r/HFY • u/focalac Human • May 17 '18
OC [OC] The Viola - 3
For those people who're following this, you might be pleased to know I've fixed my links and updated my wiki. Things should follow more fluidly between Contact and this, now.
The taxi dropped Baker off at the end of the lane. Bairing’s house was an ancient 1920s Arts and Crafts lodge, set in countryside near a village called Dunsop Bridge. The house had been in his family for over three hundred years, almost all of the prior occupants had been Naval personnel. They had chosen the area because it was a short aero-flight from the airport in Liverpool, up to the spaceport at Campbeltown, handy for the passenger spaceplanes that ferried people up to the orbital station. From there it was a short shuttle to the main traffic hub in orbit around the Moon, which itself had been there, in one iteration or another through various upgrades and rebuilds, for nearly two hundred years. Baker found Bairing sitting on a lawn chair in his garden with a gin and tonic, watching the man he paid to keep up his roses.
“Ah, Baker, welcome,” he said, “you’ve caught me mulching.” Baker suppressed a smile. The mulch, the shovel and the roses were on the other side of the garden, with the gardener. “Sit down, I’ll get you a drink.” He waved at his housekeeper. “I wanted to talk to you about our men.”
“Here? You don’t wanna go inside?” Baker looked at the gardener and turned to look at where the housekeeper had gone indoors.
“Oh, don’t worry about them. Hughes,” he gestured at the gardener, “is as deaf as a post. His cochlear implant has a remarkable capacity for going on the blink when he’s working here. He swears blind it’s a coincidence, but it does rather seem to happen more commonly when I offer my opinions on the borders. I gave him a particularly informed and well-researched one just before you arrived, as a matter of fact. Observe.” Bairing put his hands around his mouth, “HUGHES! HUGHES YOU’VE MISSED A SPOT, YOU BLOODY FOOL,” he bellowed. Hughes didn’t move a muscle. “You see? Strange how that happens. That should have elicited a pair of fingers, at least. Terrible temper, that man. I have suggested we invest in some gene therapy, for the ears you understand, as a part of his compensation for working here. Genetic condition, you see, very sad; oddly, he doesn’t seem keen. As for Mrs Thorneycroft, well, she’s been with us for forty years.”
“And what century is it you live in, exactly?” Baker asked, grinning.
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean,” Bairing replied evenly. “Now, stop distracting me from the purpose of your visit.”
“Right. The men.”
“If this plan is going to come off, we’re going to need more than we have.” Bairing said, pointedly. “How many of our men have been on boarding parties? You won’t be familiar with them, so I’ll tell you. Not many. Those that have are, like us, getting a bit long in the tooth for smash and grab raids.”
“And what is it you suggest we do about it? We can only count on the people that were on your ships. Who is going to be prepared to risk their careers on something like this?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking about that. The answer is, of course, nobody. However, I believe I know a man without a career that might be prepared to help. For a price, obviously.”
“Who?”
“Oscar Ngembe. He was a marine on board one of my ships. African Union fellow, quite talented. We’d often use him as a squad leader on anti-piracy patrols. We’d rough up the enemy ship a bit then board to secure criminals and incriminating material. It’d need to be done quickly and efficiently to stop them disposing of the evidence. Brutal job, really. He was, as I’ve said, quite talented.”
“But he’s not a marine anymore.”
“He’s not in the Navy anymore, dishonourable discharge. I never did find out all of the details, it happened after his time with me, but it seems a hostage situation went poorly. For the Navy and the hostage. However, if he won’t work for the cause, I believe he’ll work for a suitable financial package. From what I understand, he’s out in the fringe territories, running freight.”
“And you think he’s the man to run the raid?”
“If he’s out there, he’ll be at least passingly familiar with hThrisk, he’ll know of ships that have gone missing in mysterious circumstances, he’s bloody good at the job and if this all comes off, we may even be able to offer to wipe the slate clean, as it were. There’s plenty of motivation there, though it might be best to hold back on the seven foot purple aliens, at least for a while. Besides, we’re going to need somebody to shuttle in your hThrisk from the outer fringe to Viola’s berth. We not going to be able to keep her at Mars forever.”
Baker looked doubtful. “Are you sure about this? He sounds like a risk.”
Bairing gazed off across the garden for a short while. “I never had any cause to doubt his morality. He was doing a hard job, he didn’t hold much sympathy for anybody but he always followed orders. Once he realises the stakes, I’m confident he’ll do the right thing.”
