Chapter Text
Something felt right to Vi as she exited the docking ring into orbit of Manhattan. She was back in space, in her own ship. At the same time, the environment was new. Manhattan orbit was a far cry from the Border Worlds where she’d spent the last few months. Not only were there more ships, there were even two whole space stations. Just to starboard was the gleaming mass of Newark Station, Interspace Commerce’s headquarters, while the blocky Trenton Outpost, home of Universal Shipping, was a few clicks to port. And dead ahead of her was Caitlyn.
Vi examined Caitlyn’s fighter. Her HUD identified it as a Defender, the frontline fighter of the Liberty Navy. Except the standard Defenders didn’t have that big dorsal fin. Vi wondered what it was for. Surely it wasn’t just decorative…
“Good, you made it,” Caitlyn commed her. “I’ve contacted the lead transport of the convoy. They’ve completed pre-launch checks and are ready to go. Should be an easy run from here to Fort Bush and then on to Pittsburgh. Ready?”
“Ready,” Vi replied, setting her autopilot to enter formation with Caitlyn. Then her eyes spotted something else amidst the hubbub – a large ship, obviously military, approaching Newark Station. Its hull was not the usual light gray with bluish tones common among Liberty ships, but rather a light green hue. “Is that a Rheinland cruiser?” she asked.
“That’s the Donau,” Caitlyn replied. “Admiral Bolbok’s flagship. He’s visiting Manhattan to attend a high-level meeting with President Grayson. Best to keep your distance.”
Vi turned on her transceiver to listen in on their chatter. It was always good to know what was happening around you.
“Newark Station, this is RNC Donau,” a clearly articulate if accented voice spoke. “Requesting clearance to dock with your station. Over.”
“Affirmative, Donau! You are cleared for docking point six. Liberty welcomes you and Admiral Bolbok.”
Vi relaxed a bit. It all seemed routine…
“Donau! Be advised, we’re picking up unknown contacts. Advise caution!”
Her relaxation vanished in a heartbeat. She flipped off the autopilot, ready to maneuver.
“Understood Newark,” the officer from the Donau replied. “All escorts, power up weapons!”
Vi now noticed a pair of Valkyrie-class heavy fighters that had been in formation with the Donau. Now they were orbiting their ship, ready to engage any threat. Caitlyn turned towards the Donau. Vi followed and decided to power up her own weapons.
“Affirmative!” one signaled. “Ready to engage!”
“Roger,” the other said. “Tracking incoming ships.”
“Unidentified ships, this is Newark Station, you are entering restricted space. Alter course at once or we will open fire!”
Vi’s own sensors had picked up the intruders now. Their ships didn’t match anything in her ship’s database, but her threat detection had tentatively identified them as belonging to the Order…
“Fuck,” she swore.
“Newark, do not interfere!” the Order ships declared. “We’re here to protect the President. Bolbok is a traitor!”
Even as they spoke, they cut their cruise engines and unleashed a salvo of torpedoes at the Donau. They had closed to point blank range. There was no chance for the Donau to dodge and precious little time for her defenses to intercept the torpedoes.
“All escorts, open fire!” the Donau officer ordered. “All hands brace for impact!
Vi watched in horror as two salvoes of five torpedoes slammed into the cruiser’s hull and exploded. Secondary explosions began to rip the ship apart. There wasn’t even a distress call… just a scream of static that suddenly went dead.
“Red Alert! The Donau is hit! Launch all rescue and defensive units! All other fighters: engage enemy ships!”
Even as the Newark comm officer spoke, Vi saw another explosion shear the Donau’s bow off. She didn’t know if there would be any survivors, but she knew for certain that the ship itself was dead.
“Damn it!” Caitlyn spoke for the first time since the enemy fighters had been detected. “They blew up the Donau! Newark, this is LSF Patrol Gamma 6. Engaging enemy! Vi, we can’t let them get away! Engage the enemy!”
“Confirmed, Gamma 6! Interceptors are en route. The Virginia and its escort are inbound.”
This was not in Vi’s contract, such as it was. She was supposed to escort a convoy, not defend Newark Station from terrorists. But she also knew that it would look really bad if she didn’t help out. And she had Caitlyn, the two Rheinlander fighters, Newark Station’s own defenses, the Virginia, and any other ships in the vicinity on her side.
Besides, if the Order had been responsible for the destruction of Freeport 7, then Vi would be looking for some payback.
