Tales from the Inbox: Hugh's Gambit

 2949-07-13 – Tales from the Inbox: Hugh's Gambit 

If you are seeing this feed item on schedule, it means regular Hypercomm contact has been restored between Maribel and Planet at Centauri. As I understand, the problem lies in an overload of some of the backbone relay nodes in unpopulated systems in the Farthing’s Chain region. This communications breakdown has nothing to do with enemy action that I can determine. 

Also worth noting, I have been told by experts who wish to remain anonymous that military traffic alone did not cause the fault. Evidently, civilian Hypercomm traffic to and from the Frontier is up almost three-fold from where it was before the war, outstripping even the most extreme estimates of Frontier growth made just a few years ago. As of about 18 hours before this item is scheduled for distribution, I am being told that Hypercomm connectivity will be restored “in a few hours.” 

Unfortunately, I have not been able to verify this story any further in the two weeks since it last appeared in this feed. There are circumstantial indications that it is plausible, but someone has gone through a lot of trouble to erase any digital trail of this close-run expedition. 

Hugh Apperlo hooked his safety cable to one of the many grab-points on the exterior of Diane Dragović and scrutinized the rattletrap pirate vessel mated to his borrowed ship’s docking collar. As far as he could guess from the random comms chatter Varinia had picked up and forwarded to his earpiece, three men had crossed over to Dragović to ransack the light-duty hauler, and one had stayed behind at their ship’s controls. 

Of course, since Hugh was outside the A-grav influence of Dragović, “down” was an arbitrary decision on his part. The pirate ship was actually docked several decks above him from the perspective of someone inside, but in microgravity, Hugh preferred to think of every destination as “down.” He hadn’t been a spacer for very long in the grand scheme of things, and it took quite a bit of mental gymnastics to avoid letting catatonic terror overtake him during extravehicular excursions. 

At some point in the distant past, the pirate ship had probably been one of the many near-copies of the popular PCS Albatross surveyor, but it clearly had endured much at the hands of its brigand owners since then. The hull had been crudely relieved in several places to make room for additional hardware which bulged outward, protected from an encounter with debris or micrometeors by thin, hand-shaped cowlings facing the bow. Five small liquid-fuel rockets with bulbous fuel canisters had been attached to the stern with sponsons, and Hugh had at first laughed at the ridiculous way none of them had pointed directly sternwards until he realized that they were also not the same model of rocket – the odd angles at which they’d been installed probably cancelled out the slightly different thrust impulses, allowing the whole set-up to move in a straight line. The original gravitic drive was there too, but its bulged cowling was tangled in a haphazard skein of wiring whose purpose he could only guess at. 

Fortunately, one thing the slapdash ship didn’t seem to have was a preponderance of exterior hull cameras. Hugh had been counting on that. Hugging his bag of high-tech destruction to his chest with one arm, he started clambering down toward the pirate rig. Since the pirates’ pilot had oriented his ship toward the gravitic axis of Dragović, its ventral hull faced Hugh, and its cockpit viewpanels were out of sight on the opposite side. 

Hugh heard a cry of triumph emerge from the babble of unsecured comms traffic the pirates were putting out.  

Before he could ask Varinia what was going on, she filled him in. “They just broke into your cabin, Hugh.” 

Hugh winced. He hadn’t brought most of his personal belonging on this expedition, but he hated to have grubby pirates digging through his effects. “Get on the intercom and tell them to leave my cabin alone.” 

“That won’t stop-” 

“It will convince them there’s something there worth stealing.” If they spent a few more minutes tossing his quarters, they would take longer to work their way up to the command deck, where a door not much stronger protected Varinia, or down to the engine room, where nothing stopped them from tearing critical components out of the gravitic drive. 

Varinia didn’t reply, but Hugh heard a faint echo of her voice on the pirates’ comms band as one of their headsets captured her intercom broadcast. Just as Hugh had hoped, the response was only guttural laughter and a redoubled search within the cabin. 

Gently, Hugh pressed his weightless boots against the pirate ship’s hull and then activated the magnetic soles to anchor himself. It took him only a moment to find three rail-like munitions hardpoints on the underside of the bow. Unfortunately for his desperate scheme, two of them were already occupied by weapons as ramshackle as the ship itself. Hugh groaned; he couldn’t pry one free without setting off alarms in the cockpit. He would have to make do with one. 

