Broken Halo (Wayfarers) Read online

  After two more turns in the corridor, she began to wonder if they shouldn’t turn back. The Concord and the rest of the fleet might be able to tolerate her momentary absence, but the fleet was still on alert status. It would be a disaster if the enemy arrived while she was still picking her way through the bowels of the ancient carrier, unable to reach the bridge and her command console. Yet some strong feeling urged her to continue, and Susan lead them to yet another bend in the passage ahead.

  This time the corridor seemed different. The bulkhead opposite the turn was reinforced; in fact, unless Susan missed her guess, the wall was armored to resist plasma fire. It was a curious change, and she approached it warily. She ran a hand along that armored surface and was surprised to find it slightly pockmarked, as if weapons had been fired at this particular spot. Dust leaped from the wall as she brushed it, revealing that it had not been touched in many years, but the faded remnants of scorch marks were still visible in her hand light’s illumination.

  Then Susan heard Chief Kowalski utter an oath so foul no Wayfarer could have invented it, and she spun around in surprise. She saw the engineer diving to one side, and followed suit immediately. They rolled to a stop around the bend in the corridor, and she could hear further blasphemies from the man as he scuttled back and away from the edge.

  Elder Rollins, on the other hand, merely stood and watched them move. Susan stared at him in horror, expecting whatever disaster she had narrowly avoided to overtake him at any second.

  Nothing happened.

  Slowly, she rose, brushing dust from her uniform. Chief Kowalski stood as well, his face still flush from exertion. Susan summoned her best calm, silently berating herself for reacting too quickly. “Chief Kowalski—”

  “It’s all right, Admiral.” Rollins motioned with his hand light toward the ceiling ahead. “I believe he was alarmed because of that.”

  Restraining her anger, Susan took a look around the corner and bit back an oath of her own. Perched on the ceiling like a voracious demon was a repeating plasma cannon, of the kind that could vaporize personal body armor and might even have a chance at damaging a rig. The weapon appeared to be fully automated, with a glistening camera for its eyes and a turret to provide aim. It was the sort of internal defense that the Directorate had abandoned centuries ago, due to unreliability and occasional accidental discharges that caused far more losses than they prevented.

  The power to the weapon was off, which was surely the only reason that any of them were still alive. It leered at them, unmoving, while Rollins played his light over it. The Advisor lowered his hand light and probed the darkness further ahead. A short distance away, there was another bend in the corridor. One which had, as Susan was compelled to notice, a similar set of armored bulkheads.

  Worse, it seemed to be illuminated.

  With an effort, Susan kept a tremor out of her voice. “Chief Kowalski, I believe I need your engineers to cut the remaining power to this section before we continue. Do you agree?”

  “Hell, yes.” Kowalski glanced at the Advisor and coughed. “I mean, yes, ma’am. I understand.”

  “Good.” Susan looked back at the gargoyle of the plasma weapon and felt a shiver of horror at how close things had come. If the power had been on, and she had wandered into the weapon’s line of fire …

  She shook herself and turned to the others. “I believe we’ve seen enough for today, don’t you?” As they nodded, their eyes locked on the weapon as well, Susan motioned for them to follow her through the wreckage to the rest of the ship. “Then let’s get back. There’s plenty more waiting for us back there.”

  Yet even as she said it, she wondered what exactly that weapon had been protecting—and what secrets the Directorate had plainly tried so hard to bury with it.

  Chapter Eight

  Gabe was on his first flight in days, once again enjoying the chance to soar through the stars, when a signal came in over the communications net. “Command to Angel-One. Do you read?”

  He smiled when he heard Susan’s voice. It had already been too long since he’d last heard from her. “Angel-One here. What do you need, Command?”

  “Just checking in, Angel-One.” Susan fell silent for an awkward moment. “Have you found anything of interest yet?”

  “Not yet, Command. We’re still doing our initial sweep.” Gabe glanced around him at the rest of the formation, but the others didn’t seem to be listening in on the frequency Susan was using. “Don’t tell me you’re worried or anything, are you? I mean, there aren’t any automated turrets for me to wander in front of on the Penance.”

