Traitor

“You’ve a minor wound from a beam weapon that partly penetrated your shoulder. I’ve repaired your muscle, your blood vessels, your nerves, and skin. You sustained a minor concussion which I’ve repaired. You’ve extensive bruising on your side despite the armor. You can continue with your activities in five minutes,” the medical AI said slightly improving her previous arrogant manner.

“You’ve been in the pod for two and a half hours. You’ve had treatment using superior Empire technology, Yada, Yada, Yada. I’ve corrected all your problems.”

The voice reminded him of Phyllis Pritchett an elderly spinster who taught him at Junior High school. She was a shapeless woman of indefinite age with thin gray hair. She used to tilt her head backward to look at him down her nose. She had disliked him from the first instant that she had seen him. After every examination, he would have to go back to her to discuss his paper as she usually scored him poorly even if he had the answer correct. Jason often suspected that she did this to have an argument with him. She treated him as if he was an idiot even though he was an excellent mathematician and achieved outstanding results.

The AI however no longer behaved as if Jason was a waste of time, but the voice still grated and she still sounded condescending.

“Thank you so much for providing such superior medical care from the Empire,” said Jason laughing. “I wonder what medical care would be like from a civilization that’s sixty-thousand years ahead of the Empire. They might do the same treatment in minutes while I was fully awake and entertain me with go-go dancers,” retorted a grinning Jason, “And I’m telling you this because you’ve improved a lot but there’s a lot of scope for improvement. Always remember there are others better than you and remember people want a compassionate pod not one that thinks she’s the bee’s knees. Your voice needs to be worked on next. It needs to be more sexy, deep, and husky. You sound like a prissy schoolmarm.”

“Yes, my Lord,” said the pod, “I’ll do my best. I know the whole spiel of superior Empire stuff is a real bore. I’ll send you some samples of voice and if my Lord has the time I’d appreciate your advice on the best voice. My voice is a standard one supplied by the priests. I’ll check through the options.”

Jason had fought in many fights during karate, aikido, and judo tournaments that he had involved himself in since early childhood. He had fought in Vietnam. He had been hurt and had bones broken but was fortunate not to have been shot. That wasn’t entirely true he thought. I was hit three times but they were superficial injuries without much in the way of treatment and rehabilitation needed.

He considered himself fortunate to be provided with a high-level of medical treatment in the Empire. He knew that he would have had hours of surgery at home and would have needed a long period of rehabilitation. His shoulder would have never been the same. It felt fine even now but he couldn’t move very much in the pod.

“Will I need any rehabilitation for my shoulder O wise medical AI? Is my shoulder fully fixed, or was the job incomplete and I’ll need months of rehabilitation?” Jason asked.

“The repair is complete and your shoulder will work. Your shoulder will recover its full strength within four days. Begin your usual gym slowly with your weights at fifty percent of the usual. You can run as you do with the dogs. Do not engage in unarmed combat for two days. You may do your forms. You don’t need formal rehabilitation. You may leave the pod in five minutes. Is there anything else I can help you with?” The pod asked in a husky voice somewhat deeper. “How is that voice, Milord?”

The AI was polite. It was also almost contrite. “That was a lot better,” Jason remarked. “Thank you very much, I do appreciate your care. I’ll do as you direct from an exercise point of view. Do you know what happened after I lost consciousness?”

“I will interrogate Ship on your behalf and retrieve the holograms and assemble them in sequence for a three to four-minute presentation.

Seconds later the hologram began to form images. Jason saw ship marines breaking through the corridor obstruction seconds after the bridge door imploded and make their way towards the bridge while under heavy fire. He saw the grenade he threw fly out the doorway and explode in front of the attackers immobilizing a quarter of them. He was very pleased about that but relieved it didn’t explode in his hand.

He saw the second group of defenders break through the obstruction in the second corridor, catching the attackers in crossfire before breaking through the attackers and entering the bridge. Jason saw himself being shot and his attacker shot from behind a split-second later. Then it was all over on the bridge, as ship marines captured the last attackers.