Moving slowly to avoid making any noise that might be audible inside the hull, Hugh approached the lone empty hardpoint, hooked his safety line into a projecting loop of material which was probably not designed to be a grab-point, and pulled one of the sleek ovoids from his mesh bag. Slapping a piece of polymer tape over the missile’s computer link pins, he lined it up and slowly pressed it onto the rail.  

The Incarnation weapon slid onto the pitted pirate hardpoint as if designed for it all along, and Hugh thanked God and the saints of universal starship design conventions for this mercy. He had one shot, and would need to make it count. 

Thanks to the tape, the missile failed to connect to the starship’s computer systems, so it reached out wirelessly. When it did, Hugh was waiting for it. He snagged its outstretched link with his suit’s onboard computer. It was possible the wireless ping caused an alert in the outlaw ship’s cockpit, but that couldn’t be helped. As soon as the link was established, Hugh set the missile to scanning for targets. 

“They made it up here.” Varinia’s voice had grown dull and listless; she was, Hugh knew, already mentally preparing herself for the worst to happen. 

“Tell them about what’s in the cargo hold.” 

“But that’s-” 

“Vari, do it.” Hugh winced; the wrecked Jericho bomber might be her only ticket to a return to a normal life, but he wouldn’t let her protect it at the expense of her own person. 

A moment later, the missile achieved a lock on one of the other pirate ships, circling Dragović while their fellows ransacked it. Since it was top of the line Incarnation military tech, even a light anti-strike weapon had enough power to destroy a pirate ship. At least, that was what Hugh hoped.  

“I’m finished here. Retract the docking collar.” He gave the weapon instructions to launch in twenty seconds, then unhooked his safety line and kicked away from the pirate ship, suddenly aware that he would be tortured to death if his little scheme failed. 

“Retracting.” Sure enough, within moments, Dragović’s airlock extension folded back on itself and set the pirate ship gently free. “They didn’t like that. What should I tell them?” 

Before Hugh could come up with something, a bright flash below him heralded the departure of the missile, riding the white-hot fire of its small solid-fuel booster off into the void. He started reeling in his safety line as the pirates’ comms chatter devolved into unintelligible shouting, and was satisfied to hear it grow deathly silent in time with a sudden flash in the void. 

Evidently, Varinia had seen the pirate ship’s death on her sensor readouts as well. “Are you secured? I’m bringing the drive online.” 

“I can take two or three gees.” Hugh, outside the A-grav axis’s influence, would feel every bit of the ship’s acceleration. Fortunately, his suit and safety line were rated for far greater punishment. 

“What are we going to do about our passengers?” 

Hugh felt the safety line go taut as Dragović began accelerating away from the two pirate ships, now circling each other warily. “I don’t know yet, Vari. But I’m sure I’ll think of something.” 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: The Penderite Tabernacle

Tales from the Inbox: The Penderite Tabernacle

This is not the conclusion to the story that has occupied this space for a few weeks. While we are not entirely sure why (and Naval Intelligence has not been helpful in getting to the bottom of it), all Hypercast connectivity from our home office here on Planet at Centauri to the Maribel system where Duncan and Nojus are stationed. 

This Hypercast breakdown is widespread and affects a number of systems around Maribel as well. While rumors of sabotage are flying all across the datasphere, it is more likely this is a result of over-stressed relay networks which were never designed to handle the data flow rates the war has created between the Core Worlds and the Frontier. Naval signals tenders are likely even at this moment making repairs to the system, as most low-priority Navy traffic uses the same relays as civilian communications.

Duncan will return with the conclusion to the account of Hugh and Varinia stealing a derelict Jericho bomber next week, provided the network connection is restored by then. Instead, this entry is a story which we sent along to Duncan some months ago and which he edited and prepared for just this sort of occasion. A surprisingly small amount of datasphere attention was given to last month’s launch of the Holy Tabernacle, a starship commissioned and built by the Holy Order of Penderites to transport their high-ranking pontiffs and their most revered relics.  

While the vessel is an impressive feat of engineering, Duncan thought it most interesting that the six-hundred-year-old sect, which has always had its center of religious activity on Earth’s Iberian peninsula and which prides itself on its adherents’ avoidance of modern technology, would suddenly desire to make this center mobile. Operating a starship, perhaps the most complex piece of modern technology in the Reach, is definitely an interesting step for this order. 

When he reached the edge of the balcony, Grand Hierophant Toloni out his arm to encompass the view. "She’s beautiful, isn’t she.” 