  It was easy to imagine Susan’s eyes narrowing. “Not at all, Angel-One. You can usually take care of yourself—when you aren’t crashing into things.” She paused. “How are your … new accommodations working out?”

  Gabe grunted. “We’re holding up well enough, Command.” It hadn’t been easy or comfortable transferring aboard the former mercenary cruiser. The fact that the mercs had renamed their vessel the Penance hadn’t convinced him of their sincere repentance at all. “They’re treating us well, but they don’t like the risk they’re taking by being stationed so far away from the rest of the fleet.”

  “My heart bleeds for their lack of comfort, Angel-One.” Susan sighed. “The distance is necessary. The enemy doesn’t know that we have a major carrier besides the Concord, and when they jump in, we could send units from the Penance to investigate instead of from the fleet directly. Besides, the Junkyard and the Scrap can salvage materials from some of the more exposed areas while you patrol.”

  The fact that she was repeating her reasoning was a sure sign that Susan was having second thoughts. Unfortunately, Gabe knew she had been right to order the merc vessels out, with Wayfarer rigs aboard. He hadn’t wanted to join that detachment, but to carry off the deception Susan had planned, it had been necessary for someone to go, and he wasn’t about to order someone else to go when he wouldn’t do it himself. Even if it did mean that he wouldn’t see Susan for a few days.

  For that reason, and a host of others, Gabe tried to sound cheerful. “Right. We’re doing fine out here, Command. Just taking in the sights.” He glanced back toward the retrieval area, where the two merc cruisers were busy mining an asteroid. The activity would be rather obvious to anyone who cascaded into the system, but that was part of the idea. Plus, they needed the supplies. “The Junkyard and the Scrap were reporting the other day that they had gathered quite a bit of ore for the Foundry to use. We should come back with quite a few things that the fleet needed.”

  “I know, Angel-One.” There was another, longer pause, and Gabe waited for her reply as he soared through space. When Susan spoke again, she was clearly making an effort to stay professional. “After they’re finished with the asteroid, the detachment has been ordered to move to position Alpha-Three-Two. There’s a gas cloud there that might contain some unrefined fuel; if they can manage to harvest it before the Directorate comes, that might be worth even more than the ore.”

  Gabe smiled. “As ordered, Command. Has Colonel McCalister already been informed?”

  Susan’s voice was touched by a hint of amusement. “He has, Angel-One. The colonel has reported that he is anticipating the assignment with barely restrained enthusiasm, as always.”

  He laughed, unable to summon a mental picture of the cantankerous officer being “enthusiastic” for anything, especially in command of a group of former enemies. “Well. that’s good to hear, Command. Is there anything else I should know about?”

  “Not at the moment, Angel-One. Just keeping you up-to-date on your orders.” Susan hesitated one last time, and then continued. “Take care of yourself, and stay alert. The Directorate could be here at any moment. Command out.”

  Gabe wished for a moment that she’d stayed on the line, but it was a pointless dream. She’d already stretched the boundaries of her discipline by making the call in the first place; the chance that she’d while away her time with a long-distance comm call
when the fleet needed her attention was a bad one. He sighed and then opened a channel over the squadron frequency. “Look alive, Angels. We’re going to be on the move soon.”

  The detachment was already on their way by the time Gabe returned to the Penance. It was disturbing, to say the least, to approach the former merc carrier, especially when the three craft were underway. There was something about the way they maneuvered that bothered him, as if the very methods they used to organize themselves reminded him of the frantic battle in Eris. A squadron of escort craft, their weapons at the ready, trailed behind the merc ships, ready to pounce in an instant if they needed to.

  If it was unbalancing to approach the ships, it was far worse actually landing on the Penance. Everything inside urged Gabe to open fire on the merc carrier instead of calmly lining up to enter the recovery bay located on its stern, but he clamped down on those instincts as his flight filed aboard. After all, he told himself, there would be time for that later if the mercenaries attempted to do something stupid.