The hologram switched to the pitched battle near engineering. The attackers suddenly ceased fire. They realized they were going to be overwhelmed and surrendered.

“Thank you,” said Jason, “I do like your new bedside manner. Keep it up and your patients will love you.”

He had a flashback to the battle, seeing himself diving and throwing out the grenade, then stabbing the two Marines. He felt the burning in his shoulder and falling before he lost consciousness. He knew he must’ve banged his head but he didn’t remember it. His head still felt a little fuzzy but was much less fuzzy than the previous time that he was concussed while playing football.

“You may exit the pod, now. Look after yourself, Jason, and have an excellent day. You did a great job.”

Jason climbed out of the pod to find he was being guarded by eight marines. “Sir, I’m Sgt. McGregor, we’ll be your guards until we are sure the ship is secure. That was great leadership Admiral, and you were pretty impressive on the bridge if I may say so?”

“That’s very kind of you sergeant. Just call me Jason I’m pretty informal and I have no military rank. I’m going to my wardroom to clean up and then go to the smaller meeting room next to the bridge.”

“Colonels please meet me for a preliminary debriefing in the smaller meeting room next to the bridge in an hour. In the meantime, I’d like the ship to send patrols out; let’s send out remote sensors to warn us of a potential attack and I’d like us to find the enemy ships. I’m sure they are close to us, and are hiding and waiting for the battle outcome. Those big boarding pods had to come from somewhere else.

“I assume we have a tracker on our ship or our saboteurs are sending messages. Can we set up communications blocks to prevent our status and position being known. Is an hour sufficient time?” Jason asked. He heard their acknowledgment in the disembodied way that voices sounded within armor.

“Damage report! Ship, include all our forces.”

“The ship has suffered readily repairable damage. I’m no longer being obstructed. I’ll complete repairs to the holes in the hull within the hour. Our forces disabled forty-two enemy fighters and we had thirty-one pilots injured. Four were killed before their escape pods ejected. Most of the fighters are salvageable and repairable within three days. We have captured twenty-six fighters. I’m bringing the captured and damaged fighters into Bay three as I speak. Several of the pilots from both groups are seriously injured and will be in pods for up to three weeks.

“I’ve almost completed the weapons reload as we now have ample reserve material. I could do it faster if I used material from the frigates and the destroyer, but I advise against that strategy as I can repair the enemy ships. I’m generating an extra four thousand repair drones and one-hundred-fifty construction AI bots from my reserves. I will bring the ships on board to do the repairs.

“There’s a rich asteroid belt close to us. We have enough materials on board to do most of what we need to do, but we have found large quantities of all the rare metals that are necessary for missile building and for repair of all our damaged weapons and those on the captured ships. There’s even the necessary raw material for the rebuilding of the communications drones.

“We’ll create a major reserve capacity mining the larger asteroids and storing the smaller ones and I’ll extract the necessary metals as we proceed, and store the material in case of future combat.

“Fighter scans are also showing evidence of other damaged ships in this area. I’m sending out salvage drones to bring back as much as we can. We’ll then identify the vessels. I can use the existing ship material rapidly and effectively.

“This isn’t a regular shipping route. The wrecks appear on preliminary analysis not to be of Empire origin. Some are ancient from what the drones are showing me. We’ll ensure we analyze them to salvage any advanced technology we can.

“I’ve ample storage space. It’s faster to use reconstituted salvaged material than to use mined materials. We can repair all of the damaged enemy ships. I’ll start on ship reconstitution of all vessels as quickly as is possible. It will take sixteen hours to mine a large reserve. We have enough existing material to do repairs on the enemy ships, make our missiles, and have enough to rebuild the entire stock of missiles three times. We aim to increase that reserve a further one hundred and fifty percent.

“There’s enough diversity of dark energy and dark matter to reconstitute our existing particles and energy, to power all weapons and fully rebuild our reserves within the next twelve hours. We are using automated collector pods for these purposes.

“The marine cyber-warfare group has neutralized the interference that I was facing, and is limiting access to my systems to priority protected systems only. The engineers have reported that someone blocked my sensors from seeing the weapons energy levels. The engineers have made repairs.