Captain Sandra Ibsen couldn’t help but agree. The starship below, half-covered by scaffolding in a specially built docking cradle, was far larger than any vessel that had any right to land on a planet’s surface, but despite its size and the reinforced structures which allowed it to rest on its keel, it had the clean lines and graceful elegance of a much smaller vessel. If it weren’t for the antlike figures of the techs and shipwright workers scurrying about on the scaffolds, she might have thought the vessel no larger than a cutter or ship’s pinnace. 

The old man, leaning on his two-meter-high scepter of office, said nothing, but the smirk tugging upward on his thin lips suggested that he had expected Sandra to be taken aback. 

“This is...” Sandra leaned on the railing and looked down to the open-air shipyard below. There must have been thousands of humans living and working in the facility. “I thought the Penderites didn’t-” 

“We reject over-reliance on technology, Captain Ibsen.” Toloni shrugged. “But we are not so inflexible as the Amish or the Samarites. When necessary, we will use the tools of the age.” 

“When you requested my presence, Your Eminence, this is not what I expected.” Sandra had grown up among Penderites on Hercules – she'd even been sent by her parents to train at one of their religious academies. She had, however rejected the ascetic life of a Sister Priestess before completing her course of study, left the academy, and hopped aboard a tramp freighter bound for Vorkuta. The unsmiling honor guard of the Grand Hierophant had been something of an alarming welcome party when she had landed on Earth. 

“Then our efforts have not been in vain.”  Toloni pointed to the vessel in the cradle. “We have labored in great secrecy on this. I wish to hire you as a ship-commander for the Holy Tabernacle.” 

“Me?” Sandra took a step back. She had just completed a contract skippering a small passenger-liner on a milk-run route between Earth and Maribel, but the vessel below was at least twice the tonnage of anything she’d been responsible for in the past. “That’s at least a five-hundred-million-credit-” 

“One point four billion Confederated credits so far.” The old man coughed, as if admitting the figure hurt him. “It may have been two billion if we had not done much of the work ourselves.” 

The idea of the Holy Order of Penderites recruiting a staff of technically savvy engineers and shipwrights, either from its own converts or from those outside the faith, was simply too much for Sandra to bear. The order was large and wide-spread throughout explored space, but to sell enough wealth to raise billions of standard credits must have nearly drained its coffers even so. Penderites lived simply, with little technology, and avoided access to the datasphere which suffused the lives of most of the citizens of the Reach. In their view, living closer to the land, Earth’s or that of another life-bearing planet, helped them form and strengthen a relationship with God. 

“That’s not a transport ship, Your Eminence.” Sandra pointed to the lines of still-empty hollow sockets running down the sides of the ship. “You’re fitting it for combat. I’m not qualified to command a cruiser of war.” 

“You wound me, Captain. We do not engage in warfare. Our creed forbids it. We are arming Holy Tabernacle, yes, but only as a means of self-defense.” 

“Who would attack a Penderite-flagged vessel?” 

The old pontiff smiled. “Come. You must want to see her up close. Once you have, perhaps you will understand.” 

Despite the old man’s age, he quickly outpaced Sandra on the stairs leading down to ground level. Breathing hard and cursing the order’s idea that an elevator constituted over-reliance on technology, she trotted to catch up with him as he walked out into the vast courtyard. She noted the Kosseler crests on crates stacked between the barracks and workshops which she passed by. If the Order was importing parts and equipment all the way from Ori to build a ship of war, the government had to know about it – and if they weren’t doing anything about it, that meant the Grand Hierophant’s project had almost certainly received official sanction, and perhaps covert financial support. 

The walk to the cradle was longer than Sandra expected, perhaps because she had still underestimated the scale of the facility. Despite the orderly gridwork-arrangement of the structures raised around the ship’s cradle, she suspected she had walked more than a kilometer before the sweeping hull of Holy Tabernacle loomed above her head. She would have checked this figure on her wrist computer, but the Order had forced her to leave the device and all her other computer hardware in a locker at the checkpoint at the edge of the temple grounds. 

Waving aside a pair of armed guards, the old man led up a steep ramp to a hatch in the ship’s side, still showing no sign of slowing down. Several techs installing crystalline circuit-blocks into access panels near the airlock jumped to their feet and bowed their heads at the pontiff’s approach, but he paid them no mind. 