  Not that they’d shown any tendency toward that kind of error. The mercenaries had been nothing if not unnervingly polite and considerate; Gabe half suspected that many of them would still have wanted to kill him, but they were being restrained by orders from their superiors. When he crouched his rig in the recovery elevator and disengaged the BCI, he found one of those superiors waiting for him just outside the bay. “Ms. Nakani. What a pleasant surprise.”

  The mercenary pilot grinned lopsidedly, as if acknowledging Gabe’s ironic tone, and she nodded to the rig. “Anything interesting out there, or just more space to tumble through?”

  “Nothing for you to worry about, Nakani. The Directorate hasn’t shown up yet.” Gabe freed himself from his pilot’s chair and stepped out onto the ramp. Allen and the others were coming out of their rigs as well, looking tense as they were met by the mercenary maintenance crews. None of them were likely to be happy about having their rigs serviced by former enemies, but there was no way around it. A rig needed to be looked after and repaired after each flight, especially if they were anticipating combat, but that would be cold comfort if the mercs decided to sabotage them. Gabe tried to remind himself that there would be Wayfarer techs supervising the process and turned his attention back to Nakani. “Is there anything you need to tell me, Ms. Nakani? Or are you just bored?”

  Her grin spread into a broad smile. “On the nose, Wayfarer. Your colonel’s got me cooped up here unless someone gives me a reason to fly, and I’m going out of my mind. Isn’t there something I could do for you?”

  Gabe sighed. Every time he’d thought he would get a moment’s rest, he found Nakani there, waiting to pounce on him with more requests for missions. He had no idea what she thought he would ask her to do; most of the SRRs, as the rebuilt MSSRs were now called, had been offloaded to the Concord to make room for Wayfarer flights, and the ones that were left weren’t going to be useful for scouting in a combat zone. Despite that sound reasoning, she never got discouraged. He tried to summon the commanding tone Delacourt had always used to settle him down.

  “Ms. Nakani, you knew what you were signing on for when you were assigned to search and recovery. You’ll fly when we need you to, not before.”

  Nakani did not look convinced. “Which means we might not be ready to fly when you actually need us, Angel Boy.” She folded her arms. “Look, I’m not asking for full-on patrol flights. You can even have some of your fancy combat rigs supervise us while we practice, but we need to be out there. Not just when you need us, but to figure things out before then, whatever you and your bastard of a warden says.”

  Gabe glared at her. There was a limit to how much he was going to take from a mercenary. “You should probably show Colonel Mccalister some respect, Ms. Nakani. After all, he has the authority to shoot you on sight. Insults aren’t going to get you and your happy bunch of murderers into space any quicker, but they might get you confined to your quarters.”

  She threw up her hands. “Fine! Whatever you say goes, Captain Miller. Yes, sir, no, sir, three bags full, sir. Just mark my words, pal, because one day you’re going to need me and my bunch of murderers, and you won’t have us. Think about what you’re going to do then, and how much fun it’ll be.”

  Without another word, Nakani spun and stormed away, her stance angry and frustrated. Gabe watched her go for a moment, heavily tempted to send a report to Mccalister about her behavior. Given how cranky and mean the colonel could be, Gabe had no doubt that Nakani would be confined to quarters, and probably for a very long time.

  At the same time, she did have a point. The SRRs were different from the MSSRs the mercs had been piloting; the modifications had been severe enough that their BCIs were apparently a little uncalibrated. A little practice with them could hardly hurt anybody, though it would spend a little fuel. He sighed, and wondered if he should mention the idea to Susan.

  Allen came over while Gabe was absorbed in thought and nudged him. “Mercenary problems, Captain?”

  Gabe gave him a mocking glare. “Shut it, Lieutenant. Don’t you have your own work to look after?”

  His wingman shrugged eloquently. “Well, yeah, but your problems are so much more interesting.” Allen gestured to the retreating mercenary. “And here I thought that our problems with them were over when they stopped shooting at us. Things were simpler then, eh?”