So she followed Caitlyn into the fight, targeting the nearest Order fighter. Its shields were rather beefy, but her nimble Starflier had no issue staying on its tail even as it maneuvered. As she closed, she got a good look at it. It was a pretty basic layout, cockpit forward, with three engines mounted vertically in the tail. It actually looked kind of similar to Caitlyn’s Defender…
Vi pushed those thoughts out of her head. In its place, she heard Vander’s voice instructing her. “If you’re in a dogfight, pick one target, get on his tail, and don’t let up until he’s dead.”
All around her, space was alight with weapons fire, from the white of her own Justice lasers to the sickly green of the Rheinlander tachyon cannons to the blue of Newark Station’s turrets to the red of the Order’s weapons, whatever they were. Both Newark Station and Planet Manhattan swam in and out of view as she twisted and turned, pouring laser fire into her target. His shields failed and her lasers began to knock off pieces of hull until eventually she send a volley of laser bolts straight into the engine and the enemy fighter exploded.
Vi was no stranger to combat. She’d tangled with pirates throughout the Border Worlds. She didn’t pause to think. She just targeted the next fighter. This time, she was joined by one of the Rheinlanders. Under a hail of white and green, he didn’t stand a chance. Then there was just one more, already damaged from a close encounter with Newark Station’s turrets. Even as Vi began to fire on him, she saw Caitlyn sweep in and blow him out of the sky with a missile.
“That was the last one, Newark,” Caitlyn declared.
“Confirmed,” said a Rheinlander. “No more enemy contacts.”
“We read you,” Newark Station replied. “Radar is clear. SAR: Report. Did you pick up any survivors?”
“Negative, Newark. We’re continuing our sweep.”
There was a momentary pause before Newark continued. “Acknowledged. To all utility ships in the area: scan for survivors. All other vessels, return to normal duty but stay alert.”
Vi’s heart sank. She’d harbored some hope, but the destruction had been too sudden. Too total. This hadn’t been a raid. It had been an assassination. Yes, the terrorists had died, some of them at her hand, but so what? They’d succeeded. The Donau had been destroyed, seemingly with all hands. Vi didn’t especially care about Admiral Bolbok, but she did somewhat empathize with the regular spacers serving aboard the cruiser.
“Vi,” Caitlyn commed, her voice sounding defeated. “There’s nothing more we can do here. The transports are waiting at Fort Bush. We should get going.”
“Roger that,” Vi sighed. She set a course for the Fort Bush trade lane. Once they were away from Newark Station, Caitlyn spoke again.
“I can’t believe it! How did they get this close to Manhattan without being detected? First Freeport 7, now this? It’s getting out of control…”
Vi couldn’t disagree. The universe seemed a lot more dangerous these days.
They approached the trade lane, a set of eight nodes arranged in two circles. As Vander had taught her, Vi saved a bit of time by waiting to dock until the last second, at which point the trade lane accelerated her far faster than her ship could go.
“This is it, Vi,” Caitlyn declared rather dramatically. “This is one of the major arteries through Manhattan space. We’re only taking it as far as Fort Bush. If we kept going, we’d reach the jump gate to the Colorado system.”
It was an odd thing to say. But maybe Caitlyn was just trying to deal with what had just happened. Vi wondered if she was taking the attack personally. After all, it was her job to stop that sort of thing. Vi couldn’t remember hearing about anything like this happening near Manhattan of all places. And she needed to focus on their upcoming mission.
Fort Bush sat at an intersection of four trade lanes. For ease of navigation, each system had an arbitrarily assigned set of cardinal directions. So the trade lane they had just emerged from led “west” back to Manhattan. Another, as Caitlyn had said, went north to the Colorado jump gate. A third went south to Norfolk Shipyard, and the last one went east towards Planet Pittsburgh. Fort Bush actually shared this particular “intersection” with Baltimore Shipyard. Vi took this all in almost automatically. It was important to get the lay of the land, after all, especially if she was going to be stuck in New York for a while.
The convoy came into view – a pair of cargo transports.
“Transport Leader,” Caitlyn said “this is LSF Patrol Gamma 6. We’re here to escort you to Pittsburgh. Over.”
“Roger, Gamma 6,” the transport leader – a woman in her thirties – replied. “This is Captain Lydia Wolcott of the USV Brandt. Pre-launch checks have been completed. All ships are in position and we show green status.”
“Vi, take up a position near the transport.”
Vi entered formation with the lead transport – the Brandt. Caitlyn assumed a matching position. Pretty typical. She’d often tagged along with convoys before and observed how the escort fighters operated.
“We heard the news about Bolbok,” Wolcott continued conversationally. “What happened?”
“The planetary defense grid was off-line and the Order managed to break through,” Caitlyn explained. “They took out the Donau with their first torpedo salvo. We never had a chance to stop them. Looked like the Order was determined to keep Bolbok from meeting the President. Hard to believe that this could happen. We better get going.”