“Saboteurs have almost shut down the weapons power supply reactors. We were running at just three percent of capacity, which was delaying weapons reload. The enemy was unable to affect the stored energy and the energy that was diverted from the engines. The engineers are systematically checking through the sensor and control grids, and are also limiting access. Surveillance has been quadrupled to areas that lead to critical systems.

“The enemy disrupted both missile and cannon aiming calibration. We have repaired and recalibrated the medium and long-range cannon. We have found different and unrelated faults in the short-range controls and are repairing them.

“The weapons looked normal to me on my sensor arrays, but post battle analysis is showing errors. The engineers are checking that our weapons are working perfectly and that we can use them effectively. We are building replacement communications drones to replace those lost in battle. They are complex drones and are slow to build. We don’t usually build them on the ship and will have to use a missile line for their construction.

“We have communications specialists on board who can commission the drones and probes.”

“Ship, what is the usual role of these specialists?” asked Jason.

“They specialize in enemy communications analysis, and build custom, small communications probes to block or interfere with enemy communications. They attack and hack into enemy AIs and computers, to break chains of command. They find the ships of command and find out command pathways. They specialize in enemy communication and computer languages. That’s a brief outline only. The current group comprises language specialists, computer specialists, and hackers. Dedicated AIs work with them closely. They are part of the cyber-warfare division.

“At the start of battle, they block enemy communication and then use communications drones to block all sensor information leaving our area to any other remote sensors. They make it look to the enemy as if the pirate ships are still sitting here. They sent several hyperspace drones ahead so the enemy won’t see our arrival.

“They block all electromagnetic and related information that emerges from our ship.

“They are analyzing the destroyer computers, and they have confirmed that the ships are from The Mob. Jason, I’ll report further when I’ve received updated information. The Marines are interrogating the pirate captain and his senior officers. I’d suggest that you return with your guard to your cabin, so that you may more comfortably meet with the officers in forty-five minutes.”

Jason entered the refresher. The dogs eagerly joined him. He looked forward to the experience when he had the time. The machine gently massaged him which he enjoyed and then washed his hair with a fragrant shampoo. The dresser dressed him in smart casual clothing. He opened his mouth over the mouth cleaner and felt it clean his teeth and refresh his mouth in a few seconds. He made his way to the meeting room and command control center beside the bridge.

Jason arranged to meet the colonels in one of the smaller breakout meeting rooms near the bridge to which Cherie the Ship directed him.

Someone with great taste had decorated the room which was the most luxurious of many similar rooms near the bridge. The room provided lighting that delicately created an intimate setting. The decorator made the room look like a board room with wooden panels, pictures of past captains and admirals and abstract sculptures on pedestals. The table was a beautiful polished piece of multicolored laminated wood. The chairs were plush and comfortable. The two colonels had arrived ahead of Jason. He entered the room with two of his guards following him.

“I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Jason Kargo and I’m returning to the Empire from the planet Earth.”

“I’m Janet Malone Colonel of Marines.”

“I’m Phoebe Harris Colonel of Empire fighter corps.”

They were wearing their armor and integrated helmets so Jason couldn’t see much of them. “Colonel, did our fighter patrols locate other enemy ships within range?”

“Sir, please excuse us for wearing our armor. It’s standard post battle protocol until we are sure our living and work areas are fully secure. Sir your area is under heavy guard and you will be accompanied by a security detail until we can assure your safety.

“I sent out fighters, before our last conversation. Four squadrons of fighters are scanning the region. We are searching the area near us, including stars, planets, and moons.

“Mining asteroid scans are underway and gunships and fighters are protecting mining ’droids from the ship while they’re getting necessary supplies for repair and construction of weaponry. Abundant material is necessary for missile construction and if we don’t mine it we’ll use up our reserves. The asteroids are rich in everything we need. We are bringing smaller asteroids on board to save time. There’s no rush to move on, when we have such outstanding resources close to us that will help us in the future. When fully armed this ship is formidable and well-nigh impregnable. Even now we can defend ourselves against a very much bigger force, than the one we faced.

