The Catherine Kimbridge Chronicles #4, Retribution Read online

  Immediately his personal assistant, an attractive young female who was just entering her peak nesting age, came into his office. He had secured her services because he knew the combination of her youth, attractiveness, and ambition would serve him well. His office was just off the Bridge of the MS Typhoon. He could hear the Captain bellowing orders as the door opened to admit her. Undoubtedly tensions were riding high in the fleet. That could be useful, he thought to himself.

  “Sir?”

  Snatch-Bait considered her for a moment. She really was quite attractive.

  “Take a letter. I want it circulated to the entire Board.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Per my intention and plan, insurgent factions on numerous prime worlds have been lured into revealing themselves. My office has a zero-tolerance policy toward these groups. For this reason you were not notified in advance of this operation. Now that the presence of these groups has been unequivocally confirmed, my office will spare no effort to eradicate them. The policies of the previous chairman that allowed such groups to flourish will no longer be tolerated.”

  “Anything else, sir?”

  The chairman smiled.“Sign it and send it… and then join me in the pool.”

  “Yes, sir”

  ***

  Cat awoke with a start. She had not even realized the doctor had drugged her to make her sleep. One moment she had been talking with him about her kidneys and the next she was waking up in a cell with Private Stone.

  “What happened, Admiral?” the younger man asked when she fought to open her eyes. The cell was certainly bright.

  “My name is Cat.”

  “Yes, Admiral, it is.”

  “Then why do you insist on calling me‘Admiral’?”

  “Well… because you’re an admiral and I’m a private,” he said, somewhat bemused.

  “And this is significant?” Cat said.

  “Some people think so,” Private Stone answered, not sure of what to make of the situation.“Are you remembering much?”

  “Bits and pieces,” Cat said.“I’m not sure what happened, but it sure knocked me for a loop.”

  “How much of your Heshe tech is still functioning?”

  “What the heck is a Heshe?” Cat asked, confused.

  “It’s probably better you don’t remember. I’m pretty sure this room and these clothes are bugged,” Private Stone speculated.

  “I’m cold,” Cat said.

  The Private moved closer to her and wrapped his arm around her shoulder to try and share some of his body heat. She grabbed his hand, ostensibly to pull him closer for warmth. Once she had his hand, she began to gently press her forefinger into his palm. She pressed quickly twice followed by a long press and then a short one.‘L’ This was followed by two short presses‘I’ a pause and then three short presses‘S’. Slowly, one letter at a time, she spelled out the word‘Listen’ in Morse code.

  He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing. Thus they began to plan their escape. A few of Cat’s memories had slowly returned of their own accord, but she continued to feign complete amnesia. For the better part of a week she was removed from the cell and taken to an interrogation chamber where the ships’ captain, a Modos named Dry-Bait, would ask her a series of questions about the location and disposition of Coalition forces. She would tell him honestly she didn’t remember.

  On the sixth day the routine changed. Instead of asking her questions, she was strapped in a chair and a technician fitted a small machine to her head. It was connected by a fiber optic cable to a small unit on a table. When the captain asked the questions, this time she felt a warm sensation just beneath the skin of her scalp.

  She answered truthfully and the technician adjusted a series of controls. The questions were asked a second time and a second time she answered truthfully.

  The captain swore and swept the small device off the table. The technician cowered.

  “Get out of here!” Captain Dry-Bait yelled at the man.

  Turning to face Cat, he glowered.“Well… AdmiralKimbridge… It seems your memories truly are gone. Oh, we see you have regained some trivial vestiges of your former self, but by-and-large your mind has been wiped clean.”

  Cat smiled.“I take it this displeases you?”

  “It does indeed.”

  “Good… because whatever else I was… I know this… I was against whatever it is you are planning for that planet down below.”

  Dry-Bait laughed.“I was planning to simply crush the rebellion. Our illustrious Chairman, however, has decided to make an example of Naanac. Trust me. You would have been happier with my solution.”

