rix_scaedu

I wrote this to jeriendhal's prompt "Chains of Command".

“This is going to be interesting, isn’t it?” Prince Eustarius, more usually known in his squad and on the ship by his call sign of Carbon, lounged back in his seat in the ready room as he regarded his cousin and squad mate, Steel. He, in turn, was reading a letter from the Office of the King’s Household to Prince Castaris, which was not a problem as he was also that royal gentleman. Their other two squad mates, Maze and Dark, had turned to look at them from where they were playing darts.

“Yes,” Steel agreed. “On the one hand, we have been ordered to attend Admiral Gastenev’s cocktail party as a place of parade by our Captain, who in turn is acting on orders from the Fleet Commander. On the other hand, the Office of the King’s Household advises me that on no account am I or any of my companions at arms, to wit you three by name and rank,” he waved his letter inclusively to encompass the three of them, “to cross the King’s will and attend Admiral Gastenev’s soiree of the same time, date and location.”

“See the Captain,” suggested Dark, looming over Maze with darts in his hand. “Perhaps we can get an exception or a duty roster change?”

A few hours later, the Captain was asking, “So, Steel, just what do you hope to achieve by this meeting?”

“I’m hoping to get my two sets of orders deconflicted, sir. I have the greatest respect for your authority, but neither can I disobey my uncle.” Steel let that hang in the air, the Captain knew who he was talking about.

“If this had come from the desk of His Majesty’s Military Attaché, I could do something with it,” the Captain told him regretfully, “but as it stands, the Office of the King’s Household isn’t in my chain of command. The Fleet Commander is.”

“I, on the other hand, sir, am sworn to obey the legitimate orders of both. Might my squad and I offer to stand duty for the watch of the cocktail party?”

“Regretfully, no.” The Captain grimaced. “As we are in a secure port, a protective squad on watch is not considered necessary.”

“So, sir, which leaves me one possibility.” Steel’s face tightened as he asked, “What do I need to do to get us locked in the brig for the night of this party?”

Maze was working on the door. The most dangerous part, the transition from their ship to the enemy one, had been accomplished successfully. Now they had to get in and take out the controls for the drone and slaved fighters that were attacking their own vessel. Maze’s job was to get them in through the airlock without blowing the seals or decompressing the ship – the enemy had long put in fail safes that worked against those tactics. Essentially, she was picking a cyber lock while wearing battle armour in a vacuum. Fortunately hers came equipped for the job.

Meanwhile Dark was standing high overwatch. His task was to take out any fighters or drones sent to wipe them off the home ship’s hull, or his enemy equivalent if they sent their own team out for hand to hand. Steel and Carbon were on hull watch to take out the combat crawlers that came over the hull to remove intruders. They were an interesting variation on automatic maintenance equipment, proactive maintenance was what an engineer card-playing friend of hers called them. This vessel looked liked a cannibalised and converted Quillain ship, so she wasn’t expecting anything too surprising in that arena.

The lock yielded to her persuasions and blandishments and cycled through to admittance mode. A quick check for booby traps and they were all in. The outer door had only just closed behind Dark when Maze began work on the inner lock. “Be ready for trouble,” she whispered over their team-only link as door signalled acquiescence, “That was too easy.” The team moved to the sides of the airlock, Dark and Carbon in front as the door opened.

Dark’s heavy weapons barked between the opening shutters and took out the deck mounted weapon on the other side before it fired. Then they were into the corridor and the sole surviving gunner was overwhelmed, the gunshield had been his sole defence. Down the corridor, the enemy layouts were predictable enough, then left into the centre of the ship, shooting out the drop down guns as they went. Mowing down the crew trying to conduct a defence.

The control room door was locked, Maze’s job again, but this was still the original Quillain bridge lock – she had the backdoor password on file. They were in. Drone and fighter controllers looked up from their boards, woefully unprotected, Carbon took out the sole armed and armoured security with one shot. Steel lifted the nearest operator out of his seat with one hand by the nape of his neck and began the process of moving them all up to the far end of the room.

Maze plugged in her other suite of tools and made her way into the control system. She was faster than their security program, if that was what you could call it, and went straight for the command protocols. Drones, shut down. The deadly little needles of steel, engine and warhead all stopped, even firing their control jets to stop them dead. Half the fighters were out now, returning to their bays, that was the best way of dealing with them. That last group though-.

Maze switched to the circuit that let her speak to her own bridge as well as well as her team.

“Lollord, this is Maze, you have a suicide breacher inbound. Repeat, you have a suicide breacher inbound. Searching for second part control system, over.”

“Maze, this is Lollord,” the Captain was as crisp as she was, “Find it. Out.”

Carbon and Steel were searching for another compartment leading off this one. Dark was guarding the prisoners. Maze stayed linked to the system. When Steel found it the door was merely flush and catched. The two of them exchanged a glance as she went into smaller control hub, both thinking “Psych ops.”

