The Defense of Exeter Station, page 19
part #1 of Sandorn's Allegiance Series
“If it’s the latter, I want you to leave the system and rendezvous with our inbound fleet. Regroup in core space, then come back with a bigger fleet,” Anderton said, less optimistic than Sandorn.
“Aye, ma’am.”
“And if it’s the former…” Anderton paused once more to make sure she held Sandorn’s full attention, “Commander Sandorn, I’ll be putting the station’s weapons control under your authority. You’ll be better positioned than myself or anyone stationside to direct firepower appropriately.”
“Thank you, ma’am, I won’t let you down.” He added, nodding.
“I’m confident you won’t.” Anderton said, “I’ve had a message from our inbound reinforcements as well.” The ominous statement irked Sandorn.
“More bad news?”
“Unfortunately, yes. The formation split mid-warp. Two destroyers are pulling ahead of the rest of the fleet, disregarding their commanding officer’s direct orders. We have to assume they’ll be hostile when they arrive on-grid, despite one of the captains professing loyalty to the Alliance. The rest of the fleet can’t match those two destroyers in speed, else—naturally—the fleet commander would be in hot pursuit.”
Sandorn furrowed his brow—this doesn’t sound like the Union’s modus operandi, they’re more likely to maintain silence over outright lying—he thought. “Do we know who this captain is, Ma’am?”
“Captain Lerin of the Swift.”
“Lerin?” Sandorn said wide-eyed. “I knew a Commander Lerin, skipper of the Datsu a few years ago.”
Anderton checked Lerin’s record on her datapad. “Looks like they’re one-and-the-same. Friend of yours?”
“Yes, ma’am, I fought alongside him in Solitari, he’s a good man. I’m glad he made Captain.”
Anderton again double-checked her datapad, re-reading the messages she’d received from Commodore Flynn—Lerin’s fleet commander. “I’m sorry to say Sandorn that we’re to treat him as hostile, and we’re to arrest him on arrival for disobeying a series of direct orders.” She sympathized with him, pondering Lerin’s position. If he came in hostile, away from larger ships, the station guns could easily vaporize his ship. ‘He couldn’t be that stupid, could he?’ She thought. After a brief silence, she decided to allow Sandorn the option of how to proceed. “When they arrive, we’ll be too busy to arrest them. If they fight alongside you it’ll help their cause, but you must be prepared to either engage them, or retreat to safety.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Sandorn considered the warning. “Can I send him a message?” He wouldn’t have thought his old friend could side with the Union after what they’d been through together, but equally he wasn’t the type to disobey orders.
“No, I’m afraid not, his channel has been blocked by fleet HQ. We won’t be able to communicate with him until he’s on grid.”
“Well we have our plan, ma’am. This news doesn’t change that.” Sandorn said resolutely. He didn’t want to fight Lerin, but equally he had a duty to keep as many lives safe as he could in the Exeter system.
“Fly safe, Commander.” Anderton saluted, standing fully to attention, then ended with a formal “dismissed”. Sandorn returned the salute and pose, then turned and left the conference room. Thoughts of loyalty and impending doom weighed heavily on his mind.
∆∆∆
As night rolled in, most of the Scorpion’s temporary crew found themselves struggling with sleep. As midnight approached, Sandorn sat in his stateroom aboard the Scorpion, pouring over reports at his console. He made some minor crew adjustments, swapping drone control officers from one-bay-to-another, pulling one officer off point defense and two out of the main engine room and redirecting them to damage control, moving one stand-by bridge officer to the main engine room. Crew movements were the job of an XO, not the job of a commanding officer, but he didn’t have an XO, and the longer night preyed on his anxiety. He reverted back to his past role as XO aboard the Veloz, analyzing simulation reports and restructuring the crew.
As time passed he felt more uneasy until the door chimed, startling him. He didn’t expect anyone to be aboard, and hadn’t realized how quiet his stateroom had been. Checking the identity of his visitor, he tapped a control on his console opening the door. Rosso stepped through the doorway and walked up to Sandorn’s desk, taking a seat opposite him. Her presence instantly calmed him, draining his worries. He couldn’t help but smile at her.
