Chapter 14

Sepia star system, inner system.

High orbit over Sepia.

"Hello captain. Welcome back to the lands of the living."

Sarah groaned, and opened her eyes, but only got blurry images. She felt...sluggish. But she still recognized her AI's voice.

"Elteria? What happened?"

"You got shot up. Badly." Sarah's vision finally stabilized, and she looked at the AI's hologram currently bent over her bed. Given the big old red cross on the ceiling, and 'Eternal Seeker' printed under it, she was in the ship's medbay.

She really wished she wasn't so familiar with that damned ceiling she could have recognized it even without the markings.

"So I see. What happened?" Sarah shook her head. "I can't...remember."

"That's because your implants are shut down until you're fully back up." Sarah nodded slowly. Storing your memories in your implants was standard practice throughout the Known Universe. After all, biological memory was fallible, electronic memory...less so. And you could make backups if necessary. "They shut your brain down as well when you got wounded to minimize trauma." Sarah winced, that was a problem with the implants made for a fleet officer. Unlike the marine version they weren't tailored to keep you in the fight for as long as possible, they were made to preserve you, and if that meant knocking you out upon taking critical damage in the middle of a fight, they'd do it. "You took a hypervelocity rifle round to the chest."

Sarah froze.

"I'm sorry, what?"

"You got hit by an hypervelocity rifle round. Don't ask me how some dipshits from a backwater hellhole like this got that kind of weaponry, because I'd really, really like to know the answer." The AI smiled sardonically. "Unfortunately the gun won't tell us either. It got blasted to pieces when your little protégé avenged you, and what was left had all serial numbers and markings erased. And unlike the personal shield generator, it wasn't intact enough for me to pull a match from my database. Still picked up the pieces." She shrugged. "If nothing else, the grav generator's components are worth a small fortune, and we'll have some spare parts for the Bertha if needed."

Sarah nodded. The problem with hypervelocity rifles was that gauss technology simply couldn't accelerate a projectile at that speed, at least not without size penalties that would make it impossible to be portable by even someone in power armor. There was a reason the gauss turrets on the Eternal Seeker were so big after all. Thus they had to use a gravity generator that was...advanced. So advanced that it drove the individual cost of the weapon through the roof and made it a rarity on the battlefield.

The Eternal Seeker had one, single hypervelocity rifle left in it's armory. Even with the resources that had let her refit a stars damned gunship to the highest standard of the Directorate Navy, and divert enough missiles to level a planet she'd only managed to grab 3 of the weapons for the armory, and they'd lost 2 of them in the last 60 years. The last one was the Bertha, their single most powerful infantry weapon...well, formally. After all they had the fusion gun now.

If that damned WMD qualified as an infantry weapon to begin with of course.

"Wait." Sarah blinked. "My protégé?"

"Yep, you know, the stray you picked up here. Hold on." Elteria straightened, and snapped her fingers. "Move your asses in here, but I'm warning you, if even one of you idiots crowd her I'm kicking you out in a heartbeat, understood?"

The medbay door opened, and only a chuckle answered Seria's warning as Hector and Seria stepped through the door.

"Skipper. It's good to see you." Said the sergeant, and Sarah smiled. Her marine sergeant only called her 'skipper' either when he was worried to hell...or she wasn't here to hear it.

"Hello sergeant, likewise." She looked at Seria, and raised an eyebrow. "So, I've heard some interesting things. From what I'm gathering...you kicked some ass for me?"

The armorer positively squirmed.

"I, ah...might have grabbed your weapon and opened fire on the one that shot you."

Sarah chuckled.

"Nice work." She sighed, and adjusted slightly on the bed. "So, what happened after I got taken out?"

Hector combed his hair with his hand.

"Mostly cleaning up really. We engaged the bastards, and what was left of the sepians sortied to counter attack. Confirmed the governor was alive and kicking, alongside most of her ministers. Afterwards we got you topside alongside some of their critical casualties." He shrugged. "Didn't cost us much, and they all made it. I have their CO's personal thanks as well."