Inside the ship, Sandra had hoped to find the Penderites using lifts, but she was dismayed to find Toloni leading her to another damnable stairwell and headed up. She had lived more than half of her life in half-gee shipboard conditions and climbing interminable stairs in Earth gravity was simply exhausting. 

“Holy Tabernacle is a vessel designed for one mission, and it is of utmost importance that this mission succeed.” Toloni waved his staff, whose crystalline head barely missed scraping on the overhead panels, for emphasis. “We can crew the ship with lay Penderites who have come to us from your profession, but we lack officers. If you accept this job, you will be responsible for recruiting officers.” 

“I can... Do that.” Sandra tried and failed to keep her breathlessness from showing in her voice. “Except gunnery... officers.” 

“That has already been arranged.” 

Three decks up from where they had boarded, the Hierophant abruptly left the stairwell and led Sandra into a wide corridor that appeared to extend across the breadth of the ship. A pair of the Hierophant’s honor guards in their gaudy parade uniforms stood on either side of a heavy hatch at the midpoint of this long hall. The moment they spotted the Hierophant, they stood at attention, heads bowed and antique bayonet-fixed rifles resting on their shoulders. The men didn’t look up as the pontiff and Sandra approached, but she could tell as Toloni withdrew a large key from his robes and fitted into an archaic-looking tumbler-lock that they had both surreptitiously taken her measure and inspected her visually for weapons. 

“Remove your shoes, Captain Ibsen.” The Grand Hierophant leaned on the key until it turned, the tumblers within clicking audibly into place. “The deck beyond is holy ground.” 

Still recovering her breath, Sandra knelt to loosen and slip off her shoes, trying to recall from her partial religious instruction what sort of place might be within. As far as she knew, a Penderite only removed their shoes in a place believed to contain the very real presence of God. There were no such places in the Penderite enclave or Penderite religious academy on Hercules. 

As soon as she stood in her smartfabric socks on the cool deck, Toloni pushed the hatch open. Unlike most shipboard hatches, it was hinged to open inward like the double doors of a static building, and it swung open easily even for his thin arms. The space beyond was dimly lit, but before Sandra’s eyes could adjust, the Hierophant grasped her wrist and led her in. 

“Do you remember what the original Tabernacle was built for, my wayward Sister?” 

Sandra looked around, seeing incongruous oil-lamps hanging from the buttressed pillars on either side of her. The space within was surprisingly small, but high-ceilinged, and she realized it was some form of onboard chapel. 

“To allow the Children of Israel to pay homage to their God in their wanderings, Your Eminence.” Sandra replied. Perhaps the Grand Hierophant meant to visit his widely distributed faithful – a tour of the largest Penderite enclaves would indeed be a novel step for the technologically-skeptical order. 

“Yes, but... There was more.” Toloni stopped at a vast, heavy curtain that ran the length and height of the compartment. “It was the very seat of God, and so is this ship.” 

Sandra remembered her old lessons. Those who stepped through the curtain in the original Tabernacle without being extensively sanctified had been struck dead. Despite the increasingly agnostic attitudes which had dominated her life as a spacer, she shied away from this forbidding shroud. 

“God has spoken to us, Captain. The Order of Penderites will not long be safe on Earth. Ancient Iberia will soon reject us, so we will remove the holy things from this land.” Toloni turned away from the curtain to Sandra. “Dark times are coming. Will you come back to the Order in this time of need?” 

Sandra swallowed, terrified but strangely at peace. “I... I will, Your Eminence. You can count on me.” 

Toloni smiled warmly. “I knew I could, Sister. Come, let me show you your quarters.” 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Honeypot

2949-06-29 – Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Honeypot 

I have found some interesting things about the story that has graced this feed the past few weeks. Though I cannot find evidence that the submitter is who he claims to be, one of my contacts in Naval Intelligence confirmed that several parts to an Incarnation Jericho bomber have been circulating on the Maribel black market in recent weeks. Since there have been no authorized salvage operations in battle areas where Jerichos were present, that means these parts came from at least one black-market salvage operation. 

Naval Intelligence does not believe that these parts are any threat to the public – they're distinctive but ultimately not weapons-grade components – but is monitoring the situation all the same. As the newest known piece of Incarnation technology, and by far the most striking in appearance except perhaps for their cruisers, the strange arrowhead-shaped heavy strike units have been appearing in media quite often since they first appeared in the battlespace. 