  “Simpler, yes. Better, well …” Gabe pondered the issue for a moment and then nodded. He’d mention the possibility to Susan when he had the chance; Mccalister would probably want to talk to her himself once he heard of it. After all, if Nakani was bothering Gabe about it, the colonel was probably almost constantly harassed on the issue. He looked back at his wingman. “There are worse troubles than having to decide how much to let someone help you.”

  “True, true.” Allen stretched; he sometimes complained that his muscles came out of the rig stiff and sore. He swung one arm around as if to loosen the shoulder joint a little. “So where to, boss?”

  Gabe rolled his eyes. “All right, wise guy, come on. Let’s go see if this boat has a decent cafeteria on it somewhere.” He led his friend away from the rigs, where the mercenary techs were already starting their work. “It won’t be long before they have us back out there anyway, and I have a feeling that the Directorate isn’t far off.”

  Susan looked up as an alert pulsed across the command deck. Her eyes caught the sudden jerk of movement from the watchstander at the sensor station. The young officer hesitated and then turned to address her. “Admiral, we’re picking up indications of a resonance cascade entering the system.”

  The tone of the watchstander’s voice was admirably calm, but even Susan could feel the sudden spike in tension. Her heart began to beat faster as she nodded. “Thank you, Lieutenant Myers. Please send the information to my console.”

  Myers nodded sharply, and a moment later the data was scrolling across Susan’s screen. She tapped a few keys, and the relative position of the cascade appeared on her display. It was hard not to look incredibly relieved. The entry point was nearly half the system away from where the refugee fleet now hid, well away from where she had planned to move. Even better, it was closer to where the mercenary ships were positioned, leaving that decoy in a much better position to act.

  The danger might have been greater to Gabriel as well, but Susan knew she would need every advantage and bright spot she could find in the coming days. She opened a signal to the Penance, hoping that their sensors had already reported the event. “Command to Penance. We have a resonance cascade at Delta-Four-Nine. Do you have it on your sensors?”

  There was a long moment, and then Colonel Mccalister’s gruff voice answered back. “Confirmed, Command. We have the cascade at the same position.” She could picture him frowning before he continued. “Command, we’re reading an energy output a lot smaller than the Directorate’s last incursion. It’s only consistent with one ship at the most, and not a very large one. Could it be a scout?”


  Susan examined the data again and found that the colonel was correct. She sat back and folded her arms, staring at the display. “Command to Penance, the Directorate does not typically employ scouting tactics unless it’s approaching a new enemy system. They already know who we are and where we went. A scout would be redundant.”

  Mccalister responded in an even tone. “Perhaps it’s a trick, then? They could be trying to flush us out and then jump in on top of us.”

  Captain Ndigwe’s voice answered before Susan could. “Deliverance to Penance. That tactic doesn’t make sense. If they could perform a cascade so accurately, they would have come in right where we did. This approach suggests that they have the same limitations that we do.”

  The next signal from the Penance was far less patient. “Then what else would make sense? If they had such a big fleet the last time, why only come with one of them this time? And if they could dampen their output from the cascade for this hop, why didn’t they do it the time before? I mean, look at this! The output is almost small enough to suggest the ship is barely even escort-sized, let alone something the size of that carrier we saw last time.”

  Susan broke in before Ndigwe could respond, hoping to cut off the argument before it could continue. “We need more information. Penance, are your rigs standing by for launch?”

  Mccalister answered after a short delay. “They are, Command. We have all eight CTRs and four of the RSRs prepared for immediate deployment.” He paused, and then continued with obvious reluctance. “The six remaining SRR units are also prepped and ready for any recovery missions.”

  Susan could fully understand the hesitation in Mccalister’s tone. She had just finished reading over Gabriel’s arguments in favor of the SRRs being allowed a kind of practice time, and even now she could hardly believe his willingness to allow the mercenaries that much freedom. The cost in fuel alone would have been an issue, but any amount of laxity in dealing with such people could develop into something worse, especially now that the Directorate was in full pursuit. Then again, Gabriel had occasionally been right before—as he never tired of reminding her.