Per Ardua, Ad Astra - Part 4

[hizashikage]

Taka owed a lot to Bizi Kei, and he didn't begrudge Intelligence wanting to go over his information with a fine-toothed comb. He had to admit, it was a little out of the ordinary at the very least, if not downright suspicious, to suddenly have access to a network of genuine Jimsho information with no precedent--and it was Intelligence's job to be suspicious. He bristled a little at the implication that his code might not somehow be good enough to get them what it had, that there might be flaws in his programming, but he could understand the suspicion. Eventually his intel passed the vetting process, with several hawks up the chain of command remembering that he had actually been a tech monkey in Jimsho, that he'd gotten pilot training after defecting, and that he had skills other than loyalty to his people and a hot hand on a fighter's controls.

Intelligence accepted as reasonable the idea that he hadn't given his network to them gift wrapped as a defection present when he first came over because he couldn't say for sure that it would work, but that his systems would be guaranteed to suffer the heaviest scrutiny when they were brand new. They didn't appreciate it, exactly--Intelligence always liked to be the secret shakers and movers, always wanted to be the ones with their fingers on the hidden kill buttons, and be the ones controlling all the various flows of information in and out of their space--but they accepted it as reasonable. They even accepted as reasonable the idea that after several years of service as a fighter jockey instead of a tech monkey his carefully crafted network had slipped his mind. They bought, or at least pretended to buy, which was the important part, his story of being reminded of it in an old journal, of deciding to see how rusty his skills were by trying to activate it, his pleased surprise when it worked just like he'd hoped it would. Those were all more or less true, old journal entry read several weeks before the engagement at Ilana. He'd cut out Alex's death from his official story, because he was also cutting out one other very important detail--he was scrubbing the information first, then re-encoding before sending it along up the chain.

He had a little team of code crackers fresh from Vistlip Academy who were too young and fresh-faced to question orders working on every information packet they received, scouring it for information on the two freighters that had picked up survivors from the Arashi in the hopes that they'd be able to lead him to them. Then, transmissions neatly scrubbed of evidence of his searches, they repackaged the data and sent it on for him. The entire command at Charlotte thought their orders were official, but his own T&P skills weren't so rusty to keep him from hacking an official order or two. Taka knew he'd be in trouble with Command if he was ever caught--Intelligence would be livid; they'd want his head at the very least--but he also knew that Command would never sanction his little side project, even if it wouldn't interfere with the official line, and that Intelligence would like it best if he never saw any of the intel that came through his own network. He felt a little bad about the deception; he owed Bizi Kei for the chance to work as part of a team, the chance to lead, the chance to live up to his potential, but he also owed Alex's memory and Taka was loyal. He would never use the info to hurt Bizi Kei's pursuits, so he couldn't see what it would really hurt if he was a little underhanded in his pursuit of the crew of the Arashi.

His intel was good. Most of it was noncritical--letters sent to parents, siblings, lovers; orders for replacement parts; and brokered deals on in-season produce--some of it detailed troop movements, which was most obviously useful information, but even the little things could be useful in the aggregate. Get enough orders for replacement parts, and you start to notice patterns in what the other side is using and breaking and needs more of, which might speak to training exercises and preparation for upcoming operations. Intelligence was getting a lot out of Taka's system, almost an overload of potentially useful information. He was helping the cause, not working against them. As it was, they were far too busy analyzing to miss what they never knew they didn't have--and that little bit, two measly freighters, and the remnants of a ship's crew, that was Taka's, and critical to his own private mission.

***

They swung by Toma's place in the middle of one Jimsho run, about four weeks into their gig as professional bait. They were getting used to working as a team, which was almost as weird as anything else was all by itself. Neither group was really much for cross-company bonding. They had private sets of often overlapping networks of contacts, friends, acquaintances. They'd all been part of other small businesses in their younger days, building their way up to owning their own ships and shipping businesses--some temporary, and some they'd thought would be the group they'd partner into--but neither crew had ever really had a partner who wasn't part of their own business.

"Didn't think to see you two here together," Toma remarked cheerfully when Ryo and Kame showed up in his little shop together. It wasn't like Jin and Yamapi, who could be counted on to hang out any time they were both in the same port for more than half an hour. Kame glanced at Ryo and shrugged.

