Warpath (33 page)

“Ashley just did,”
Alice replied.

Minh-Chu opened his
mouth to speak, but was interrupted as Alice went on. “I don’t
know what the best thing for me is half the time, how does he know?
What am I supposed to do with the Rangers here anyway?”

“Help tame Tamber?
Defend our favourite moon?” Minh-Chu offered. “Become a better
soldier than anyone I know by the time you’re twenty?”

“You’re no help,”
Alice said. “I’m going to go see if I can find Governor Anderson.
Maybe I can get this changed if I go from the top down.” She
stomped off towards a side corridor that would take her to a shuttle
bay.

“They don’t make
smaller boots for people her size?” Minh-Chu asked, noticing, not
for the first time, how comically large the soles of her combat boots
seemed on her.

“I love it,” Ashley
said quietly. “Sometimes she looks like she’s a kid playing in
her dad’s shoes.”

“I heard that!”
Alice screeched over her shoulder.

“She’s been rolling
back for a couple days, resetting so she’s physically sixteen
again,” Ashley said quietly after waiting a few moments for Alice
to go around the corner and out of sight. “She’s rigged her
medical tracker so she can see it now.”

“I didn’t know,”
Minh-Chu replied. “Haven Shore is the best place for her though.
The Rangers will take care of her, and I think they respect her
there.”

“They do,” Ashley
said. “She’s officially an Officer now, not just a returning
trainee.”

“Did she say
Captain’s Mast?” Minh-Chu said, checking his command and control
unit for details. The accused was an officer he’d never heard of.

“Reason number two of
three that I know I’m in the military, officially, like a real
military,” Ashley said. “The Governor, Ayan, Oz, and Captain
Valent are all going.”

“You say that like
it’s a social gathering,” Minh-Chu said with a smirk.

“We didn’t exactly
have that on the Samson,” Ashley said. “Captain kept things
pretty informal but watched the whole crew. No one got much past
him.”

“Now, with a bigger
crew, and war you know things will be different.”

“I know, it really
clicked this morning when reason number one I knew I was in the
military came along. I got officer registration forms.”

Ashley looked as
serious as she ever did at the helm, and they stopped in front of the
entrance to the Mess Hall. “What do you think?” He knew the forms
she was talking about, he got a version of them before his patrol
began and opted in for career registration.

“Three year term with
no babies, my age gets locked, my health gets monitored and my skill
level has to fit in a margin this wide,” she said, holding her
hands a few centimetres apart. “Unless they go up, then the margin
moves up.”

“There’s more
latitude than that, and there are exceptions to that rule,”
Minh-Chu said, leading her through the doors and to a table beside
it. “I can walk you through the details, but you can think about
this, you don’t have to serve in the military.”

“You are,” Ashley
said, sitting close to him. “I know there’s no question, you’re
signing up.”

“Freeground is where
I come from. My family is safe, they’re not there anymore, but-“

“I understand,”
Ashley said.

“You don’t have to
sign up because I did,” Minh-Chu said. “It’s hard, military
families live with a lot of difficulties, but I’ll serve to defend
you, and Haven Shore.”

They watched as the
Blessed Mission locked into place part way in to the main
manufacturing bay. The first thing a large manipulator arm did to the
hull was scrub the name of the ship, OOE BLESSED MISSION, off. The
hall was filled with the sounds of over two hundred people cheering.

Minh-Chu learned a long
time ago that women didn’t always need their problems fixed,
sometimes they needed to be listened to while they worked their
problems out themselves. It was that lesson from his sisters that he
heeded then, and took Ashley’s hand.

“You said military
families,” Ashley said to him. “Is that me?” she looked at him,
expectant and as beautiful as he’d ever seen her. “That’s me,
for you?”

“I love you, Ashley,”
he told her. “Someday I’d like you to meet my family, we’ll go
there, they’ll embarrass me, adore and adopt you. They’ll do that
because my grandfather used to tell us that we should all be
fortunate enough to have two families, the one we’re born to, and
the one we choose when we meet someone we can’t live without. I
know you don’t have the family you were born to, but I want to be
the family you choose.” He wished, more than anything, that he had
a ring in his pocket. That would be the moment to propose, the moment
to demonstrate to her that he wanted to be with her forever, but
there was no ring. There would be, he promised himself, and soon.

