The medical team arrived and Ayan stopped them with a gesture just as they were about to focus on the wide eyed woman on the deck. “Does anyone else have life threatening injuries?”
No one in the slave crew stepped forward. Most of them stared at Ayan in astonishment.
“All right, go ahead and treat her. Don't take her to medical, take her to the brig instead.” She turned to Sean. “You four, make sure she gets there. Squads nine and ten; offer to remove their implants and add them to the ship registry as guests until we can figure out where they'll be working if they wish to stay. After you've finished, help these people to medical, lower aft berthing, the galley, whatever they need.”
Chapter 10
Oz narrowed the focus of his secondary display to Minh's position, his fighter's status, and physical report. His Ramiel fighter was between the station and the planet, running close scans of the damaged structure. The fighter itself was under stress, fighting the gravity of the dense planetoid beneath as Minh manoeuvred between the hanging struts of the structure.
The fighting had stopped outside the station. Every single ship had been secured, disabled or destroyed, nothing had gotten away. It had been a nightmare to coordinate and Oz had to give Minh credit, if he weren't so easy to work with, so decisive and well practised something would have slipped past them and there would have been many more losses.
The day had been won on their front, but there was so much left to do. “Ronin, it's time to come on in.”
“But I don't want to get out of the water, mom,” Minh replied, mock whining.
“Seriously, you need to come on back and take care of the squadrons. You've got a lot of pilots who had to bail and don't know if they accomplished anything today. Nathan's finished the debriefings but a thumbs up will mean a lot more from you.”
“What did we accomplish today Oz?”
The question was only mildly surprising. Minh had been more pensive, more insightful ever since he'd been back. No surprise, considering all the time he had all to himself. Oz thought. “The word's in from the Captain. The Palamo is a slave ship, so is the rest of that raider fleet you just nailed down. We just freed over eight hundred on the Palamo alone, tally on the rest isn't in. We've also landed five slightly abused ships on deck.”
“Freeing slaves, capturing ships. Now that's something.”
Oz watched as Minh's sleek, predatory starfighter angled away from the planetoid and passed between two main supports. He set a course for Minh to follow to the main hangar, alerted the deck crews that he was inbound and sent it to his fighter. “Calling everyone else in behind you. I'm setting a patrol of one squadron that's finishing their rest cycle.”
“All right, I'll visit the bridge when I can get free.”
Oz stepped down from the platform and invited deck Chief Vercelli to take his place. “Sorry Chief, I know his stats were fine but I need Ronin to have enough energy left to take care of house keeping when he gets back aboard.”
“I've been around the Flight deck long enough to know a Wing Commander spends half his time flying a desk. I have to tell you, this flight control deck is something else. It makes it a lot easier to follow what's going on and make decisions. I see you have some pretty fierce training though, you make running things look easy.”
“I've had a lot of training and experience on a couple carriers. You're right though, these systems are so easy to run my five year old niece could operate them.”
“I liked your choices here today. I think we're going to get on well.”
“Thanks Chief. Tell me if anything interesting comes up.”
“Will do.”
Passing from the flight control deck with the constant chatter of two dozen operators, coordinators, tactical officers and technicians to the bridge was like going from one world to another. The combat stations on the bridge were nearly silent, calmly maintaining systems, keeping aware of changing conditions as fighters landed and took off and monitoring the exterior situation. Jason had joined the three communications officers at their stations, where they monitored local transmissions and directed the screening of the massive quantity of data they'd downloaded earlier.
“Captain Valance reports completion of a full sensor sweep on the Palamo. Five other ships have surrendered. Chief Vega reports that she's finished her sweep of the station and the injured are being loaded onto the Cold Reaver. She's attached a communications device to a structural support, hoping that we can use it to get through to the survivors,” Agameg Price reported from the Captain's chair as he stood and made his way back to the lead tactical terminal.
“Thank you Lieutenant. Did the Captain have any directions for us?”
“He said he'd be finished checking the viability of the Palamo in the next half hour but it doesn't look good. The initial scan is at the top of the command log.” Agameg smiled and checked in with his own subordinate who had much less to report.
“Right above this message from Chief Frost called; 'All dressed up for nothin.'” Oz shook his head and called up the report on the Palamo.
“Frost can be a little,” Agameg hesitated a moment, considering his choice of words carefully. “Abrasive. He's very good at his job though.”
“So I hear,” Oz nodded as he looked at the slowly turning three dimensional view of the Palamo. “Now that's an old carrier,” he muttered. Its rectangular hull looked like the decks were roughly stacked atop each other. The power plants and landing bays were easily distinguishable, like the design was modular at one time but the parts had grown together as time wore on and repairs were made. “I can see why he doesn't think it's worth salvaging. One bay is completely compromised, there are about thirty compartments open to space and the reactors are cold.”
“Do you think Captain is looking to take on another carrier? There's the Viscount's Pride as well, though it doesn't look as well crewed and it's in much worse condition than the Palamo.”
Oz thought for a moment, looking at the old carrier. He could picture it in its day, some government had paid billions of dollars to put into service, most likely over a hundred years before. What he was seeing was a carrier made for extremely long range combat. Its strength was in its fighters. Some of the old, scorched launch ports had been sealed or patched over, and they obviously used one of the broad decks to launch their various fighters. They had added large exterior holds, throwing the vessel off balance and one of the landing decks had been refitted to launch guided missiles. “If he is, this isn't the one he'd want. Besides, we'd need a whole other crew and we're just getting the hang of the Triton.” He looked to Agameg, who was watching him as though he was soaking in every word, taking in every mannerism. “What do you think? Would the Captain Valance you know want to expand his fleet?”
“Oh, no. I wouldn't know for certain in any case, he doesn't confide in me,” Agameg sounded almost startled, turning his attention back to his station.
“Well, if these smaller ships are in any kind of salvageable condition he might keep them. We have the room.”
“That would be likely, especially considering the condition of the Samson.”