"And the veneration from the local troops." Completed Elteria, before shaking her head. "Heck, the freaking planet. She might have been a politician, but the governor didn't get where she was without majority support, Sepia is a democracy after all. The way we absolutely demolished the SLF whenever they encountered them, and dragged them into the light only amplified it. We're stars damned heroes here. I've had to deflect marriage proposals."

Sarah frowned.

"I thought we only accepted message traffic from military installations and the government?"

"Yeah, who do you think made the proposals?"

Sarah looked at her AI's face, and shook her head as she realized the AI wasn't joking.

"Okay, fair enough. How's the governor doing?"

"Right now?" The AI chuckled. "Trying to get to the bathroom without an infantry platoon filling the room, I'd guess. The army...didn't take well to their beloved leader being nearly murdered under their watch. They parked a fucking infantry division on top of the palace, with air support and at least 3 layers of heavy defenses. I'm fairly sure my scanners have detected nuclear tipped surface-to-air missiles in the mix as well. Honestly if I wasn't getting hourly updates from the governor asking if you'd woken up and how you were doing I'd think this was a military coup of some sort."

Sarah winced.

"That might be how the SLF will try to spin it honestly."

"The SLF isn't going to spin up anything. The governor decided that them firing anti ship missiles, with, you know, warheads capable of wiping out cities, was the last straw. That and them slaughtering virtually all of parliament and most of the upper levels of her government. System security is busting down doors and has basically arrested anyone that hosted SLF propaganda websites, knowingly or not. But...they were already shutting down. I think the SLF is going underground. These kind of insurgencies never have that many fighters -they didn't have a secure extraterritorial training ground after all-, and they took atrocious losses trying to rush the palace. I think we just gutted whatever passed for their action arm, and, well..."

"The government's out for blood now." Finished Sarah.

"Yeah. And they have overwhelming popular support behind them. People are angry and the government is looking effective as hell with our victories. Hell, I don't even know if the governor will have to bother campaigning in the next election, I'm not sure there would be a point."

"Don't underestimate the ease with which crowds change their opinions Elteria. The mob that's carrying you around on it's shoulders today might just tear you apart tomorrow." Sarah sighed. "But that's not our problem. If the governor is alive, then schedule a conference with her. I believe our contract here can be pretty much considered as fulfilled after that mess."

"Actually...." Elteria trailed off. "Well....I finished decrypting the logs for the directional transmitter."

"We've got the satellite?"

"Yep. Wouldn't have seen it without them, but we got it. It's in the outer system, almost in the damned Kuiper belt actually. Can't resolve much at this range without going active, but I've focused enough sensor arrays on it to see the slight heat differentials, so it definitely has power and a cooling system, the latter probably pointed out system."

Sarah nodded. What was the old adage? Ah, yes, 'there is no stealth in space'. It wasn't quite true -cloaking fields were a prime example-, but it was a good rule of thumb. Some people thought it meant that you couldn't see anything in space, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. In fact, it was insanely easy to detect things in space, at least with the technology to have an interstellar civilization. The problem was that, if anything, the scanners were too good....and detected too much stuff. The whole trick for a sensor system and it's operator was separating junk like meteors, asteroids and even debris fields from satellites and warships here to tear you a new one. That was why the Dominion refueling station was practically impossible to detect, as everyone could see an anomaly there, but without more motive to look at it very closely it would just be classified as another one of those seemingly eternal storms in any gas giant.

"Excellent." Sarah sighed. "Well, we're mercenaries. Let's see if I can up our fee for a little extra assistance. Still, start looking at some options for our next stop. I doubt we'll stay here one more week. Pick somewhere more...civilized please."

"Aye aye ma'am!"

*****

"Captain, it's good to see you well."

For what it was worth, the governor looked genuinely relieved to see her, and there appeared to have been genuine concern in her voice, although Sarah had learned never to trust politicians on that kind of stuff -their whole carrier was basically about letting people see the emotions they wanted them to see-, but it was still a bit gratifying.

