“I need you to retreat, Chief Vega. Now.” Ayan said quickly and clearly.
“Backtrack!” Stephanie called out. They made it just around the corner before the halls ahead of them exploded, rocking the point of view perspectives on her holographic display. Ayan brought up the summarized status displays for the squads and breathed a sigh of relief as she saw Chief Vega's people had gotten to the minimum safe distance. “Thank you Ayan. Glad to have you in transmission range.”
“This is the Cold Reaver. It looks like the raiders pinning us down committed some kind of suicide. One of our landing struts are damaged but we're all right.”
“Your guess isn't far off Cold Reaver. Let Chief Vega do a sweep of the area before you begin loading the injured.”
“Aye, sitting tight until we get the all clear.”
“Chief Vega, do a sweep between the Cold Reaver and the people we have at the inner door. When you arrive at the inner door I'd like you to affix a conductive wire to the superstructure of the station then connect it to your reserve comm unit. We might be able to get a signal through the electromagnetic field they have set up.”
“Will do Ayan,” Stephanie replied.
“Ayan, what's going on?” Jake asked over his private comm.
“It looks like the remainder of the raiders were just killed,” Ayan's eyes went wide as she saw the Jake's boarding mission from his perspective. His sidearm was perfectly aimed at a wealthy looking fellow's head.
“My scan of his slave control unit tells me there's one more on the ship but the detonation order came from this one. He killed thirty one of his own people before handing it over to me.”
She listened as Jake told the Captain to give him the password. “Ask him why he's killing his own people on the station,” Ayan directed quietly.
Jake was interfaced with the amulet the Captain used to control his slaves and the first password attempt failed. It warned him that he'd only get two more attempts. “I'm going to get the password and make sure the slaves are safe. They'll tell me what's going on on the station once they're free,” he whispered. There was a determination in his tone that sounded dangerous.
Ayan had heard it before on the First Light right before he ordered them to mercilessly obliterate a light carrier. She eyed the log being uploaded from the amulet. Captain Gammin didn't just use the control unit and slave implants to kill people, he used them to administer drug cocktails that made certain members more suggestible, rendered female members of the crew mostly unconscious and boosted alertness in others. The crimes Captain Gammin committed using the devices were endless and according to what she was seeing he was constantly adding new slaves to his crew. The most common use for his amulet was torture, mostly on a young woman named Nerine.
She found the serial number of the other controller and brought up a cross section of the Palamo. A red dot designated the amulet's location, it was in one of the hangars.
A glance back at Jake's status told her that he'd managed to deactivate the Captain's control unit. “Kneel,” she heard him demand.
“Jake, we have a brig. We might need him for more information. He could be a member of a larger group,” Ayan said hurriedly. She watched the rest of the exchange and cringed as Captain Gammin tried to bargain with Jake. Captain Valance's heart rate jumped, his neural statistics indicated a level of anger that would have most Freeground officers relieved of duty and suspended for a month.
“He won't do this again.” Jake whispered over the private comm as he pulled the trigger.
Ayan looked away just in time to avoid seeing the mess his sidearm made of the man.
“What is it?” Jason asked in a whisper.
She shook her head and forwarded the whole record of Jake's boarding action to Jason. The display listed a new contact on the tactical map, a thirty four meter hyperspace capable ship. “Oz, do you see this?” she asked.
“It's up on my screen. My birds are on patrol, the party's over so I can spare a pair,” Oz replied over bridge communications.
“I'll have Chief Frost hit them with EMP rounds. There's a slave controller on that ship, I want it disabled before we bring it aboard,” Ayan informed him.
“All right, once it's disabled I'll have a Uriel haul it into landing bay two.”
Frost came up on her display; “Somethin' for my gunners to shoot, lass?”
“Aye, disable only. Use EMP rounds.”
“Done and done,”
For the space of three seconds five heavy gunnery turrets opened fire, sending hundreds of EMP railgun rounds towards the small interstellar ship. A flare of electromagnetic bursts obscured it for several seconds as the rounds discharged and the Triton’s tactical system noted it as inert when the vessel came back into focus.
“There you go, Oz. Have it brought in then take the command chair. I'm going down with four squads to meet whoever's on board personally.”
“Already tired of commanding a carrier?” Oz asked with a chuckle.
“No, I want to see what kind of scum they dislodge from that ship and meet it personally. Jason can fill you in on what we're seeing up here.”
“All right, on my way up. Chief Vercelli has Flight Command.”
“Going to offer him the same treatment Jake gave Captain Gammin?” Jason asked as she stood.
“Nope. This one's all yours once we get him to the brig. We need information about these people and the sector we're in.”
He genuinely smiled. “Time to put all that interrogation training to work, oh boy. Do you want me to start communicating with the rest of the raider ships and seeing if any of them want to join us now that our Captain has made a mess of their captor?"
Ayan smiled at him over her shoulder. "Always the clever one. Just make sure we have enough room for fighters once the ships are finished landing."
It only took Ayan a few minutes to change into the combat vacsuit that the fabrication centre had made for her. It felt like a second skin and she couldn't help but smile a little as all the improvements her and Laura had developed during their time together at Special Projects came on line.
She left the head gear retracted into a hood and strapped her sidearm on as she made her way to one of the main lifts. Two squads were waiting for her when she arrived. The other pair were already in the main hangar.
She was the subject of many sidelong glances at first. Of all of them she was the shortest, but she wore the same armour and had seven slashes on her cuffs, designating her rank as the same as the Captain's. He'd appointed her to the position without telling her and left her to seek out her own place on the ship. It led her to test her skills and get some practice at commanding the Triton in simulation and to her surprise she managed to take control. It wasn't easy, far from it. The Triton was designed as a multi-role close combat carrier and mission platform. It had the capacity to run several operations all at once, acting like a mother ship with sub crews.
Lucius Wheeler had never used the vessel to its full potential in any respect, and it was becoming plain to her that Jake had every intention of doing just that. Oz increasingly took care of day to day operations while Jason organized the security office like an intelligence unit. The Chiefs Jake had appointed were getting better at their jobs and respected the help offered by the former First Light crew. The only Chief that didn't directly benefit from their military experience was Frost, the Gunnery Chief. He was already amazing at his job even though he was a mess off duty in many respects.
Ayan couldn't help but muse about how it felt like a month had passed since she arrived aboard the Triton. It had actually been fourteen days and she had done so much it boggled her mind. With the right direction the crew made fantastic accomplishments and responded very well to her clarity and positive reinforcement even though three in ten often required more training. The largest project she'd participated in was the construction of two replacement engines in the main hangar. When they had settled into the obscured portion of the asteroid field they would replace the pair that Wheeler and the Saviour had ruined.