of command, Deck Officer. What you’re saying makes perfect sense to you, right now, but in the bigger picture, which I am aware of, we need that fighter destroyed.”
Prussin nodded. “Of course, First Citizen. I’ll have to check with the Captain, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Isa shook her head. “That won’t do at all. Kimberly Shan will approve it anyway, and this has to occur now. Level the MSSF, Deck Officer.”
Maria hesitated for a moment, the nodded. “Yes, First Citizen.”
Isabella smiled. The UTFS Warbler, and more importantly, its crew, would give her what she needed.
All that that was, though, was a folddrive.
There really was, under normal circumstances, any good reason to risk pilots like that.
The static on the radio picked up slightly, and Isabella could swear that she could hear words. Shan had been right about one thing—that Fold had given them a ridiculous amount of delta-v. Isa knew that Red was probably already in control of the situation and turning the ship around, but it was still not amusing to be in the cockpit for a yet longer period of time.
She idly wondered how much temporal dilation the Warbler had experienced due to folding that close to an R-bomb detonation, then realized that it was entirely possible that the little ship had experienced decades or centuries of dilation, leaving it flying off to the edge of the universe, leaving her stuck in a prototype starfighter with no Ansible and no way to contact anyone.
Her radio crackled again, and she could make out the voice this time, faint and scratchy. That was a major downside of the MSSF—all its communications were, by necessity, affected by speed-of-light delays, and used actual radio waves.
“UTFS Warbler to unidentified starfighter in the blind, we are picking up your position via FTL scan.” The person at the other end of the line followed with a set of bearings, velocities, and coordinates, which, once Isa plugged them into the MSSF’s computer, indicated that the ship was well outside the range she could even hope for her fighter’s comms to be able to cover. The MSSF had a top-of-the-line radio transmission suite of course, but there was only so much you could do with technology that had been ancient well before anyone even knew what the Ansible Field was.
She glanced back to the life support display. The MSSF was supposed to support a pilot for up to three days, complete with food. She could get out of the chair and move around in the null gravity, to access a small head and set of cabinets, but both were unpleasant to use. None of that mattered anyway, because it had been launched totally unprepared—they hadn’t been prepped for long-duration flight when the Fata Morgana had been attacked, and she hadn’t exactly had time to do the full pre-flight routine. The ship did have onboard air recycling, so she wasn’t in any immediate danger.
She rubbed her eyes. She hadn’t slept well in days, since the attack on the Fata. Somehow hiding in the bridge hadn’t exactly been particularly comfortable. The MSSF was built to accommodate a sleeping pilot though, so she lay the seat back—it reclined an absolutely luxurious fifteen degrees. She made a mental note to never get into an MSSF again.
She wondered what it had been like for Red, being modified like he or she or it was, to be that close to the detonation of an R-bomb like that. Isa realized, in the back of her mind, that this was inadvertently becoming one of those days when she asked questions about Agent Red, an activity that had never yielded anything good in the past. She had seen the forbidden experiments in human genetic and cybernetic modification that had taken place deep beneath the sands of the Arabian Desert, in the facility known as ‘Blackacre’. She had read the files on her grandfather, Jafan, and the experiments that he had had—fully synthesized sentients. Quentin Mers and his brothers had eventually killed Jafan, and at least one of them had escaped. It was supposedly still out there, but the stories devolved into ghost stories about a planet named Rama where dead flesh walked and it rained blood.
Honestly, the real truth of Blackacre had been more disturbing than any ghost story. Sheila Hazzard, Isa’s mother, had always been a kind, wonderful mother—and an effective researcher and businesswoman. Isa had loved that about her, her ability to separate her family from the facts of life. The experimentation that had gone down at Blackacre, the twisting of human life... It had been well-intentioned, even if the fact that the previous generation of the Republic’s leadership had been obsessed with some unhealthy and ineffective military ideas.