“Let’s hope for the best,” Wolcott sighed as the convoy began to move out. “Several convoys have come under attack in recent weeks. The Rogue problem has gotten out of control in this area.”
“Don’t worry, that’s why we’re here,” Caitlyn reassured her, which actually made Vi nervous. Was Caitlyn expecting trouble?
The convoy docked smoothly with the trade lane, pulling them forward like boats on a river of light. Vi kept her hands on the controls, ready to act at a moment's notice.
“Looking good so far…” Caitlyn’s tone was cautiously optimistic as they entered a large debris field, bits of twisted metal whizzing past. Vi thought she might be tempting fate…
“Alert!” Wolcott cried out. “Trade lane disruption detected!”
Sure enough, the field quickly wavered and collapsed, spilling them out into the middle of the debris field. Vi had no illusion that this might be some kind of technical issue.
“Damn it! Vi, weapons ready! This could get rough!”
Vi scanned the field, looking for a threat she knew was there. She spotted six ships approaching them. Her computer flagged them as hostiles. “There!”
“Rogues! Vi, break and attack!” Caitlyn ordered. “We’ve got to keep them away till the trade lane comes back up!”
Vi needed no encouragement. She’d never encountered Liberty Rogues before – as the name suggested, they were rare outside Liberty – but she’d fought their like elsewhere. Fortunately, their Bloodhound fighters were rather bulky, being designed to carry as much loot as possible, making them easy to hit. It helped that they remained focused on attacking the transports and not her own fighter.
She took down the first Rogue smoothly. The second tried to maneuver through the debris field, using the debris to break line of sight (or at least absorb some of the shots). She didn’t have much luck. Vi’s ship was nimbler and she was a better pilot than her opponent (at least she thought so). One laser bolt did break off a piece of debris.
By the time her second target was down, only two others remained. She and Caitlyn methodically picked them off. Vi made a mental note to upgrade her weapons at the earliest opportunity. The fight hadn’t been difficult – Caitlyn was good – but it had taken her longer than she’d liked to eat through their shields.
“Last one!” Caitlyn crowed. “We better get out of here before more of them show up.”
“Couldn’t agree more!” Wolcott sighed. “The trade lane is back up. Let’s– Wait! Radar shows new targets! Gamma 6, we have to make a run for it!”
Sure enough, another six Rogues were approaching from another angle – perhaps a badly-executed pincer maneuver. Or maybe the first group were meant to soften them up. Either way, while Vi and Caitlyn were in good condition, the transports had taken several hits.
“We’ll cover you. This is gonna be close, but I think we can make it without another fight! Everybody, stay on course! Vi, do not engage the pirates! We have to get the convoy out of here!”
Vi agreed wholeheartedly. She wasn’t crazy enough to get into a fight she could avoid. She didn’t bother rejoining formation, simply docking with the trade lane herself even as an energy bolt slammed into her shields. As she was pulled into the trade lane, she glanced at her rearview camera to see the Rogues peeling away, frustrated by their failure.
She was still on edge when they came out of the debris field and reached Planet Pittsburgh. As planets went, it wasn’t pretty. Scratch that, it was fucking ugly. But at least they were safe here.
“We made it,” Caitlyn sighed. “Everybody in one piece?”
“Barely,” Wolcott replied. “That was close! Thanks for getting us here in one piece, Gamma 6. We almost didn’t make it.”
“A situation we’re soon to fix,” Caitlyn snarled. “The Rogues were better equipped than we expected, but we got what we came for. Thanks for playing the bait.”
Bait?
“Now it’s your turn to reel them in, Kirraman.” Now that Vi’s paranoia was back online, Wolcott was handling this near-death experience fairly well. “We’re gonna unload our cargo. Remember our bargain.”
“I’m transferring the payment to your account now,” Caitlyn confirmed.
“Understood. Transport Leader out.”
Now that business was concluded, Vi spoke up. “Hey, cupcake, what’s going on?”
“You’ll see soon enough.” Caitlyn’s tone was knowing and a little sultry. “Go ahead and land on Pittsburgh. I’ll meet you on the surface.”
Vi didn’t like being jerked around, even by a pretty woman. If Caitlyn had sent Vi alone – or even with some junior officer – Vi would probably have bailed right about now. But Caitlyn had been there personally. She’d put her own ass on the line right along with Vi’s, which Vi could certainly respect.
Vi tried to push all thoughts of Caitlyn’s ass out of her mind as the docking ring carried her down to the surface.