"We got in together," Ryo dismissed. "Thought we'd come by first, since it's been a while either of us were in system."

Toma laughed, but he had a serious look in his eyes. "I've heard some things about you--the both of you--and Jimsho lately. Neither of you ever were govrunners. I'm not saying you can't make the business decisions you wanna make, but just--knowing you guys the way I do--just be careful about how far in you get yourselves. If you don't want to get a reputation, you can't take Jimsho military jobs only."

This time Kame laughed, and he hoped it didn't sound as forced to everyone else as it did to his own ears. "We just owed some favors, that's all. We just haven't had a lot of time lately for other jobs now Jimsho's calling them in." It wasn't exactly untrue. Toma had a point though, a good one. When this was over, neither of them wanted to be stuck running military jobs because they'd let the rest of their contacts go.

"We're not your private golden retrievers, you know," Ryo told Matsujun after they got back. Commander Ohno and Takki were there too, and Kame thought that Ryo timed his comment specifically for this kind of opportunity, even if he was technically addressing Matsujun. Ryo felt more comfortable with Matsujun--you always knew where you stood with him. "You can't just tell us to 'fetch, fetch' all the time. We have businesses to run; reputations to keep. The One Piece never had military connections this tight, and I know for a fact that the Space Queen didn't either. At the very least, it's going to be suspicious if we're your pretty lapdogs all of a sudden, and we've practically dropped off the map when it comes to our usual contacts. That's going to cripple us in the long run."

"What are you trying to say?" Takki cut in, leaning towards Ryo, away from where he had been leaning over Ohno's shoulder to look at his console.

"I'm not trying to back out of this deal," Ryo said, holding his hands up, palms out, placating, at odds with his tone. "I'm just saying, we can't just run around doing nothing but the jobs you send us on and sit around waiting for your next assignment when you don't have anything." Ryo scowled. "We still have bills to pay."

A little late, Ohno took an interest in the proceedings. "What do you want to do then?" At least he seemed genuinely interested in the answer, if a little puzzled by why it wasn't an ideal set up.

"Look," Ryo suggested, "We'll still do your jobs. That's part of the deal after all, right? We run supplies for you free, and you get the erzot Bizi Kei military off our tails. But we gotta keep our own businesses going. Let us run our own jobs too, when you don't have anything deathly urgent."

Takki didn't agree immediately; he wanted to pull Tsubasa in first, get his professional opinion on how that would affect intel and security, but when Tsubasa opinioned that the extra exposure of having the two ships flying around the galaxy might get them results faster now that he was finally making some headway with the source code, Takki cleared them for 'mission activities.' Kame took that to mean they could do whatever the flying Brahe they wanted as long as they dropped everything when T&T Supplies called them. It was probably the best deal they were going to get in the situation, and Kame was grateful Ryo had pressed the issue. The Flying Peapod wasn't the only ship that had been itching to get back into the air.

Takki and Tsubasa stopped telling them which systems they were testing after that. It simply wasn't necessary. They called in secure instructions relayed through Sho or Nino on Pikanchi, or once by Matsujun on the Love So Sweet, and then they called in 'official' orders using whatever network they were sounding for holes. Half the time those messages were routed through a confusing enough series of different networks that Kame wasn't sure where they even originated, but he trusted Tsubasa would be able to glean whatever information he was hunting for from the results. Those video messages didn't matter anyway--prerecorded and full of misinformation--as long as he answered them so Bizi Kei wouldn't be able to read the lack of comm response by accurately surmising that the messages weren't genuine.

During the runs they weren't much different from any other pick up and delivery job the Space Queen had ever done, filled with the boredom of long hours in a small space and the ever-present, bone-deep thrum of the ship's engines.

***

Tsubasa was close. He'd found the data transmission protocol almost immediately--the transmissions weren't hard to see once you paid a system close attention, and his compartmentalized information flow plan, while slow at first, enabled Tsubasa to figure out which networks he should be paying attention to. The data packets were small, short bursts piggybacking on normal communications traffic, so there were no extraneous transmissions to give them away. If you really looked at it though, all of the outgoing 'messages'--the actual message, plus that little extra compressed data--were bigger sending than receiving, the little secret packet of compressed data beamed off to some other destination than the legitimate traffic. Technically, Tsubasa could have shut down the data transmissions almost as soon as he'd discovered them--have some tech monkeys slap together a code patch to block or screen out the extra data. It was encrypted using a particular set of signatures; it would have been simple enough to simply block data transmissions that fell within those signatures' specifications.