“It’s important to remove threats near us. We need to find if there are other hidden ships near us.

“Shuttles have docked with prisoners, and medical shuttles have returned with the injured. Marines, followed by pilots are entering the pirate vessels and preparing to return them to the ship for repair or salvage and reprocessing for weapons use and remanufacture. Salvage and repair drones are already active on the ships.

We’ll fit the destroyer into Bay 4 and we’ll explore if repair or salvage is most applicable. My first impression is that they’re all repairable in time. Ship believes so. I’ll report the details at our next meeting. I’d suggest that we meet in four hours as we’ll have more detailed information for you. Ship tells me that she briefed you on the damage she sustained and her repair schedule.

“We have examined some of the wrecks nearby. Ships large and small are scattered over a great distance. They appear to be wrecks following a great battle, a very long time ago. We don’t recognize the armor nor do we recognize the races. Many are ships that don’t appear in our archives. We are salvaging as much as we can for analysis, but from past experience we are very careful to seal the potentially active technology in compartments. The ancients had dangerous countermeasures. Ship can use the metals as source material for the replicators or sometimes directly in repair. This is a great discovery and I hope we’ll find some useful technology.

“We definitely must send scientists back here after we return to the Empire.”

Janet Malone and Phoebe Harris sat at their usual table talking with the planning teams. The canteen was still quiet before the mealtime rush. The marine canteen was cavernous, but more sparsely furnished than Jason’s. Four thousand people could eat comfortably. They sat in a corner away from curious ears.

“So, Connie, what are the most important issues before the meeting?” Janet Malone asked Major Constance Ross the most senior intelligence officer.

“The kitchen people say that Jason is a real hunk, pleasant and self-effacing, but Marie says he does have a dangerous feel about him. She said he hardly reacts when she presses her boobs against him. She says he has ancient morals and won’t shift them. He talks about being a one-woman man and being true to his wife! She says she nearly laughed when he told her. He also told her he’s an old man. He’s only eighty! He’s a spring chicken in my view.

“They all told me that he’s happy to spend time with them in the kitchen and he asks a lot about the Empire and he’s very keen to explore his heritage. They did say most of the crew in the canteen shun him and no one talks to him, but he remains pleasant and friendly.

“His daughter told them that he was ruthless in martial arts competitions and a pioneer in computers. She also said he was a great lover according to her mother but could be really insensitive when he was pursuing a goal. She said he was a fantastic father. He was excessively intolerant of those who were undisciplined. He didn’t have many friends but those friends he had were close friends to him who were loyal and good people. Many of his best friends had died in recent years. She also told them that his wife hung herself after she was diagnosed with dementia. Had Stan got there a few weeks earlier, the tragedy would have been averted. His interests were more on the solitary side and he didn’t need a lot of company. His daughter said he fought in a jungle war and was part of a special forces unit. He reached the rank of Colonel. She said he wouldn’t talk about it.

“Some of the ship’s officers said he’s been fighting the Marine AI regularly and he was ‘a machine’ whatever that may mean. They say that he’s very persistent and continues regardless of how much the AI hits him. He just gets up and continues. He doesn’t have any powers and they say he’s been asking around about crystals for his programming.

“I then asked some of the officers if they talk to him and they say that they received instructions from the captain to have nothing to do with Jason. The crazy thing about it, is that they know that there’s no Captain on the ship. They still believe that they’re following orders. Some people are incredibly stupid.

“The farmers like him very much. He goes to see them every few days and he looks at what they’re doing with great interest. Most of them went to spend some time on Earth and said that they enjoyed themselves enormously. His family entertained them well. They particularly enjoyed the spicy foods and brought back enough to feed Jason, the ship, and an army for years. They liked the food so much that they persuaded Stan to give them a substantial allowance to supply the ship with food from Earth. He however had already been instructed to get food from Earth by the Emperor, but the farmers acquired their own huge supplies.

“One of the farmers has a cyber AI and hacked the accounts of criminals and extracted quite a lot of money for their use with the approval of Stan. Ship gave him the idea as she did the same. He said they managed to get four groups of criminals fighting, and he says he’s proud of his efforts.