They had always been behind the times, at least, ever since the end of the Xon War. It had taken Killian Hazzard ten years to begin assembling the Tactical Services, and it had taken her father another five to finally authorize them. She had had to fight to get them to produce the MSSF as an R-bomb delivery vehicle, even as Riya Dare had insisted that they use drones. Riya, Julian, and Killian had seen the changes that drones had made to the strategic landscape, and were unable to see that, even as times had changed to favor the drone over the starfighter decades ago, there might be a use for manned fighters now.
Eventually though, her father had signed off on both ‘Auk’ and ‘Skua’, giving both the MSSF, or Manned Space Superiority Fighter, and the FAWEKV, or Fully Autonomous Warhead-Equipped Kill Vehicle, the funds necessary to proceed. While Isabella had grudgingly had to admit that the Drone half of the project had eventually turned out something useful, the MSSF had been the clearly superior in all early tests. In a supreme act of treachery, Riya and Killian had conspired against the MSSF, cutting the three-hundred fighters that should have been built in the years before Tantaline down to exactly sixteen—not even enough to equip each Carrier Strike Group with the two-squadron minimum that was needed to enable their mission.
That act of treachery, though, hadn’t become apparent until Sol. She had watched as Killian and Riya had stood there, gambling away the future of humanity on the bridge of the Warden. That tableau still haunted her—she supposed that that had been how Riya Dare herself had felt on the original VT Day, when she had began the coup that had lead to the founding of the Republic, assuming command of the Soleon Defense Force and Terran Confederation Fleet, providing the anvil that Julian’s Fifth Expeditionary Force had smashed the Xon against. They had assumed that they could replicate the feat against the D, using Terra- and Low-Terran-Orbit-based defenses in conjunction with the Fleet itself dominating the higher orbits to force the D between two sets of guns.
They had failed. The D had accomplished what the Xon had failed to do thirty years earlier, hitting Melbourne, New York, and Cairo with Antimatter weapons. It had been a bloodbath, and Isabella’s only compensation had been that Riya and Killian had payed with their lives.
She was shaken out of her reverie by the radio crackling again.
“-to unidentified starfighter in the blind, activate your emergency distress beacon. Repeat, UTFS Warbler to unidentified starfighter in the blind, activate your emergency distress beacon.”
Isa reached over to the covered switch that activated the beacon, and opened it. She flipped it, then entered her ID number. “Three... Eight... Seven... Six... Seven... Two...” She muttered to herself as she punched it in.
“Record Message.” The computer prompted her.
“Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan. This is MSSF-3, based off of the Fata Morgana, to any receiving starship. Request immediate assistance. No imminent danger, one crewmember aboard, no injury. Propulsion and life support operational.” She closed the recording, then confirmed it—what she said was irrelevant, of course, as there wasn’t anyone else for the Warbler to hear, or anyone other than the Warbler to pick her up, but she might as well adhere to form. ‘Pan-pan’ indicated a non-life threatening emergency aboard the ship.
The meter that showed the fighter’s power consumption rose slightly, and the sound of static changed slightly.
Isabella counted off the seconds until she heard from the Warbler again. It was less than three seconds of delay, so the ship was close.
“UTFS Warbler to unidentified Starfighter in the blind, we are receiving your beacon. We acknowledge, and are moving to assist. Stand by for transfer operations. ETA thirty minutes. Distance of oh-point-two-five light-seconds.”
She flipped her radio on, following the ship’s instructions. She couldn’t identify the voice, but would have to have a talk with them later about the respect due to the First Citizen.
The orbital mechanics of two ships rendezvousing were highly counter-intuitive. The Warbler had shed several thousand miles per second via a fold, which had dropped it out at a high orbit of a nearby gas giant. This had put them just over a light-second behind the fighter, so they had dropped the ship into a lower, Tridentine-centric orbit, then burned prograde. The net effect was to put the Warbler on an actual intercept course with the fighter.
Of course, the Tactical Agent that was perpetually leaning over her shoulder, demanding to know why they were making burns that seemed the opposite of what was intended. Kim got a smug sense of satisfaction out of that—while Agents such as Red might be incredibly capable in infantry and airborne situations, their training apparently didn’t extend to the operation of starships. She assumed that, if one of the Fata Morgana’s engineers had survived that they’d have known these things, but they hadn’t.