“Can’t sleep?” Sandorn asked matter-of-factly.
“Not a wink.” Rosso replied. If the seat were more comfortable, she’d have slouched down and relaxed, but it was fairly rigid, only made for a quick visit.
“Nervous?”
Rosso took her time to respond, nodded slowly, then examined the room around her. She’d barely spent any time aboard the Scorpion, let alone visited Sandorn’s stateroom. After some thought, she contradicted her own body language as she responded: “No, I don’t think so.” Sandorn gave her a confused look, tilting his head to the side slightly, encouraging her to elaborate. “The day before yesterday I was torn in two. A big part of me wanted to just fly the Kadpass with you, Sara, and Pridi. Then another part of me was looking for more adventure. I didn’t know what I wanted.” She paused again, breaking eye contact with Sandorn to take another look around.
“Go on…” Sandorn said, sticking to his two-syllable sound bites.
“I did the pilot’s training and it was easy enough. Everything was natural, smooth motions, easy calls… I just ran through the motions of what I’ve done for the last eighteen months, and got the class B. It was… easy…” She spoke with her hands, making smooth flowing motions to imitate the flight of some civilian ship in peacetime. “Then I did combat training,” her hands started to tense up, “that was something else!” She said, as a smile grew across her face.
“The first few tests I was in a little corvette, manually flying through a small fleet of ships, weaving in-and-out, maintaining multi-ship orbital distances etcetera. Then I was piloting a destroyer, covering the underside of a damaged battleship, keeping the ship aligned with the hulking BS as all these enemy corvettes flew around us. Then I was dogfighting in a frigate with another frigate, spinning the ship to make the most of her armaments. Finally I was in a cruiser just like the Scorpion, in the middle of a fleet battle, taking engine damage and compensating for lost thrusters but keeping in the fight.” Her hand gestures became more erratic and purposeful as she described her training.
It’d been a very long time since Sandorn had done his own pilot’s training, but it all sounded familiar to him. He watched her light up as she described the simulations, the energy she put into her descriptions, and the excitement behind her words. “And that’s when you knew you’d made the right choice.” He said, nodding.
“So much so, yes.” She said, loosening up. “I always wanted to travel, to see the stars. I never thought about the navy because I didn’t want to do all that ‘yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir’ shit, but I didn’t realize piloting a combat vessel would be so… crucial!” She grinned, pulling a smile out from Sandorn again. “I mean, you screw up piloting a freighter, worst thing that’ll happen is station control nearby will take control of your ship and you’ll get a fine. Screw up piloting a cruiser, and that’s hundreds of lives on your shoulders. I could really feel the pressure in the simulation. I never felt so important—so essential.” She seemed nearly excited, but it was a newfound sense of honor and duty coursing through her veins.
“I know it’s going to be dangerous, and I’m sure this exhilaration will be gone by tomorrow when we’re in the real firefight. But right now, I just feel confident I made the right decision.”
Whatever nerves Sandorn had before dissipated greatly with Rosso’s arrival, he tapped a couple more icons on the display, locked his terminal, then stood up.
“Come on then, let’s head to bed, we’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.” He said, reaching his hand out to Rosso as he paused half-way to the door leading to the corridor. Rosso smiled, grabbed his hand and pulled him in the other direction, toward the bedroom.
“Woah,” breathed Rosso as the bedroom door opened, “this is nearly as big as our rooms stationside!” She observed, scanning the room. “I need to become a Commander!” Sandorn grinned. It was the first time since before the declaration of war he’d seen her truly relaxed and comfortable. He took hold of her hand again, pulled her close and kissed her deeply. She reciprocated, tugging at his jacket, unzipping it and pulling the top of it down his arms, then paused momentarily. “Wait,” she started, still holding him but leaning back slightly. “No one died in here, right?”
“No,” Sandorn replied.