“Robert says that they want to go into production when they return to the Empire. They brought back fifty times as much for the ship as they brought for Jason’s limited needs.

“They said that Jason’s wife was a real looker when she was young and his daughter could easily be a general; she organized everything in a very short time and was very efficient as was the rest of his family. Her whole extended family also came from the Empire. She told Robert, the chef, that she thought it was a good idea that Jason went on this ‘jaunt’ as she described it. She said that he had been restless and directionless for some time and needed a challenge. He saw himself as old and had been giving up.

“Marie, from the kitchen, is clearly besotted with Jason told me that she has argued often with Jason about his primitive, monogamous views, but he’s rigidly stuck with his bizarre morality. He told her he had been celibate for twenty years as his wife progressively lost interest after menopause, so self-control was no issue for him. That poor woman is in serious lust with him, but said he didn’t or wouldn’t even realize she was propositioning him. He told her he was grieving for his beloved wife.

“Lauren, his daughter, also told Robert that Jason’s great-grandfather and the Emperor sent Jason’s whole family and his wife’s family to Earth. Robert has found out that Jason’s great-grandfather was one of the four kings but has retired to be an Archduke. From what I can establish the Empress is the sponsor of this expedition. My contacts before we left said that the old man had become sick and wanted to bring back a close family member to take over the Duchy. That makes Jason a very handsome and eligible young man; if you are into cradle snatching! He’s also fertile. He’s had two children that he knows of,” said Connie.

“I like the whole Royal Family thing,” said Phoebe.

“My whole family are much involved with the Empress and we are great fans of the whole family. He may suit me very well!”

“What has he been doing on the ship with his time?” Phoebe Harris asked.

“He spent his time very productively since he’s been on the ship. I interrogated the learning AI who told me; he’s done a lot of university courses but of most relevance to us, he’s completed all the undergraduate and postgraduate studies from the war college with distinction. Ladies, he did it in two months! No one has ever done it in less than six years. Most, as we all know well, take at least eight. Despite how quickly he’s done it, the learning AI said that Patton informed her Jason’s strategy and tactics in the simulator are brilliant.”

“I call bullshit! This does not compute,” said Janet, “How, could he do all that? If you look at one subject per night and that’s excessive then one degree is remotely possible, if you work every day. My brain couldn’t cope at that pace. The simulations would kill me. One a week was a killer. How could he complete all that work? No, it’s clearly impossible. It’s too much.”

“This is the interesting bit. He didn’t know that there was a limit to how many subjects you should study at a time.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Phoebe, “they told us at the War College at Mimas that more than half a subject per night done regularly could damage you. They also told us not to use the machine more than four days a week. Even then it was heavy going. We were not allowed to use the simulator more than three hours a week.”

“No one told Jason that. He did ten subjects a night seven days a week and spent most of the day on simulators, after the gym and rehab. He never seemed stressed unless doing trans-dimensional programming or debugging.

“Stan says he’s a brilliant pilot and faster than Ship when aiming cannon and is also significantly faster than Patton.

“Ship at first would tell me nothing so I then went to speak to Patton.

“The real gossip was what Patton told me after Ship utterly refused to tell me anything about how Jason behaved during the pirate attack.

“Patton said that Jason was in a real bind. He was facing one destroyer and six frigates. He only had four rounds for the long distance, Oleg-Formost type IX Cannon. He had no missiles and he didn’t know that any of us existed. We were not on his board and had not encountered us when traveling around the ship. Not only that, Ship was not functioning properly and she aims the Oleg. Under those circumstances, I’d have wet my panties and been a gibbering wreck and would have given up.

“Jason handed over AI control of weapons to Patton. He then used the communications probes as missiles. How many captains or admirals would have thought of that? We all know they cost an arm and a leg and wouldn’t ever use them as missiles even though they sit on the weapons asset board.

“Incidentally, that’s why the damage was so precise. The missiles went trans dim before the ship shields and rematerialized in power control/generation and on the bridge.