“Minh,” Ashley
said, hugging him as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Yes,” she
said against his ear. “A family of two.”

“A start,” Minh-Chu
said. “A legendary start.”

“But no babies for
three years,” she said. “I want to sign up because I love Haven
Shore, I love Zoe, and Panloo, and so many things I’ve seen here. I
never even got to see Kambis, and it’s gone, someone did that.”
She looked back towards the ship in the manufacturing bay. The
windows ran the length of the Mess Hall wall. “I can’t believe
it, people who hate us, people who want to take control of everything
did that to us. They burned a whole planet. That can’t happen.”

“You have two days to
back out, so there’s time to think about it,” Minh-Chu offered
quietly.

“No, I’m going.
Panloo is staying though,” she said. “For Zoe, and so there’s
at least one good civilian pilot on Tamber. Most of the people I
trained are signed up already.”

“Welcome to Triton
Fleet,” Minh-Chu said.

Ashley smiled and said;
“Thanks. Going to be a while before I get to wear anything other
than a standard uniform. Or heels, no heels in the military.”

“Thank God,”
Minh-Chu said. “I could break an ankle trying to get to my fighter
in heels.”

She laughed. “I’d
love to see you try to walk in heels.”

“Watch what you wish
for,” Minh-Chu replied.

“No aging, either. We
get our clocks stopped. Maybe you could get a rollback? You know,
just far enough to get rid of the grey hair?”

“I do not have grey
hair!” Minh-Chu replied, feigning outrage. He knew he had a few
creeping in. He’d coloured three only days before with gel. “And
I have the constitution of a twenty year old.”

“Well, I can confirm
the second part,” Ashley said. “Do you think we have time to
check out our temporary officer’s quarters? Are you off duty?”

“I have to check on
Samurai Squadron in about an hour,” he said.

“Let’s go!” she
said, practically pulling him out of his seat as she stood and leaned
towards the door with his hands in hers. He did not offer resistance,
and was impressed at how quickly she could walk in heels.

If there was one thing
that Finn was grateful for, it was that he wouldn’t have to share
his report with Jake and Ayan while they were standing in front of
the stasis tubes they discovered. He was still uneasy about where
they were presenting their information, however.

Stephanie showed Liara,
Agameg and Finn to the Captain’s Mast Room aboard the Blessed
Mission. It was a small room with a table that ran the length of the
middle. There was a door on either side of the table with five seats
on one side and two on the other. Finn, Agameg and Liara stood on the
side with two chairs in front of Stephanie.

The other side of the
table with five seats was empty.

“Are we in trouble?”
Agameg asked. Finn was thankful he asked first, it was the question
on his mind.

“No,” Stephanie
answered. “But you’re going to witness the first sentence passed
on anyone in the new Triton Fleet. That is, after you give your
report and answer questions.”

“This is the room for
examining people’s actions then assigning punishment,” Agameg
said.

“Yes, under the laws
we have to follow now that our crew size is going up to about three
thousand, yes it is,” Stephanie answered.

“But not all bad
things happen in this room,” Liara said. “The Uniform Code of
Justice they’re using from Freeground designates this room for a
lot of official functions that require multiple Officers. Don’t
worry, Agameg.”

“This is one of the
only rooms that will not be changing at all when the Blessed
Mission’s modifications are complete. I’m glad to hear it will
have a broader purpose,” Agameg said. “Friends call me Aggie,”

“Okay,” Liara
replied. “Thank you. My friends call me when they need a lawyer.”

“I do not like this
room,” Agameg said, visibly looking around at the plain white
table, the white walls, and the white ceiling.

“I thought that was
funny,” Liara whispered to herself.

“It was,” Stephanie
told her.

The door on the other
side of the table opened to admit Captain Ayan Anderson, Captain
Jacob Valent, Governor Carl Anderson, and Admiral Terry Ozark
McPatrick. They took their seats quietly, there was just enough room
for them. “I call this session to order, everything from this point
will be recorded and sealed. Bring the accused in.”

The door behind Finn
opened and Ensign Rinett was escorted in. He was still in his red
vacsuit uniform. Stephanie guided him to stand beside her at the rear
of the room. “You will be silent until all reports are made, and
all testimony is given. Do you understand.”

“Yes, I do,” he
said, visibly worried. “I don’t recognize this court, or this
process, for the record.”