“Good,” Rosso responded quickly with a smile, then pushed him down onto the bed and climbed on top of him. She pulled her T-shirt off to reveal her naked torso, then bent down to kiss him again.
Chapter Fourteen
Distress Signals
The corridors of Exeter Station were swarming with activity in the morning. Every civilian that was still aboard had been given until midday to leave the station, with a halt on new arrivals in place from 10:00. Cargo drones scurried energetically between stationside warehouses and various ships, ferrying goods around. Escrow had gone wild. The normally stable economy of the system was massively unbalanced with the station’s evacuation.
Spaceports planetside around Exeter III were barely any different, hundreds upon thousands of people were desperate to evacuate the system, not wanting to be on the edge of a warzone. The facilities weren’t designed to coordinate such a high volume of traffic, and infrastructure around the planet was under immense pressure.
In station control, all of this activity was taking its toll on Administrator Gray and his team; most planetside spaceports were looking to Gray to help them manage the traffic since a large share of it was going through Exeter Station anyway. The night shift was given an extended rota to work alongside the morning shift until the early afternoon, and half of the evening shift had been pulled in early as well to deal with the chaos.
The War Room by contrast was quieter. Intelligence on fleet movements was mostly up-to-date now, full servicing cycles had finally completed on every station system overnight, and the majority of fleet officers aboard were taking the morning to rest before they were needed in the afternoon.
Captain Anderton sat in an interrogation room with Jones putting the finishing touches on the fake distress message to send to the incoming hostile fleet.
“To the inbound Union Fleet from Exeter Station,
“We have taken station control in President Colwill’s name, but we’re facing heavy resistance across the docking ring and many amenity decks.
“Requesting immediate assistance stationside to crush remaining Alliance forces.
“Suggest you dock upon arrival near the Scorpion, we hold that quadrant of the docking ring also.
“- Lieutenant Gryff Jones”
Anderton re-read the message that Jones drafted, then asked a question to which she suspected she knew the answer: “Are you happy with the sign-off?”
“Of course,” Jones replied, “why wouldn’t I be?”
Anderton typed out an addition to the message, adding the sign-off she’d seen from the Scorpion’s former engineer’s suicide note below Jones’ own:
“We stand together. We will prevail.”
“That looks better I think, don’t you?” She asked Jones as she turned the datapad to face him.
“I, uh…” Jones’ face flushed as a mixture of guilt and dread took him. “I wouldn’t end a message like that myself, it doesn’t look right,” he said firmly. Up until this point he’d been mild-mannered, but seeing those words at the bottom of his message changed his mood. Anderton stayed silent for a few seconds then raised her eyebrows, prompting Jones to speak again. “Take it off, it makes no sense.”
“You look a little warm, Jones.” Anderton said calmly, retracting her arm and the datapad with it.
“No, I’m not.” Jones responded, as if the statement was accusatory.
“You’ve gone a little red in the cheeks.” Anderton continued, doing her best to look concerned.
“Maybe I’m coming down with something.”
“Right, I think I have everything I need.”
“Delete the sign-off.” Jones said abruptly, his tone shifting from firm to demanding.
“I’m sorry, old friend.” Anderton averted her gaze, “my loyalties are to the Alliance and her hundreds of billions of peaceful citizens, not to some terroristic Union that murders without warning. I’d hoped you’d chosen the right side.”
Jones burst out of his seat sending the metal stool flying backwards as he sprang upward and slammed his fist down on the table between him and Anderton.
“I have chosen the right fucking side!” He said angrily, raising his voice. “Exeter belongs to the Union!” His eyes flashed with fury. Anderton had never seen him like this in the decades they’d known each other. “If you send that message, we’re all dead, I’m fucking dead, you hear me?” Jones continued, jabbing a finger toward Anderton just a few centimeters from her face.
Anderton rose from her own stool slowly, adjusted her uniform, then looked Jones in the eye. “Thank you for the transmission frequency and for voluntarily allowing us access to your messages to send this one, Lieutenant Jones.” She channeled the most formal tone she could muster, though underneath she felt a deep betrayal. “I believe this will be the last we see of each other.”