“He manually shot down one anti-ship missile as it transitioned dimension and when Ship at his instruction opened the collectors and finally loaded the medium plasma rail cannon he hit one pod when it was in the last second before they were too close to the hull for the cannon. I can tell you that he saved our butts. My estimate is that under the command of ninety-nine-point nine percent of admirals and captains this ship would have been badly damaged and in very serious trouble. Stan tells me that he barely had any manual control of the engines. We know that the reactors were nearly shut down.”

“Tell us what happened on the bridge, I’ve not see the detailed reports?” Janet asked.

“The Marines on the bridge told me that he was as cool as a cucumber. He shot one enemy Marine before our Marines, could open fire. He dived for a grenade heading for Stan the pilot and our guys and threw it out of the door then killed two with his knife, before they shot him from behind and incapacitated him.

“Our reserves then arrived and wiped the rest out. He well and truly has earned our respect. The Marines on the bridge want to make him an honorary Marine.

“His shoulder has been fixed, but he’s limited to moderate exercise and no sparring for a couple of days.

“I recommend that we investigate the young man more fully. Let’s invite him to join us at our gym to evaluate him without his clothes on. We might be able to stimulate him to fire his cannon more than four times,” said Janet.

“That, ladies, is the summary of some of the background of our commander, we have twenty minutes before we go and meet him, and happy hunting!” Connie Ross from intelligence, said with a smile on her face, content she had done her duty to the team.

Jason made himself comfortable in the boardroom. This time he was a little early. He looked at the fourteen heavy, plush seats arranged around the thick and heavy beautiful inlaid wooden table. He found it comforting that some things remained the same even though he felt it was strange that over thousands of years a table remained the same and chairs were much as he knew them. He slipped out of the chair to check if the paintings on the wall of admirals and one battle scene and sculptures of busts on pedestals were real or holographic.

They were real and the statues felt reassuringly solid. He bounced up and down on the chair. It was a very comfortable chair and he felt as if he was floating on a cloud. He fiddled with the mechanism on the side and it raised and lowered the chair as expected. It also softened or hardened the seat and increased or decreased the lumbar support. He smiled and relaxed.

Robert entered with his team carrying platters of deserts and drinks. He gave Jason the bottle of liqueur he had requested. They chatted for a few moments before Robert excused himself.

Jason thought how pleasant it was people still preferred to meet face-to-face.

He was looking forward to meeting the marine and air-force officers again.

He watched five of them stomp into the room in their boots but this time wearing light battle suits. Jason felt a little out of place in his casual clothes. He watched as two of his new Marine bodyguards remained in the room to be joined by four more while the others waited outside with the Marines that had accompanied his visitors.

Janet Malone and Phoebe Harris must have changed out of their heavy armor. He thought that they must still be cautious about a persisting risk on board. The silvery gray light armor they wore provided protection from debris and six hours of oxygen in the case of containment breach. The armor protected against light weapons fire and to a very limited extent, heavier weapons. They couldn’t detach their helmets, but their visors were open. Still, their voices when they introduced the rest of the team echoed in the room, sounding tinny and synthesized. Their voices were toneless and it was very difficult to determine much about their appearance. He recognized Janet Malone’s blue eyes and Phoebe Harris’s gray green/hazel eyes from their previous introductions.

Col. Janet Malone introduced her assistant as Maj. Kirsten Jones. Col. Harris introduced her deputy Maj. Cherry Singh of fighter command and in command of cyberwarfare. She also introduced Maj. Constance Ross from intelligence.

“As you know, ladies, I’m Jason Kargo, ‘the accidental commander’: the person teleported to the bridge, who unexpectedly found himself fighting real pirates without any current military rank or experience in space warfare, I might add,” said Jason and leaned back.

Jason considered that was a fair description of his role. He liked the idea of an ‘accidental commander’.

His explanation clearly amused them; he could see their eyes crinkle and watched them bend forward shaking very slightly. He heard a few tinny wheezing laughing sounds. He smiled and asked them to report.

Janet Malone began, “First I want to apologize about being in armor. We are still searching the ship for possible hidden soldiers.