Though they are lumbering behemoths next to the agile, deadly Coronach interceptors, the bigger vessels seem to contain a lot more technology that can be adapted to Confederated strike designs, since the Coronach is at its heart essentially a large drone rig with a tiny shell for a pilot. Without the cranial implants of the Incarnation pilots, a Coronach would be impossible – after all, the craft carry no control interfaces save a connector helmet. 

Hugh Apperlo found the safety catch securing one of the ovoid shapes to its rack, and with a clank the object jumped a centimeter up and rolled out of its cradle. He had to marvel at the smooth operation of the Incarnation technology - Even shot up and sitting upside down in his borrowed ship’s hold, the Jericho bomber’s rotary munitions racks worked so smoothly they almost seemed magical. He got his arms around the weapon and found it lighter than he expected – he could easily carry one under each arm. 

“Four minutes to intercept, Hugh.” Varinia Villa counting down the seconds until they were intercepted by vengeful pirates reminded him. Given that Diane Dragović, the ship they’d borrowed from Hugh’s old friend Ellison, had no weapons, if he didn’t find a way to make the salvaged Jericho’s weapons work, they were about to be dead, and that was the best case scenario. Even outside the Silver Strand, pirates had a nasty habit of taking prisoners only as another commodity to sell on the black market. 

Setting the first mystery ovoid next to the hatch leading back into the wrecked craft’s crew compartment, Hugh released a second, then hefted them both and scrambled out the way he had come, brushing aside twisted ribbons of metal and skeins of frayed wiring on his way. He couldn’t read the digital code-plates on the weapons, but he knew that, most Incarnation tech was digitally networked. All he had to do was arm them, then put them in an airlock. That couldn’t take more than three minutes, right? 

Setting the two weapons down on the deck, Hugh flipped open his beat-up wrist computer and put it into discovery/interlink mode. Sure enough, a pair of foreign devices appeared in the list. He pointed the little scanning camera at the digital placards on each of the devices, and soon he was looking at a model number and illustrated instructions for the armorer. Thankfully, the Incarnation’s variant of Anglo-Terran wasn’t too different from the one Hugh had learned – he had in his hands a pair of advanced strike-craft seeker missiles. 

"Aw, damnation.” Hugh hadn’t been looking at the instructions ten seconds before he’d seen the problem. In order to arm the weapons, a set of catches built into the mounting bracket needed to be depressed. The bracket was of a standard configuration – any war-armed strike asset in the Reach could have fitted those munitions. He could rig something up to trick that safety, but that would take time – more time, certainly, than he and Varinia had. 

“I think we’re on to plan B, Vari.” Hugh grabbed a multitool and a vacsuit from the locker next to the workbench.  

“We are well past plan B.” 

Hugh couldn’t help but chuckle. “We do now. I’m going to get a suit on, then you’re going to vent this bay and broadcast a surrender. Keep them talking and get one of those bastards to come in and dock.” 

“We’re going to surrender? Hugh, I won't-” 

“I know.” Hugh knew that Varinia would rather die than fall into the hands of pirates. She’d been a commodity in their grim economy once already in her life, and had spent nearly every waking moment since escaping them trying to reverse the horrific fleshsculpting they’d inflicted on her. “It won’t come to that.” 

“What are we going to do?” 

Hugh pulled a vacsuit from one of the lockers near the workbench and began putting it on. “We’re going to use pirates to deal with pirates.” What he was about to do was insane, and it would only work on arrogant, twitchy pirates, if it worked at all. 

Once his suit’s seals displayed green indicators in the chin display, Hugh threw the two missile pods into a mesh bag and clipped his safety line to the bag. “Evacuate the bay, then open the scoop just enough to let me climb out. Have you broadcast our surrender?” 

“Just did.” The hiss of air jetting out into the void filtered through Hugh’s helmet. “I told them we’ll lock ourselves in the command deck and they can have everything else.” 

“And?” 

“Their leader said I have a nice voice and he says he’ll pay us a visit up here all the same.” Varinia was doing a good job of keeping her voice calm – almost good enough to fool Hugh. 

Despite knowing this was ideal, Hugh felt a snarl tugging at his facial muscles. “Lock a bunch of random compartments. Make sure their search takes time.” Fortunately, Dragović had only one working airlock mating collar – only one of the pirates could dock at a time. With three or four men ransacking the ship at most, he should have plenty of time. “And patch me in as a listener on your comms.” 