“No, this isn’t a Hohmann Transfer.” Kim heard Ervin repeat to the Agent for what seemed like the fifth time. “A Hohmann is not just a term for the easiest way to do something—it’s a specific maneuver where you make only a pair of burns to move you between two orbits. This is not that. We just adjusted our velocity slightly to put us on an intercept.”
“And what’s that called?” The Agent asked.
“No. It’s not. It has no name, that’s like asking... It’s like asking what changing lanes in a groundcar is called. It’s just ‘changing lanes’.”
The Agent shook its head. “You seem to be competent enough.” It said. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
Kim glanced to Ervin.
“Finally.” He said after the Agent had closed the door. “I swear, if he had stayed in here for five more minutes, I would have had to throw it out.”
Kim nodded. “Just... Please don’t. I really, really can’t deal with tension between our crew and the Fata’s one.”
“Does this have anything to do with picking up the First Citizen?” Ervin asked. “And hell, why is she the one in the fighter?”
Kim sighed. “I have no idea. She shouldn’t have been, but...” Kim hesitated for a moment. “Ervin, you know I’m implanted, right?” She tapped the side of her head.
He frowned. “Cybernetically?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged. “Alright. Does this tie into anything important, or is it just a random fact?”
Now it was her turn to frown. “They’re illegal under Canon Law. It incurs automatic excommunication to be voluntarily implanted. They’re highly regulated under Republic law too. Not to mention, there’s a social stigma, due to the fact that some of the early ones had a habit of exacerbating existing or enabling the development of latent mental disorders.”
Once again, Ervin shrugged. “I’m not an Ecumenical. I couldn’t care less about what the Patriarchate has to say about what people put in their heads. The mental health risks have always been exaggerated anyway. I don’t have the chip, but I’ve got nothing against it.”
She nodded. “The thing is though... When we were departing, I swear, I heard someone in my head. Not like a ‘voice in the back of my mind’ type of way, but real, tangible. I swear this was real.” Kim was fully aware how insane she must have sounded.
Ervin raised his eyebrows. “Are you attempting to convince me that you have a mental disorder, ma’am?”
“Possibly, yes. Ervin, if I start to act irrationally... Don’t let Isabella take command of the ship.”
“Why?”
“Ervin, she’s dangerous. She’s unpredictable—one moment, she’ll be treating you like the most important person in Terran Space, and the next your life and the lives of everyone around you isn’t worth the dust on her boots. She’s not insane, Ervin. She just doesn’t care about people.”
Ervin nodded. “If I see that, ma’am, I’ll act to help stop it.”
“No. You need to promise me straight-up that she won’t ever have the command of my crew.”
“Ma’am, I don’t think I can do that. She’s the First Citizen, and has the lawful authority to issue orders to any personnel of any rank in the United Terran Republic Armed Forces.”
“Ervin, we’re still belaboring this point. Why the hell are we still acting like there’s a Republic? What’s the point? It’s gone—tens or hundreds of billions of people are dead. There is no ‘Republic’, because Terran Space now consists of the ninety-foot-long tin can that we live in now.”
“Ma’am, we agreed at the start of this mission that we were going to continue to act with military decorum, because if we don’t do that, what do we have left? If it’s the end of the universe, what do we have left other than to live by the ideals that we swore to uphold?”
“We swore to uphold the Declaration of Dissent and to support the Governance Committee of the Republic, neither of which has any real authority behind them anymore.”
“They inherently have authority because we swore to uphold them when we were commissioned as Officers. That’s what you keep ignoring here!”
“And you’ve done such a good job upholding the honor or dignity or whatever that that position is worthy of, haven’t you?” She regretted the words almost instantly, and knew they were irrelevant, but they clearly hit home.
“If we’re not still following the Regulations of the Republic, why haven’t we admitted to ourselves that we’re involved together?” He shot back.