“We have commenced the interrogation of the prisoners, beginning with the destroyer captain and senior members of the crew of the destroyer. We have captured two frigate captains and seven miscellaneous officers in escape pods who we’ll interrogate next. We have taken on board all the computers and navigation systems for analysis and have our specialists working to extract information that will be of interest to us.

“Our engineering officers have approached us, and are concerned at the growing number of anomalies they have discovered, some of which were part of your earlier briefing by Ship.

“Our Intelligence has commenced an investigation to find saboteurs on the ship or amongst the crew or both. Fortunately, we don’t have a full naval crew on the ship which shortens and simplifies the investigation, but this is a huge ship, and you can easily have many people hidden. There are many empty areas. We’ll find the saboteurs in time but it’s painstaking and slow work. We have placed camera drones throughout the ship. They patrol the corridors and cargo areas. This will trap the saboteurs in their quarters. We are also observing and guarding all sensitive areas to prevent the recurrence of direct sabotage. We checked the ship inventory and we know that our full complement of missiles was loaded, as was the cannon ordinance. We are searching the storage areas of the ship. It may take us up to a month to find our missing missiles. The cannon loads were probably dissipated through the reactors. Jason, an additional twenty communications missiles were also loaded and we have found them already.

“The enemy frigates were all damaged, but the missiles accurately targeted the engineering and power control systems, which will make them fairly easy to repair. Our fighters damaged two of the frigates more severely.

“If I may say so, no missile that I’ve ever seen has been so well targeted, was so effective, and did so little extraneous damage to any ship. It’s quite unlike any missile damage I’ve ever seen!

“Ship won’t tell us what missile you used. I thought there were no missiles. There was not a single missile in the storage and loading containers. The containers are all present and marked full, but every single container is empty, except for the communications drones,” said Maj. Constance Ross tongue in cheek.

Jason blushed deeply. They all looked at him and were amused. There was a long pause as they relished teasing Jason before Connie continued.

“The Mob sent the ships, but on each ship, there was a mutiny; the crew fought amongst themselves to prevent the ships from self-destruction. We are investigating why this is the case. The captain of the destroyer is Mob but there was a priest aboard and on the bridge.

“We can all discuss the implications of this further, but it confirms some of our intelligence colleague’s suspicions. The priests are deeply involved in this mess and we need to find out why.

“I believe that the AI has informed you of the work of the communications team. They have picked up a communication from the mothership, a cruiser, which we now know is located behind the first moon of the fifth planet, the one with the rings in front of the asteroid belt.

“The analysis of the situation is still evolving. We have communicated back to the cruiser making the communication look like it came from the pirates, to say that our battleship is late. I think it’ll take many days, even a week, or two before they become suspicious.

“I don’t know yet, why that ship didn’t participate in the attack. It doesn’t make any sense to hold back one ship and not use your full assets. It seems to me we are lucky to be dealing with a leadership that’s underwhelming. That cruiser could have made it much more difficult if not impossible for us. We had insignificant shield capacity according to the engineers.”

“They don’t accurately know our time of arrival and that means they will allow leeway of a few days at the very least. We have effectively blocked all outgoing communications from our ship, to prevent the saboteurs on board warning the enemy. The saboteurs know we are after them and that they face discovery in time.

“I suggest that we ambush the enemy ship,” said Malone emphatically.

Jason agreed and thanked her before asking Harris to report.

“Sir, we’ll require four more hours to move the Frigates into the smaller hangers and maneuver the destroyer into the large ship repair hanger, Hanger 4 in the midsection of this ship. The fighters have been instructed to continue patrolling widely around us and are still protecting the mining drones.

“We have suggested to the AI that the ship move in an ovoid spiral pattern, to increase particle and energy collection. The particle collection drones have returned and will provide a secondary reserve of dark energy and elementary particles for the cannon and antimatter for the missiles.

“The enemy ship is a battle-cruiser of Empire origin. The ship comes from the reserve fleet. Somehow the priests have acquired the cruiser. The Empire military computer shows it as a reserve fleet unit, and the Empire believes that it’s in storage. The cruiser carried the boarding pods.