The sole occupant was chubby without being fat, unshaven for several days, wearing a sweat soaked tee shirt and smirking in an almost insufferable “I’ve won” way. This close Maze could detect his peripheral connections through the spectrum. All that flesh over the system would severely limit his linking range. His ports were protected, but not the system ports, it wasn’t that hard to get in. Once in, she found the coding on his account impenetrable in the time she had and the loopholes in the operating system had been patched, so she forced a roll back of the operating system. He was so busy controlling his fighters and breaching craft while gazing at her unmoving armour that he didn’t notice that he was no longer alone in his hardware.

Fortunately this was almost an off the shelf system. Also control of assets was allocated from the system to the account, although that was not what the interface appeared to tell you. Most operators didn’t get beyond the interface. Maze dropped a pre-prepared account set up into the system giving herself access to all assets, made sure she was into those last few fighters and the breacher, ordered them to fire retros and come to a stop as she locked his account out of all assets. As his eyes widened in surprise she shot him in the head, the chest and the abdomen. Body fluids and fragments as well as his cybernetic augmentations splattered the room. Fighter control wasn’t the only system he’d packed into himself.

Once the drones and fighters were out of the way, the main boarding party came across and finished securing the enemy ship. Steel, Carbon, Maze and Dark stood down and returned to their ship. Armour was tested, serviced, refuelled and reloaded, and the team went back to the duty room. Steel and Carbon resumed their seats on opposite sides of the baekera board while Maze and Dark started on the post-op paper work. Carbon made his move then waited while Steel gazed at the board over templed fingers.

Eventually he moved his pieces saying as he did so, “What worries me is that this was another cheap trick. They could get twenty of those buckets for the cost of a patrol boat, two hundred for the cost of a frigate and we’ve seen nothing else for the last six months. Either they’ve run out of resources,” Carbon snorted in disbelief, “Or they’re doing something else with them. Question is, what?” He put his last tile in place and said to Carbon, “Your turn.”

Vivien pushed the door open quietly and closed it just as quietly behind her. It had been years since she’d been in a ready room and for a moment she savoured the old familiarity: the lockers; the smell; the pinup; and the hard music. She blinked hard, no ready room she’d been in during her career had stuck up a print of The Seductress by Macchiato as a pinup or played the Volgun Cycle by Kristakov as background noise. She ignored her surprise, she was here to see her granddaughter. She should have seen her at the presentation and following reception but Gavin, her son and the girl’s father, had been Gavin and sent that ridiculous note to her commanding officer. The divorce from Inglorien had been particularly vicious and Vivien sometimes worried that the child of that marriage had been overlooked in the wreckage by everyone including herself.

“Can I help you?” She snapped out of her reverie and paid attention to the speaker. He was big, tall and broad, in armour he must be a walking heavy weapons platform. The last one like that she’d served with had been handsome, oddly graceful and an excellent formal dancer. This one had a broken nose, not so bad as to require reconstruction, but that with the scars on the torso and arms visible around his singlet made him look worn by use.

“I hope so,” faded grey eyes looked up at mottled hazel, “I was hoping to see my granddaughter, Terezon. I understand she is on duty, but I was hoping for a few moments. We’re due to leave soon but I haven’t seen her for a number of years.”

He called over his shoulder while keeping an eye on Vivien, “Hey, Maze. There’s some old lady here wants to see you. Says she’s your grandmother.”

“Bring her round,” that was a male voice, baritone and oddly familiar. Vivien cocked her head, trying to tag a memory. Where and who?

“This way please, ma’am.” The big man stepped back and gestured. Vivien stepped forward, turned round the end of the lockers and saw the rest of the duty crew, pent in this room with the launch tubes for their shift, occupying themselves until required. The other three were dressed as the big man, as she had been when she’d done this job, in overalls over underwear and slip-on slippers. The overalls were tied around the waist, obviously they weren’t expecting company, to cut the strip time if they had to go down the launch tubes into their armour. The other two male members of the team, individual but cut from the same dark haired cloth, sat either side of a table topped with the board and tiles of a baekera game in progress. Behind them, half turned from the darts board, darts in hand, calm faced but so hurt looking around the eyes, stood her granddaughter.

“Ma’am, pray sit,” the man on the left, owner of the baritone, indicated the third chair at the table. “I’m Steel, this,” he indicated his game opponent, “Is Carbon.” Where had she seen those faces before? It somehow seemed so obvious, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. “Our large friend is Dark. You’re here to see our friend Maze?”

She took the seat. “I’m here to see my granddaughter Terezon. Her call sign may be Maze. I don’t know.”

“Why should we let you?” Steel fired back.

That’s it, thought Vivien, that’s who I’m remembering, your father. You must be the youngest one by that last wife of his. And that makes the other one his son. “Prince Castaris-”

“Steel,” he interrupted, “Thank you.”