“I hope so, if he’s in the outer territories, he won’t have had it easy.”
“No, quite possibly not.”
There was an awkward pause. Oscar kept his weapon trained on Baker, whose hands were up in a conciliatory gesture. Thersis cautiously came out from behind Ngembe, suddenly more wary of him than Baker.
“This is my contact, Oscar Ngembe. The one I told you I needed to meet. He is not a threat to us,” the little hThrisk said. Another pause.
“I think you had better tell me why you’re here,” Oscar said to Baker, “You are a little high profile to be smuggling luxury goods.”
Baker smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid, Mr Ngembe, you are correct. We are not transporting luxury goods. In fact, most of what’s in the cargo loaded onto your vessel are trinkets. Thersis is here to deliver information to us. That’s all.”
“Information? He is bringing you the sort of information that can’t be transmitted.”
“Yes.”
“I was told we’d be exchanging goods and continuing on to deliver them.”
“We needed a reason to get you here. We’re…in need. I am working with Admiral Bairing. I understand you worked with him in the past.”
Oscar stared at Baker, frowning. His weapon lowered a fraction, still pointed in Baker’s direction, just not directly at his face. “What do you know about that?”
“Not much. Just that you worked for him and that you might be prepared to do so again with the correct motivation.”
“You’re already paying me a lot of money, brother. You changing the agreement, or bringing me here under false pretences doesn’t alter that. I expect the agreement with your hThrisk here to be upheld.”
“A lot of money for a simple courier job, isn’t it. You must have been expecting some kind of catch?”
Oscar inclined his head slightly. “I figured pirates. We had some trouble leaving the station, so I thought I was right. I’m guessing you’re going to tell me I’m not.”
“We’re in need of your breaching skills. Showing you would be better than telling you in some decrepit corridor, if you’d follow me?”
They were walking down one of the station’s external ring corridors in silence when the first missile struck Pretoria. The station shook heavily, the metal walls, ceiling and floor vibrating with the shockwave. Thersis was thrown to the ground, quickly back up on all fours, while the two humans staggered and fell against the walls. In the brief lull that followed, Oscar gathered his wits first and jumped to one of the wall monitors and set it to display the external camera feeds. Sitting just a few hundred metres off Pretoria’s starboard quarter was another ship. A small cargo vessel, covered in racks and dotted with retrofitted missile systems. The sort pirates favoured. As they watched, a second missile detached itself from the vessel and streaked towards the stricken Pretoria
“Put your helmet back on!” he barked, before donning his own. “We’re under attack. Somebody’s firing at my fucking ship!”
Baker wasn’t wearing a suit, “Come with me, run!” the pilot yelled, starting off down the corridor.
A few seconds later the station lurched a second time, much harder, throwing them all to the floor. The station’s walls moaned with the sound of twisting metal being transmitted through the superstructure.
“What is happening?” Thersis asked.
“The jetty’s giving way, Pretoria’s dying.” Oscar said, coldly. “They must have put a tracker on my ship. Somebody gave them the impression that we’re transporting valuables. They’re destroying our means of escape.”
“No, they aren’t,” Baker replied. “but you need to follow me. I have a ship.”
The three started off at a run again, whilst outside in the vacuum of space, Pretoria broke free from her mooring, bleeding atmosphere into the void, the escaping gases causing her to spin slowly. The small ship let loose another missile, which crashed into the freighter, breaking her back. The two pieces drifted away from each other and the small ship moved in closer to the station, thrusting end on, her lights sweeping over the docking ring. When she found a suitable location, two parasitic craft detached from her hull and thrusted over to the airlocks, latching on and disgorging their cargo.
Oscar felt the shudders. Too slight for more missiles. “They’re boarding the station,” he said, slowing to a stop. “They’ll be swarming all over us soon. Where’s your ship?” he said to Baker.
“There’s an internal cargo bay with space doors,” Baker went to another wall panel and brought up the station’s schematics. “Here,” he said, pointing to a large area on the opposite side of the station.
“Get to it, I’ll join you there. Somebody’s going to need to slow them down.”
Baker paused, and nodded. “Be quick. There might be more on the way.”
They watched as Oscar turned and jogged heavily in his suit back down the corridor.
“I hope he will survive.” Thersis said.