“This isn’t a
trial, it is a review and sentencing under new Triton Fleet Law,”
Oz said. “You will be silent unless called upon to speak or you
will be restrained for these proceedings.”

“I don’t recognize
this court,” he repeated. “But I’ll listen.”

“As required by our
allies, the British Alliance,” Governor Anderson announced. “We
are to have a Uniform Code of Justice in order to operate as a fleet
in an area where they are posting defensive forces. In response, we
have declared that we are operating under the Freeground Military
Uniform Code of Justice with limited revisions, so it has been
renamed the Triton Fleet Military Uniform Code of Justice, a copy can
be provided upon request. After reviewing your actions, this command
has examined evidence that calls your conduct into question. The
Admiral will now lead the proceedings for Triton Fleet.”

“In six hours,”
Rinett scoffed. “You were able to review my actions and all the
evidence in six hours? This is just a show you’re putting on so you
don’t look like tyrants. It won’t work, everyone will know
anyway.”

“You’ll speak when
addressed,” Governor Anderson said firmly.

Oz looked to Finn and
said; “Please render the report you prepared.”

It took Finn a moment
to gather his thoughts, he was just getting over the fact that he had
been drawn into some kind of justice proceeding focused on Rinette.
“Chief Agameg and I examined the use logs, testing information and
technology of the D-Drive, or Dimension Drive that was found
installed on the Fallen Star. It took us five hours today.”

“What did you find?”
Ayan asked.

“I’ve only
confirmed what the engineering teams that analysed it before found.
It is what it seems to be, a drive that is made to open a rift in
space to a place between dimensions where limits of normal space-time
are not the same. It does not transit a ship into another dimension
entirely. The drive then creates an elongated energy field, similar
to a wormhole, to a plotted destination where another rift opens. It
draws energy from the space it is in so it cannot run out of power
before it transits back to normal space. If it builds up a charge and
cannot release it by creating a second rift so the ship can transit
back to normal space-time, it will open a rift at the end of it’s
emitter’s range so it can expend energy, but some energy from the
other side can be let through in this case. The drive didn’t have a
connection to external emitters last night, because someone enabled
the vault’s seal between the D-Drive and the emitter, so it
released the energy inside the ship.”

“Did you find any
evidence that Ensign Rinett tampered with any systems that would
cause this?” Jake asked.

“No, he was not
aboard when the tampering took place,” Finn replied. He wanted to
go into more detail, to tell them it was a Citadel Agent, but he
remembered what his instructors in college told him about justice on
a ship. Only answer the questions you are asked, and give the details
that are requested of you.

“Chief Agameg Price,”
Jake addressed. “Are your findings different from Chief Billy
Finn’s in any way?”

“My report came to
the same conclusions, and did not find the Ensign at fault,” Agameg
replied. “I did create an accurate holographic model of how the
drive works, however, but the Ensign didn’t have anything to do
with that either.”

“We see this Ensign
cleared of any involvement with sabotaging the D-Drive,” Oz said.
“Now, on to the report we read half an hour ago from Lieutenant
Commander Liara Erron. Please, relay your report to this panel.”

“Sir,” she started
officially, sharply, only regarding Admiral McPatrick. “I reviewed
the logs left by Ensign Rinett, Doctor Messana and the rest of her
team aboard the Fallen Star. Ensign Rinett was a member of the team
assigned to catalogue the experiments and research materials in
storage aboard the Fallen Star’s vault lab. He notified Doctor
Messana that he had discovered one of the original labs where
framework technology was developed, and proposed that there could be
a way to remove framework technology from a subject. A week later
Doctor Messana moved aboard the Fallen Star and began research. Over
the next four weeks her team worked on a software solution to trick a
framework into regenerating the entire body, then removing itself as
part of the process, materializing human flesh and bone as voids
appeared in the body. Doctor Messana called Officer Alice Valent in
for a routine physical and used the opportunity to make a copy of the
hardware device containing the patterns for her current form, and the
next form she’d evolve into when she was forced to materialize most
of her body due to illness or injury. Ensign Rinett stole framework
skeletons from a Un-Tam, a Haven Shore military base using a security
pass issued by Doctor Messana. They began using them as test
subjects, since the software they were developing worked in
simulation. Six failed, as evidenced by the inert frameworks we
discovered in the vault, but the last one was a success.”