“Steel,” she corrected herself, “I was looking forward to seeing my granddaughter again. My son can be very...stiff-necked. I don’t entirely understand why he made that direction, but he does not speak for me. I hoped that she and I might talk.”

“Ma’am’s family has always been very careful to make sure that we did not talk.” Her granddaughter spoke calmly but decades of marriage to her grandfather made it easy for Vivien to spot the underlying bitterness.

“The hurley-burley of family get togethers always makes in-depth conversation difficult,” said Vivien, “But you need to fight to make yourself heard sometimes, talk over the others to hold the floor. You were always very quiet.”

“I perceived a policy of deliberate exclusion,” that calm manner had infuriated her sometimes in her husband. Too often she’d only found out he was angry or upset when he started breaking things in his training sessions. “And I was quiet because everyone was telling me to be quiet and wait my turn, but it was never my turn.” She paused. “Then the invitations stopped coming when I reached my majority. It was clear that no-one wanted me around.”

“The invitations stopped coming?” Vivien was suddenly all at sea, then enlightenment began to dawn, “How did you get told about family events before?”

“Letters to my guardian from Father’s solicitor. The last letter I had from them was when I reached my majority and they wrote to advise that he would no longer be responsible for any of my expenses.”

“Then Hesperace,” she named her current daughter-in-law, the wife after Inglorien, “Hasn’t been-? Of course she hasn’t.” Vivien made a small sound of self disgust, “I should have thought of that. Let me have your contact details?”

“Perhaps not,” that was Carbon, Prince Eustasius, “I would suggest that you give her your contact details and she can send you a line from her secure mailbox, when she can access it.” He smiled, as infuriating as his father. “I’m always uncomfortable about notes in handbags.”

Vivien nodded and slipped a business card out of her handbag and onto the table in front of her. If he was his father’s son then her details would be thoroughly checked before he would let Terezon contact her. Prince Jeremias had always seen himself as the protector of his friends.

“How is your mother?” She had to ask, it was only polite. Inglorien was a difficult, brilliant, glorious creature and had had, so Gavin had said, custody of the child after the divorce. There had been something that Terezon/Maze had said just now that was setting alarm bells ringing, but what had it been?

“I wouldn’t know.” An even stiller voice than when she’d talked about the family gatherings, “The letter from her solicitors on my majority not only told me she was no longer responsible for my expenses, it told me I was never to contact her, unless the matter arose out of or in the course of my military duties.” She took in her grandmother’s shocked expression, “Yes, reaching my majority was really fun. At least my guardian provided cake.”

“Your guardian?” That was what had set off her alarms. “I thought your mother had you. If not her, who did you live with?”

Gavin had said, no, Gavin had said, “I don’t have custody.”

“Uncle Telvy, when I wasn’t at school.”

“Telvy? Is he a relative of your mother’s?” There were certainly no Telvys in Gavin’s family connections.

“No,” she actually smiled, a ray of sunshine that transformed her. “He was a friend of the court.” Her grandmother’s expression made her pause, “Well, the court had to do something. I checked the case papers after my majority, when I‘d calmed down a bit. Both my parents renounced custody. He was...available.”

Gavin was going to die. She loved him dearly but right now, despite him being her child and an Admiral, she wanted to send him to his room for time out so she wouldn’t kill him. Terezon had been six when they’d divorced and not once had he said anything that suggested any comprehension that he’d subjected his child to this depth of abandonment. No wonder the girl always seemed quiet and subdued. No wonder there were no photos or mementoes of her childhood handed over for grandparents to pore over, the wretched man had just not been interested to know himself.

The door to the ready room banged open and Gavin’s voice called out, “Mother, are you in here? I hate to disturb your nostalgia-“

“Hutt!” Dark, the first to sight the Admiral in his dress uniform had sounded the alert and all four were immediately on their feet and at attention.

Her son glanced, unrecognising, across the duty team, “As you were. Mother, it’s time to go. You can hang out in the duty room as long as you like on our transport.” He held out hand to help her up and gave her that smile that explained a lot about how he’d persuaded three women to marry him over the years.

Vivien looked at him coolly. “I didn’t come here to ‘hang out.’ I came here to see Terezon. You might remember her, only child of your second marriage? The one I never got to see enough of because you renounced custody?”

He flushed. “Now is not the time or the place, Mother. Now-”

“Why not here? Why not in front of her?” Vivien glanced in her granddaughter’s direction, Kedrith all over again, she was leaning back against the bulkhead doing breathing exercises for centring and control. “Afraid she might show you a reflection of yourself you don’t want to see?”

He opened his mouth to speak and the strains of Kristakov’s Volganan Chorus was replaced by the launch claxon. The duty team leapt for their chutes leaving overalls and slippers behind and were gone in seconds. Listening for them, Vivien caught the four successful away chimes bouncing back up the chutes.

“Thanks to the enemy,” she went on, “We are now alone and not going anywhere. What the hell were you thinking?”