  ***

  WhimPy-101 played back the response it had received from the Heshe listening post in this universe. It was the third time he played back the message. His perfect recall negated the need to replay the message but he derived a subtle pleasure listening to the voice of the race that created him. He supposed it was the same feeling a human had when they talked with a parent. The message remained the same: We are coming. Tell no one.

  ***

  Jason Ruck finally sat on the bridge of the GCP Mador again. Ricky Valen and the Honey-Dipperhad paid the WhimPy platform a visit deep in the sun’s corona. The Honey-Dipper’sstealth systems were among the best in the Coalition. This, combined with its relatively small size, made it a hard craft to spot. Nevertheless, the Honey-Dipper was forced to use an unusual approach to the sun. An active drive system would have been easy to spot. The only reasonable option was to allow the sun’s own gravity to provide the needed acceleration. That way even if the ship was spotted it would appear to be one of the many thousands of rocks consumed by the star on any given day.

  It had taken Ricky and his ship a full four days to fall into the sun. It might have taken just as long to talk the recalcitrant captain into the mission, except that his AI had a mind of her own and insisted that she was going whether he came or not. Grumbling that there was something fundamentally wrong with a ship that could mutiny by itself, he finally agreed to the mission. It wasn’t that Ricky was above risking his life… it was just that deliberately falling into a sun and hoping for the best was not his idea of a reasonable risk.

  Jason swiveled in his command chair.“Comm… Raise Admiral Faragon.”

  “Aye, sir,” the young lieutenant said, as she carried out his instructions.“Admiral Faragon is online”

  “Admiral, the Mador and Yorktownare in position.”

  The holographic image of Admiral Faragon floated in front of Jason.“Very good, Commodore. The fleet is set to transit into the Betaverse in just under twenty minutes. Are you still holding the WhimPy cloak?”

  “That’s an affirmative, Admiral, but as I indicated before, I don’t belief that Uruk forces have been fooled. They did a pretty good number on 101. He’s spent the last several days harvesting material from the sun in order to rebuild and augment his defenses.”

  “Understood, Jason. To be frank, son, we really don’t know what to make of the situation. Clearly the Uruk contingent has the strength to press their agenda, but they are restraining themselves and hiding their capabilities from the bulk of the Syndicate forces. We are hoping they continue to do so. Our bigger problem is the massed Syndicate force, which should arrive in the next solar day. Our ENOs picked up a conversation which seems to indicate the chairman plans to engage what they call their loss-mitigation system on Naanac.”

  “We’ve confirmed that here, as well, sir. As you know, we are getting feeds from Admiral Kimbridge. The captain of the Retribution, which is one of the Uruk ships, seems to already be aware of the order to destroy Nannac.”

  The holographic image paused and listened to a voice off camera. He nodded before turning back to Jason.“That can only mean that the Uruk have an equivalent listening system in place on the Syndicate flagship.”

  “I would agree, sir. It still leaves us with a problem.”

  Admiral Faragon nodded.“How do we stop this loss-mitigat
ion system from sterilizing the planet? The loss of life and the message it would send to the other worlds in revolt are both unacceptable.”

  “The only good news is the WhimPy has finished digesting the data-mining Admiral Kimbridge put in place before she was taken. We now know where all the devices are located. We could target the devices from orbit, but we would do almost as much damage as if we let them go off. The problem is the Modos build all of their sites on top of naturally occurring radioactive sites. Anything we do is likely to release large amounts of radioactivity.”

  “Again, not an acceptable solution,” the Admiral said.“The Suhtii have provided us with some additional technology that they developed. It’s a shield enhancement that dissipates energy along a time continuum. It has some unusual constraints that make it difficult to use on a starship but I’m hopeful it may prove useful in our current situation. I was hoping to have Cat’s brain working on it, but we may have to work out the details on our own. I’m transmitting the specifics to you now. Please share this with Captain Kirkland on the Yorktown. Meanwhile, I will see you both in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Very good sir. Ruck, out.”