“There’s not a lot of space for extra people on the cruiser. If it carried the pods it couldn’t have done so for an extended period. I assume that it traveled for one to two days, or at a stretch, three days at full speed; more than that would be intolerable. The cruiser was very crowded and couldn’t have comfortably traveled a long distance.

“That would represent a few weeks of travel for us at our usual snail’s pace,” said Colonel Phoebe Harris as she handed over to Maj. Ross.

“We are now collecting intelligence from the ship. A cyber warfare drone, a Megred IV-b, has bored its way into the hull and is tapping into their internal communications and also the computer system of the ship.

“The fighters launched smaller Epic IX, hull based auditory communications interceptors that are now attached to the hull. We can now listen in on verbal communications within the ship. They are joking about how we’ll have no idea about the trap that they set for us. The bishop and his underlings talk incessantly about the group of saboteurs who have done so much for them on our ship and how extensive the on-board sabotage is and gloat about how we don’t know what is coming for us.

“Jason, they definitely want you badly. You’ve pissed off the Patriarch big time! From what we can establish there’s a whole hierarchy of priests on board speaking Empire standard with a crew from Nirvana. None of them have any military experience and I suspect they would be of no value in any battle, yet they seem to be in charge. There’s some mention of clones. We can’t make head or tail of what that’s about.

“The communications group is penetrating their computers and hacking their systems as we speak. This is proving to be very difficult as the security appears to be tight. We are also being exceedingly careful not to alert them to our work.”

Maj. Connie Ross looked at them smiling clearly proud of her team’s rapid progress. She looked ready to start speaking again, but Jason gently and politely interrupted.

“Papa Zora knew about the plan to fetch me. This was his ‘yacht’ for a long time until the Empress took it back to fetch me. I don’t know what he knows about me but I do know he loves hostages. I still have family in the Empire. My great-grandfather was one of the kings. Zora may want me for a hostage or even to kill me. I’ve had one priest try and give me poison.

“There’s some valuable information that I have for the cyberwarfare group that I’d like to give them when convenient. I found multiple passwords that the priests used that may be of some assistance. The priesthood, as you know, used the ship for years prior to our trip. Papa Zora used it for centuries and regarded it as his flagship. His people meddled with the computers on the ship and built sabotage routines. I think Papa Zora is so paranoid that he built sabotage routines into the system in case the ship fell into any other hands, but they used the ship for so long that they forgot how much useful information they left behind. I suspect he left some of his computer experts amongst others, who are hiding on the ship.

“I’ve Papa Zora’s master password, his senior computer technician’s password, his repair technician passwords, and various other passwords. Most interesting of all, I found the password generator that they used. If one of their senior group logged in with their own password, they could generate passwords that would work for other crew members.

“There’s every reason to believe they have installed similar systems on the cruiser. I’ll give these passwords to your cyber warfare group and I’ll give them the software password generator. I’m sure they will find them useful.” Jason sat back after his monologue, lost in thought for a few moments, then stated flatly. “I still failed to find the key to turning the whole sabotage system off.”

“We are now up to date with what each other has done. Thank you very much for being on board,” said Jason. “You’ve no idea how much of a relief it was to find that I had Marines and fighter pilot assets. If not, we would have been in the deepest of trouble. Thank you all for your contributions; without you, our desperate situation would have been dire. It has been a pleasure to meet you and to discover your existence,” said Jason emphatically. “I also hope to see your faces sometime in the next ten years!”

“I’d like you to join our cyberwarfare and communications group for a few hours as soon as possible,” said Singh, “I’m the leader of that group, and I’m sure that we can do something with what you’ve discovered.”

“I’ll go with Major Singh and join her people to hand over what I’ve found. Can we meet again to update progress and consider the cruiser ambush in another four hours?” Jason asked. “I suspect the sooner we act the more likely we’ll catch them unawares. I’ll think about it and suggest you do the same, and I’m sure we can come up with a plan. I suspect you know a lot more than I do, as I’ve only had a few months’ worth of experience, but I’ll do my bit,” said Jason laughing.