As Anderton turned to walk away, anger took full control of Jones, who lurched forward, swinging for her with a closed fist and a grunt. The interrogation room’s software recognized the act of violence and threw up a temporary force field between the two parties electrocuting Jones, ricocheting his fist backward at five times the speed he’d thrown it. He fell to the floor with a sizzling, smoking hand. Anderton flinched a great deal on hearing the fizzle of flesh against the bluish glowing field, then turned to face her old XO.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t be on the same side, Gryff,” she said solemnly.
“Fuck you!” Jones returned bitterly, clutching his hand while groaning in pain.
Anderton shook her head, turned, and left the interrogation room.
∆∆∆
Every department across the Scorpion was a hive of activity, despite the ship staying docked all morning. Various simulations were running separately throughout the ship, readiness calls, fire control drills, combat exercises, and other performance testing activities to warm the crew up for the afternoon’s encounter. The Scorpion would remain docked to uphold the illusion for the hostile fleet. Seeing her bounce around the system running live drills could alert the inbound fleet that something was amiss before they arrived.
Just off the bridge in conference room one, Sandorn, Durand, and Vasu were tidying up their own fake distress signal from the former chief engineer, taking care to match the language he’d used in his suicide note and other messages Durand had gained access to yesterday.
“To my brothers and sisters of the Union headed for Exeter Station, this is acting Captain Bjorn of the Agitant-class cruiser Scorpion.
“Exeter Station defenses are down. We are docked, but alliance personnel are refusing to surrender stationside.
“We control a quarter of the docking ring but cannot push further without assistance.
“Board the station with all available marines when you arrive, and we will take Exeter Station together for the glory of our Union.
“We stand together. We will prevail.”
The message was displayed on the main viewscreen in the conference room, ready to be sent directly from ‘acting Captain’ Bjorn.
“I hate writing in this rhetoric,” Durand exclaimed, turning her nose up at the message.
“Hopefully we won’t need to do this very often,” replied Sandorn, “it irks me too to write about the ‘brothers and sisters’ of the ‘glorious Union’.” He shook his head, looking from Durand to the message and back. “It’s all so divisive and backwards. Anyway, I think we’re happy with the draft now?” He looked questioningly between Vasu and Durand.
“Well, I don’t wanna say I’m ‘happy’ with the message. It’s a load of shit, but at least it’s polished and accurate shit.” Durand said plainly. Sandorn gave her a sharp look with his brow raised trying to telepathically warn her about her language. She seemed to get the message and rephrased, “polished and accurate nonsense, sir.” Sandorn nodded with a little smile.
“Aye, sir.” Vasu spoke, smiling at Durand’s choice of words, “I wouldn’t phrase it the same way, but it matches Bjorn’s language in his other messages, and I reckon it’ll get them swooping in to try and save the day.” He paused, then added: “at least we can hope it will.”
“Thank you, both.” Sandorn said, “Vasu, do we have word from Captain Anderton on when to send the message yet?”
“Aye, she’s halted all outbound military comms about ten minutes back, last time they sent a message to the incoming fleet was late last night, so to the uninformed, it looks like the station’s been fighting a comms battle all night. She’s going to send Jones’ message in about an hour, then we’ll send ours another hour or so after that.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Sandorn replied, nodding, then stood from the table. “Right, Durand, get back down to engineering, I want you running this morning’s drills personally with your staff.”
“Got it,” she responded, correcting herself, “yes, Commander.” Unlike Young, who simply lacked the etiquette of an officer, Durand and Sandorn had worked together as friends for years, and while he’d always been her commanding officer, it was difficult to change from the first-name informal habits she’d developed.
“Vasu, report back to the bridge, make sure we have all our comm-links fully established between the Scorpion and Exeter Station with as many backups as possible, the last thing I want is to lose communication just as our enemy arrives.”