  Chapter Twenty–Escape...

  As Cat was being led back to her cell she thought about what Captain Dry-bait had said. The planet below was to be made an example of. She couldn’t allow that to happen. But what could she do?

  Anthony, the young soldier who shared her cell, was of a mind to attempt to force a break out. Cat had her doubts. Even if they managed to break free of the cell, where would they go? What would they do?

  Before they were halfway back to her cell, however, an alarm klaxon sounded battle stations. Lights in the corridor began to flash rhythmically. The soldiers escorting her looked at each other in indecision. Clearly they had other duty stations during an emergency that did not include prisoner escort. Suddenly Cat had a thought. She froze in place, staring at the flashing lights. They tried to move her along, but she remained rigid.

  Undoubtedly they knew she had suffered some type of traumatic brain injury. The frequent visits by the ship’s senior medical staff, as well as the mocking laughs others cast her direction as they walked her to and from the interrogation facility, should have been enough to ensure that.

  As they became more insistent in their attempts to move her along, she allowed her body to collapse, and then began a series of violent spasmodic movements. She knew her antics would not fool a human medical professional, but she was betting that the Modos were not as familiar with human ailments… especially not these Modos.

  Her ploy worked. The soldiers were frantic to get to their duty stations. A sick prisoner was somebody else’s problem. She allowed her body to relax, and she adopted a completely blank stare. After a moments of heated discussion, they scooped her up between them and literally ran down an adjoining hall to the medical bay. As luck would have it the chief physician was in surgery, and so she was left in the care of an assistant. The soldiers practically dropped her on an examining table and bolted out of the room. Cat, for her part, continued to feign unconsciousness.

  When the physician’s assistant turned to pick up a medical scanner, Cat struck. Disabling a Modos attached to a Suhtii was simply a matter of pulling a control tentacle away from the Suhtii’s temple. Cat carefully transported the Modos to a saltwater bath especially designed for the Modos. She then locked the seriously confused Suthii in an isolation bay. This last was necessary because the Modos had trained the relatively simple Suhtii to respond to summoning whistles. The last thing Cat did was to change out of her prison garb and replace it with medical scrubs. She grabbed a second set of scrubs for Private Stone.

  As she worked her way carefully back to the cell that held the private, she began to remember more of what had happened to her. In point of fact, the limited number of observation nanites floating through her system had detected a change in her circumstances and triggered the release of construction nanites from the fire-safe in her supposedly disabled Heshe encounter unit.

  Within minutes she was again in two-way communication with the massive WhimPy weapons platform and its powerful AI. That AI took over control of Cat’s construction nanites. At the same time, 101 began the task of restoring Cat’s memory from an archived backup.

  ***

  Private Stone was doing pushups in his cell when Admiral Kimbridge approached the cell door unescorted. He raised an eyebrow, but otherwise said nothing. She activated the locking mechanism and tossed him a set of medical scrubs. They were ridiculously large on her, but they should fit his bigger form easily.

  After he had discarded his prison uniform, he joined her in the corridor.

  “What now?” he asked.

  She smiled.“Now we have some fun. There is an engineering station I want to get a look at up one level. I’ve walked by it every day for a week now. We’ll have to be careful. There are bound to be people in the corridors.”

  As they made their way toward the turbo lift that would normally be used to go up a level, he noticed her scrubs were shifting and resizing themselves to better fit her.

  “Admiral… are you back to being you?”

  “I never stopped being me… but if you’re asking if I have access to my enhancements and memories again, that would be an affirmative.”

  As they approached the lift, Cat touched a panel on the wall, which then slid away and revealed a ladder between the levels.

  “How?” the Private mouthed silently.

  Cat smiled.“You forget,” she whispered.“I spent quite a bit of time on other Modos ships.”