Sarah smiled, although she knew that it would look strained. Elteria had flat out refused to let her out of the medbay for 6 hours, and Sarah had known better than to ask to take the call while she was still bedded. Sometimes she regretted they hadn't acquire a new ship's doctor after Calahan had retired. Doctors were stubborn, but Elteria was worse, much, much worse.

"Nice is...relative governor." She leaned back into her command seat, and sighed slightly. "I heard you wanted to talk to me?"

"Yes. First, I wanted to thank you for saving me." The governor held up her hand as Sarah opened her mouth. "I know, I'm the contract holder, if I'd died you might not have gotten paid, still....Thank you. You went above and beyond for me and my people."

Sarah chuckled.

"You know what I'm going to ask if you insist on thanking me so effusively right?"

The governor laughed.

"Of course I do! And you have more than earned some extra payment. Your original fee was 50 megacredits for stopping the offworld support, with an extra 25 if you killed or captured whoever was supplying the SLF, and an additional 10 if you brought back information of where that support was coming from. I'd say you've more than fulfilled your primary objective, and although the smugglers seemed to have evaded you, you brought in enough prisonners than I am willing to consider the last bonus fulfilled as well, on top of the few hundred kilocredits those prisonners would be worth under our original agreement. I would also like to add another 50 megacredits to your fee for your timely rescue."

Sarah had to stop herself from whistling. Dominion credits weren't the most high value currency around, but it wasn't low either. That had to be a noticeable chunk of her government's budget at this point.

That is, of course, if she wasn't being subsidized by the Dominion.

"That is....very generous governor. Although I do have an additional proposition."

"Oh?"

"As I was saying when we were...interrupted, I was following a lead. I didn't know if it would go anywhere at the time....but I believe it does now. We have managed to locate what we believe to be a stealthed SLF communication relay satellite in the outer system, and we would be more than willing to go and recover it, as well as it's data banks, for you. On top of that, if we manage to get the logs for it's directional transmitters, I believe we would be able to find the SLF's headquarters."

The governor looked at Sarah for a few seconds, before slowly nodding.

"You continue to deliver above and beyond all my expectations captain. Very well, I am ready to extend your contract. 10 million for the satellite and it's logs alone...25 millions if you find their headquarters. Another 25 if you help my people storm it."

Sarah smiled. Yeah, the woman was definitely being backed by the Dominion, there was no way she could come up with that kind of money in anything resembling a timely fashion otherwise. System governments, backwater or not, had colossal resources, but no fringe system possessed massive reserves of interstellar currency like that.

"It would be my pleasure to do latter governor. I have an account to settle with these...people after all."

*****

"I'm sorry Papyrus, we-"

"Can't go down with us." The businessman sighed. "Moonlight, I appreciate your loyalty, but...you are too important to be lost over this. Go! Sepia will not be liberated, but the grand liberation will live. Tell Liberator of what has transpired here. I am uploading every file, every scrap of data we have acquired about these mercenaries, and the Dominion's machinations in Sepia. I know they aren't complete, but when the time comes, when Liberator's fleet scour our oppressors from the stars, at least they will not do so blind, at least not fully. I would have preferred it had been otherwise but...here we are."

Allira swallowed, and nodded.

"Yes Papyrus, we understand. We will take your information to Liberator, you have our word."

"Excellent." Papyrus' eyes softened. "We might have some time. I doubt they have captured Razor alive, or they would be shouting it on every roof right now, and there would probably be soldiers already tearing down HQ. I have sent a general directive to all cells to disperse, and told all of the cell leaders and active combatants to activate their emergency plans and get into the deepest bolthole they can find. I've also transmitted to those I trust the most the list of assets I believe will survive the investigation. Maybe when Liberator arrives, there will be some ready to stand for their freedom on Sepia once more, and they will have the means to help bring about that freedom. Until then, however, I'm afraid there isn't much more I can do. This is our last conversation I'm afraid, I have ordered every communication system to be destroyed, and all records shredded. The satellite I will leave, should Liberator ever find a use for it."

"Very well....Goodbye Paul."

The businessman smiled.

"Goodbye Allira. Goodbye Annalisa. May the stars shine upon you."