With all the air gone from the cargo hold, Varinia opened the doors and extended their jury-rigged cargo scoop just enough that its nets and scaffolds made a sheltered tunnel leading out into the space below Dragović’s bow. Hefting his sack of missiles, Hugh clambered up into it until he left the influence of the ship’s A-grav axis and floated in microgravity. He hated microgravity, but less than he hated the idea of death or durance among brigands. 

“The lead pirate is on docking approach and I’m extending the collar. Are you sure about this, Hugh?” 

“No.” Hugh fought the butterflies in his stomach as he worked his way along the tangled netting of their hand-made scoop. “But it should work.” 

Details

Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Gamble

2949-06-22 – Tales from the Inbox: The Jericho Gamble 

Despite the risk of a power surge in the systems Varinia Villa pushed the battered gravitic drive unit of Diane Dragović almost a quarter-gee past the safe limit as soon as the little ship cleared the tangle of battlefield debris. 

Hugh Apperlo looked up from the sensor plot on his own console when a single piece of wreckage thrown clear of the field glanced off the dorsal hull above the command deck. Since the collision didn’t cause any fresh warning lights to glow on his board, he tried not to pay it any mind. With only the crudest of shear-barrier screening unit, Dragović should not have risked acceleration so close to the debris, but he didn’t question the decision, when compared with all alternatives. 

“Any sign of them yet?” Varinia didn’t look up from her console.  

“Not yet.” Hugh trusted his companion to fly the borrowed ship, but he wished he could have helm control all the same. He figured another percentage point on the engines probably wouldn’t cause a power surge, and every meter per second counted when pirates might show up at any moment. 

Though Varinia didn’t say anything, Hugh knew she had more reason to fear pirates than he did. After all, it had been pirates who had taken her off a struggling Silver Strand subsistence world at a young age and sold her into the creative hells of the chattel black-market, and pirates had been the buyers who had seen fit to modify her body until the average citizen of the Reach couldn’t look at her without wincing in disgust. True, the Strand’s brand of piracy had always been crueler than any other, but brigands capitalizing on the war-torn Coreward Frontier were probably not much better. 

The sensor plot chirped, and Hugh glanced down to see a trip of red pips appearing at the edge of sensor range. “There they are. Three small hulls... Looks like survey runabouts.” 

“Time to intercept?” Varinia didn’t need to ask if Dragović had built enough speed to beat the pirates to the edge of the system. Their ship could only accelerate past four gees by risking an electrical overload, and even the most worn-out surveyor would be able to double that, at least in short bursts. 

“Twenty-four minutes.” 

Varinia didn’t reply right away. Hugh heard a quiet tinkling noise, like wind chimes in a gentle breeze, and glanced over to his partner to see her visibly trembling, the artificial spines sprouting from her skin scraping against one another. Despite knowing how terrified she was, Hugh couldn’t help but notice how pleasant the sound was. 

“I’ll go check the star drive.” Hugh stood and turned toward the steep stairs leading back and down into the rest of the ship. Old Xiou-Edwards drives, unlike newer star drives with safer designs, could be activated within a star’s gravitational shadow, but they tended to explode spectacularly if they were, especially on a vessel with antique, corroded power distribution conduits. 

“No.” Varinia locked eyes with Hugh. She too knew about the explosive properties of their outdated star drive, and she probably also knew that Hugh would chance a surrender, if he were aboard alone. “Not yet.” 

“Do you have a better idea?” 

“I’m pressurizing the bay.” Varinia flipped a few switches. “The Jericho is upside down on the deck with its nose facing mostly toward the doors. See if it’s any help.” 

“Vari, that wreck isn’t going to help us.” Hugh a fool’s errand intended to get him off the command deck when he saw it. Whatever Varinia had planned, she didn’t want him to be there to tell her to stop, and he knew exactly what that meant about her plan. “There’s got to be something else.” 

Varinia sighed, put the helm into autopilot mode, and stood to face Hugh. “Trust me, Hugh.” 

Hugh sighed and nodded. Despite fearing he knew exactly what she was going to do, he trusted Varinia Villa with his life, and knew she trusted him with hers. If she thought she knew what the best move was, he’d learned to trust her judgement above his own. “Whatever gets us out of this.” He tried to put as much emphasis on the word “us” as humanly possible. 

Varinia pushed Hugh toward the stairway and spun back to her console in one fluid motion, crystals scattering the flickering illumination from the overhead panels. “Go.”  