Kim forced herself to not immediately respond. “This is escalating. It needs to end. We have operations to oversee, and we have no idea how to rendezvous properly with this starfighter. This conversation is over, and we are returning to flight ops.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Isa looked the fighter over as she strapped her helmet back on. It was surprising how quickly one got sentimental about a pointless little ship like this. She pressed a button to cycle the air out of the cockpit—leaving any sort of airlock was far, far easier when it was empty.
The MSSF wasn’t coming with the Warbler, or even docking with it. While there were solutions for attaching a MSSF to one of the new Lepidae gunboats, the Icterids didn’t even have airlocks capable of accommodating docking clamps.
That meant that Isabella was going to have to make the crossing in her spacesuit. Tactical armor was airtight and pressurized, and vacuum rated for several minutes. There was also an emergency EVA Mobility Unit in the MSSF, made to be useful with both Fleet flightsuits and Tactical armor, so, if the Warbler had gotten its trajectory right, she would be entirely capable of making the jump.
“MSSF-3 to UTFS Warbler, we are ready for transfer.”
“Copy that, MSSF-3.” There was a pause, then, “Fore and Aft airlocks both ready to be cycled. You are go for transfer.”
“Copy that.” Isa sucked in a deep breath, then ejected the canopy of the cockpit. Her HUD highlighted the Warbler for her, and helped her maneuver the Mobility Unit. The Warbler was almost a minute’s flight away, as Shan hadn’t wanted to get close to the MSSF, which was probably a good plan.
The gunboat had handholds on the exterior, which honestly surprised Isa. Tactical boats had had exterior gravity for the past five or ten years—apparently the Fleet was just that far behind the technological curve. She closed the airlock behind her, and radio’d the Warbler’s SENCOM center.
“MSSF-3 Pilot to UTFS Warbler, I am aboard.”
“Copy that, MSSF-3 Pilot. We are cycling the forward airlock now.”
A moment later, she was climbing onto the deck of the Warbler, surrounded by her Agents, several crewmembers of the Warbler, and a woman holding a red-and-white Medical Kit.
“Ensign Cassidy Freeman.” The woman said, pushing her way to Isabella. “Are you injured, to the best of your knowledge?”
Isa shook her head. “I’m not injured, Ensign.”
“Excellent. You’ll come with me then.”
“I’m fine, Ensign.” She responded, a little more forcefully this time.
“Which is wonderful, First Citizen. You’ll be coming with me to the Med Bay.” As the Ensign said that, Isabella felt a tug at her mind, much like what she knew Agent Red could do.
Isabella looked towards the Agent, who nodded almost imperceptibly.
Fascinating.
The Enhanced girl poked and prodded Isabella for a good half hour before admitting that she was, in fact, perfectly fine and fit for duty. As she was finally allowed out of the Med Bay, she noticed Kimberly Shan sitting nearby. They passed each other as Shan entered.
Ignoring the brief encounter, Isabella strode up to the Weapons Control Room, and pulled aside the Deck Officer, Maria Prussin. “May I have a moment, Deck Officer Prussin?”
Looking slightly flustered, the woman nodded. “Yes, of course First Citizen.”
“I’m going to need my starfighter destroyed. It contains classified technology that the D are not able to replicate. It is of the utmost importance that it is destroyed immediately.”
Prussin frowned. “First Citizen, I’ll comply with orders of course, but... Isn’t retention of a drone or two more valuable than denying the D some new weapon? We’ve already been wiped out.”
Isabella shook her head. “This is why we have the chain of command, Deck Officer. What you’re saying makes perfect sense to you, right now, but in the bigger picture, which I am aware of, we need that fighter destroyed.”
Prussin nodded. “Of course, First Citizen. I’ll have to check with the Captain, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Isa shook her head. “That won’t do at all. Kimberly Shan will approve it anyway, and this has to occur now. Level the MSSF, Deck Officer.”
Maria hesitated for a moment, the nodded. “Yes, First Citizen.”
Isabella smiled. The UTFS Warbler, and more importantly, its crew, would give her what she needed.
All that that was, though, was a folddrive.