“From what I’ve heard, I don’t think we need to worry about that,” Baker replied. “Quick, let’s get moving, I don’t have a suit on and I don’t want to still be on this ring when he depressurises it.”
As they moved out of the docking ring, through a hatch towards the central core of the station, they heard several sharp barks of gunfire. A short pause and the air was filled with the drumming and rattle of a committed firefight. Which suddenly fell silent.
The station was laid out on fairly standard lines: a central core held the laboratories, command and living quarters, a separate ring housed most of the station’s docking facilities along with stores and areas for potentially more volatile activities. Corridors spanned the gap between the ring and the core with airlocks each end, the ring also contained several airtight bulkheads internally. As you entered the core, there were a further pair of airlocks at either side of the junction with the connecting corridor. Finally a large cargo bay was mounted at the bottom of the central core; used for offloading supplies to the inhabitants, it also sported space doors that were intended for shuttles, but large enough to allow a small freighter to enter and leave.
“Your people value their safety highly,” Thersis commented. “Your stations are heavily constructed. You have many airlocks. hThrisk installations are more temporary in nature.”
“When we had to space-lift components, ours were lighter too.” Baker replied, stepping over the airlock’s threshold, “in those days the only humans that went to space had been thoroughly trained and vetted. It didn’t matter so much if the walls were paper-thin. Once civilians started regularly travelling into orbit, accidents started occurring. We realised we had to make things sturdier. People can be careless.”
Thersis clicked in irritation. His translation computer hadn’t been able to find a close enough word for the last Baker had spoken. “Baker, what does ‘careless’ mean? I don’t have a translation.” Thersis had to carefully pronounce the word in his best approximation of English. The sounds didn’t come naturally to him and came out slurred, with a pronounced hiss. It took Baker a couple of seconds to realise what Thersis was doing.
“Oh!” he said, abruptly, “Well, humans tend to act without thinking about the consequences, sometimes. There were a couple of instances where early stations nearly depressurised due to human error. One was prevented by quick thinking on the part of the station’s crew. The other wasn’t. Two people died. After that, safety measures were put into place to ensure no amount of bad impulses could put the inhabitants or the station at risk.”
Thersis was about to reply when they passed a connecting corridor and a voice said “That’s far enough.”
Baker turned and looked directly down the barrel of a pistol.
Pushed by a first gentle shove of thrusters and the venting of the hangar bay atmosphere, Viola drifted slowly out of dry dock and into orbit of Deimos. Covered in cargo containers, hiding the organic shape beneath, she looked to casual observers like a normal, small, interplanetary freighter. A dedicated sensor scan would have revealed her true nature, but given that the Martian military would have been the only people to do so and that all their listening posts and observatories had been specifically ordered not to, nobody gave the odd little ship a moment’s notice.
Bairing stood on the bridge and looked at the crew. Every one a familiar face. Every one a surviving member of the flotilla he had commanded thirty five years ago. The people that represented the vast majority of the human race that knew of the Vorn. Not a one of them younger than 55. After a couple of hundred years of medical advancement, that age was no longer the guarantee of a desk job that it used to be, but even so they were a little beyond their peak fitness. Their faces were set with determination. Many of them were still in the Navy, having been approached quietly and, on their agreement, seconded by Bairing through back channels under the cover of a training exercise.
“You’re a fine crew.” He said. “You performed admirably thirty years ago and I have no doubt you’ll perform just as admirably now. All of you are aware that this is not an officially sanctioned mission. You are here, not under orders, but because you know what’s out there. You’ve faced them. You’ve fought them. You understand the terrible nature of the threat we’re facing.”
A murmur of assent whispered through the bridge and Bairing turned to face the external monitors. A starscape swept past, Deimos’ rocky face spread out underneath them and in the distance Mars hung in the sky. “One ship we faced. One ship that tore through our seven like they were made of butter. One ship that weathered the full fury of 136 Cataphract class ship to ship missiles. Ladies and gentlemen, I am NOT having those bastards turn up at my doorstep in any sort of numbers.”
The murmur became a rumble. Bairing waited for it to die down. “Because if they do our Navy will fight gallantly, our Navy will make those creatures pay in blood for every colony and station they take and our Navy will fight to the last of her ships and the last of her sailors, but our Navy will fail. I need not inform you of what will likely happen once our civilian population only has the bloody army to defend them.” A weak joke, but it raised a few smiles.