  Thanks to Cat’s newly enhanced hearing, they managed to avoid running into any crew members in the corridor. Unfortunately, the same could not be said at the engineering station; it was manned by a single Modos—a Modos Cat knew all too well. It was the Lieutenant who had captured Cat.

  Quick-Kick was busy at his station and did not immediately notice the two enter the room. It wasn’t until Cat cycled the door closed that he turned around to see who had come in. All four sets of eyes—those on the Modos and those on the Suhtii—went wide at the unexpected sight.

  Cat raced forward at an inhuman speed to attempt to separate the Modos symbiont from the Bearephant host. Quick-Kick responded equally quickly. This was Cat’s first clue that the Suhtii the lieutenant was attached too was not a normal specimen, but an android host; with android reflexes and android strength.

  As Cat reached forward to forcibly disconnect the Modos from its host, Quick-Kick caught her arm and twisted it brutally. The bone snapped under the force of his grip. Had Cat’s Heshe enhancements been fully online the damage would never have occurred. But there were too few nanites, and those that were available had not yet had time to reinforce her bones.

  Her AI immediately blocked the pain center and began to quickly knit the bone together. Cat backed off. This opponent was more dangerous than she had anticipated.

  Private Stone stepped in and tried to physically restrain the Modos officer. Quick-Kick shrugged him off with unconcealed contempt. As the private tried to hold on, Quick-Kick threw him across the room. He hit the wall with a crunch that signaled broken bones. He slid to the floor with a dazed look on his face.

  Although the private was ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the lieutenant, he provided Cat the moment she needed to mount a better-planned attack. She placed a hand on the engineering console and created a link to its electrical system. She then sent an impossibly thin graphene fiber, extruded from a fingertip, through the air toward the Modos perched on the Androids shoulder. In an instant it was all over.

  She fired well over one hundred kilowatts over the filament. It became a hot plasma in a fraction of a second but not before rendering the Modos symbiot unconscious. The android continued to fight for a few seconds longer, but Cat flooded it with several thousand command and control nanites that were hooked directly into the WhimPy’s AI. They quickly reprogrammed the android to follow Cat’s instructions.
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  She bent over Private Stone. His collar bone was broken, but already his medical nanites were repairing it. She helped him up.

  “Thank you,” she said, gently.

  “Begging the Admiral’s pardon… but what are you thanking me for? He kicked my butt.”

  “Your bravery bought me the time I needed to beat him. If you hadn’t distracted him, we would both very likely be dead right now. I’ve been there before and I can tell you I don’t like it… so again I say,‘Thank you.’”

  “You’re welcome… I think.” He looked around the room. He had to admit there was not a lot that he recognized.“Is there a plan now that we are here, ma’am?”

  Cat turned to face the various displays. Her eyes searched the readouts until she saw what she was looking for. Instantly her face lit up.

  ***

  Admiral Faragon whistled as he sat back in his command chair on board the GCP Victory. He was being hailed by an old friend onboard an enemy warship.“Cat, I can’t say I’m surprised to hear your voice… but I can say I’m damn pleased to hear it.”

  “Sir, I’m glad you’re glad… but I’ve got a bit of a situation here. You understand that the MS Retribution is loaded to the gills, if you’ll pardon the pun, with Uruk technology?”

  “Yes, according to 101 it packs quite a punch.”

  “I need WhimPy to take it out… blast it into smithereens.”

  Admiral Faragon leaned forward.“Cat, you may not have heard… but the last time the WhimPy tried that it didn’t end well for our side. What makes you think it will now?”

  Cat’s voice was steady as she answered what was a reasonable question.“Sir, this ship is a mishmash of Modos and Uruk technology. For whatever reason, the Uruk want to work from behind the scenes. That means that most of the time this ship operates using purely Modos tech. Its only when it’s seriously challenged that the captain engages the Uruk tech. I need him to engage that tech now.”