Hugh raced down to the main cargo bay, reaching the bulkhead door just as its display went from orange to yellow, indicating acceptable pressure on the far side. Hugh quickly shut the pressure doors in the corridor behind him, then overrode the caution indicators to open the bay. 

His ears popped as the hatch opened, and the air within smelled metallic and burnt as soon as he hurried inside and slid down the ladder to the main cargo deck. Given the twisted holes punched in the arrowhead shape occupying most of the space, the smell was only too understandable. 

“Try getting in through the damaged section.” Varinia, watching his progress on the security system, suggested via Hugh’s earpiece. “The crew compartment would be roughly in the center.” 

Hugh grabbed a wrist-light from a locker on one bulkhead and clambered up the angled side of the Jericho’s hull, glad of the hexagonal handholds generously scattered across the strike craft’s hull. A quartet of smoothy-fared openings near the bow were probably the business end of some sort of laser or plasma cannon, but he knew they would be of no use. Even if the Jericho’s power plant could be restarted, the control systems would be beyond his ability to understand in less than twenty minutes. 

Instead, as Hugh edged his way between the scorched, razor-sharp edges of the craft’s composite armor paneling, he hoped to find his way into the primary munitions bay. If that space was still intact, and the Jericho hadn’t fired off its arsenal of guided weapons before being hit, perhaps he could trick something there into locking onto their attackers. 

“How’s it going up there?” Hugh squeezed his broad shoulders into the scorched innards of the Incarnation ship. If she thinking of doing what he was afraid of, he wanted to keep her talking, and so dissuade her of the idea. 

“They’re closing.” Varinia’s voice sounded shaky and higher-pitched than usual. “I’m going to try to hail and bluff them.” 

“Don’t lie to me, Vari. You’re going to try to deal with them.” 

“Hugh, I would never sell you out to-” 

“Stars around, woman, you think I would believe that of you? I know what you think you have to do. Don’t.” Hugh pushed past a tangle of loose cabling suspending a series of broken crystalline components in the middle of his path and spied the shattered exterior of what had probably been the crew compartment.  

After peering inside this and finding unrecognizable, charred, dessicated lumps dangling from the straps of a trio of recumbent chairs, he turned his attention to looking for a way into the munitions bay below their deck, which was now overhead. Surely there would be a means for the crew to escape a damaged craft, and through the bay would be the easiest method. 

“It’s all my fault, Hugh.” 

“Nothing’s your damned fault, Vari. We rolled the dice together. They weren’t in our favor. We'll deal with what comes next.” Hugh spied what he was looking for – an iris-like hatch in the center, between the three seats. Its electronic controls were dead, but Hugh quickly wheeled it open with a manual-crank handle provided for that purpose. “And we’ll deal with it together.” 

“What about-” 

“I’m in the munitions bay.” Hugh, with one shuddering glance at the unrecognizable corpses around him, grabbed the edges of the overhead opening and lifted himself into the space above. Playing his light through the compartment, he was gratified to see no less than six sinister oblongs hanging in a rotary rack forward. The second rack, behind the hatch, was empty. 

Varinia seemed only too eager to latch onto this change of topic. “How’s it look?” 

“Promising.” Hugh braced his knees on the hatch and pushed up on the munitions bay doors over his head. They didn’t budge. If the bay was to be used as an escape route for the crew, there was probably a manual release somewhere, but he saw no sign of it. “Whatever these are aren’t very big. I could probably haul them to the airlock by hand.” 

“Be careful.” 

Hugh played his light across the computer-readable code plates which passed for warning placards on Incarnation technology. “You don’t need to tell me twice.” Gingerly, he reached out to run his fingers behind one of the oblong shapes, looking for the release catch that would let an armorer remove unused ordinance when the strike-craft returned to its mothership. 

This week we return to the account submitted by people claiming to be Hugh Apperlo and Varinia Villa. Despite many messages from readers claiming to be able to confirm or falsify this story, at this time I am no closer to validating or invalidating it than I was at this time last week. 

I have however learned that the terms of the anonymous bounty offered for provision of Jericho wreckage I mentioned last week were particularly interesting – they read more like a corporate contract than such documents normally do. While this could have multiple explanations, it seems only too possible to me that one of the major strike-craft manufacturers is trying to get an edge over its competition by reverse-engineering Incarnation tech. 

As things have been pretty quiet here since the last attempt to relieve Margaux, I have plenty of time to keep digging into this, and I plan to do so. 

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