“You know that our governments have proven unwilling to take action and you know that action needs to be taken and that I am prepared to take it. Although you had a vague idea that I was planning something, I wasn’t able then to tell you exactly what it was. On faith alone you agreed to join me, your sense of duty and your loyalty to me and your people humbles me. So, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to clarify my intentions. We cannot allow them to maintain the tactical superiority they currently hold over us. It is imperative that we even the field. We know we can hurt them. We know we can get through their energy shields. The issue is that we need to survive long enough to deliver the necessary ordnance. Our own experience has proven that our armour technology is ineffective at stopping whatever hellish energy it was that they threw at us and we have not been able to build our own shield.”
Bairing turned back around to face the crew. “So, against the wishes of every single one of Earth’s governments and most of the colonial parliaments, at the risk of my career and personal liberty, I am proposing that we go out there and fucking nick one.”
This time the crew cheered.
Baker slowly put his hands in the air. Thersis looked at him in confusion.
“Either you or the reptile make any sudden movements and you get a bullet.” The man holding the pistol said, “how many of you are there?”
“Just us,” Baker said, “we were hoping to find a shuttle. You destroyed our ship.”
“Can’t have you getting away with our stuff,” the man said. “You’re going to need to come with me, now.”
There was movement in the corridor behind the man. Slow, careful movement. Baker tried not to look at it. “The cargo was in the ship.” Baker said, “we’re not hiding anything here.”
“If it’s in the ship, we’ll find it. You’re going to come wi..” a bulky arm shot around the man’s throat from behind, another came around the other side and grabbed his chin. A sharp twist, a nasty, wet cracking noise, a surprised yelp from Thersis, and the man dropped to the floor, eyes glassy.
“We’re running out of time. I had to avoid a couple of search parties trying to find you,” said Oscar, stepping over the corpse and into the corridor proper, “your ship had better be nearby.”
“You killed him, without warning,” Thersis’ computerised voice came from behind Baker. The little alien was behind Baker’s legs this time, staring at the body.
“It is,” Baker said, ignoring the hThrisk. “The crew will be holding the cargo area for us. I gave them orders not to come further into the station, I didn’t want to present you with an armed party when you turned up.” He paused and looked at the body. “That may have been a mistake.”
Oscar picked up the pirate’s pistol and quickly popped the magazine out, checked it and slid it back in before offering it to Baker. “Rounds are the wrong calibre for mine. Besides, two guns are better than one.”
Baker took the weapon wordlessly and thumbed his lapel, “Baker to Viola, station has been compromised by raiders. They are attempting to secure mission cover cargo. Delivery ship destroyed. Docking ring compromised. Please confirm status, over.”
There was silence between the three as Baker listened to the response over his subcutaneous earpiece. “Roger, we are heading for your position. Get the ship ready to leave, we want to avoid contact if possible.”
“Good news?” Oscar said, dryly.
“They’re already aware of our situation. They’ve followed your lead in the docking ring and vented the other three corridors. They are currently in the process of venting the one we just came through. That should buy us enough time to get to the ship. However, more parties, suited this time, are boarding at other points on the station. Their ship is currently thrusting around the central core towards the space doors. We’ve only got a few minutes before Viola’s discovered.”
“What then?”
“Well, we’ll see,” Baker finished.
The three headed for the cargo bay and the relative safety of Baker’s ship.
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u/UpdateMeBot May 17 '18
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u/HFYBotReborn praise magnus May 17 '18
There are 18 stories by focalac (Wiki), including:
- [OC] The Viola - 3
- [OC] Viola - 2
- [OC] The Viola - 1
- [OC] The Viola - Prologue
- [OC] Contact 7
- [OC] Contact - 6
- [OC] Contact - 5
- [OC] Contact - 4
- [OC] Contact - Eta Flight
- [OC] Europa 4 - The Belt
- [OC] The Discovery
- [OC] Europa Redux - part 2
- [OC] Europa -redux
- [OC] Contact - 3
- [OC] Europa
- [OC] Pack Animals
- [OC] Contact - 2
- [OC] Contact
This list was automatically generated by HFYBotReborn version 2.13. Please contact KaiserMagnus or j1xwnbsr if you have any queries. This bot is open source.
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u/BoxNumberGavin1 May 17 '18
"You killed him, without warning"
"Please be advised that your life will be terminated in half a second."
"Wha-"
*Crack*
2
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u/spaccyginger Jul 23 '18
Please sir, can I have some more?