That wouldn't have solved Tsubasa's bigger problem, though: what data, exactly, was being leaked and how the systems were collecting information in the first place. So Tsubasa let the transmissions continue, slowly and surreptitiously ensuring that no really critical data flowed over those networks. He needed to find the root of the leak, not just the transmission process, because he had no way of knowing if there were alternate routes the program could enable to get the info out if its original method failed--alternate routes that might be harder to track.

Tsubasa's network of operatives and codecrackers were technically spread all across Jimsho space, but he had them all working on this project, its priority much higher than any of the development or routine hack-and-crack attacks against Bizi Kei of which their normal assignments consisted. They stripped away layer after layer of programming and kept going, still looking for the source of the leaks. They were working in older systems, reliable, nearly a decade of use now without anything but minor maintenance problems. Without Tsubasa's slow, calculated leak of information, no one would have ever thought to check them; why suspect old, reliable systems when you had other, newer systems implemented within the last year. By all rights, any one of those would be more likely to be their source compromise.

It wasn't until he looked at the source code, and the hidden programming written into it, that Tsubasa decided to do some digging. It was all clean, professional work, and the rogue code was literally built into the networks, there from the very beginning rather than built separately and patched on later. It wasn't a whim when he checked to see who the original programmer had been--the work was consistent across all the affected systems, enough so that Tsubasa was almost certain that the same programmer had to have created them all--but he wasn't expecting whoever it was to make it easy to figure out his or her identity. It was simpler than Tsubasa had thought. The programmer hadn't thought to cover his tracks in their records, no pseudonyms, no false trails or dead ends. Takahiro Moriuchi, former junior officer in Jimsho's T&P--tech and programming--division had built every single compromised system, designed all their code, and put their associated networks in place. It wasn't the sum total of his work in the Jimsho--which Tsubasa had looked over more thoroughly than half the politicals higher up knew was even possible--but it was the latest; the last work Takahiro--Taka now, according to his intelligence files--had done before defecting to the Bizi Kei Alliance military.

***

It wasn't even during a Jimsho run, which is what made it seem so unfair. Two small cricket-class Bizi Kei ships on anti-smuggler detail stopped them as they came in on their approach on the station. It wasn't technically Bizi Kei space, though they were close, so the ships didn't technically have jurisdiction. As such, ships asked to stop by Alliance warships could appeal to the system government and defense force to intervene. Actual smugglers tended to cut and run at that point rather than avail themselves to the local governments' services because the defense force would search the ship instead. It was useful for situations like this though, when the Bizi Kei Alliance was gunning for a ship that wasn't carrying contraband--either for personal reasons, that is, reasons that didn't involve this system government, or just to cause trouble--because big as Bizi Kei was, they avoided stepping on any independent nation's toes. While largely united in history and culture, they were still technically an Alliance, and if they sent the message that they were willing to run ramshod over the independents' authority, large administrative sections of the Alliance breaking off wasn't too ridiculous a possibility.

The cricket classes broadcast the usual 'stop for boarding' message everyone on smuggler detail used. It didn't actually say to stop for boarding, that kind of authoritarian language stepping on too many toes, particularly out here in independent--nation, and business--country, but it did politely request the ships in question stop for questioning pertaining to the trafficking of contraband materials between systems. The standard video message was broadcast on a general frequency, accessible for any communications array within a certain radius. There were stories about kids rigging old comm sets at home out of spare parts and getting it up and running at just the right time to catch one of these kinds of messages being broadcast from a ship that was a little closer to stationary habitation than usual; usually the story ended with the kid being so scared by the sudden message about contraband that they ended up doing something comical that their older relatives could laugh about for years to come. The general video message served as a general warning--for the ship under suspicion, for local defense forces, and for nearby ships in case the one being asked to stop tried to shoot its way out. Collateral damage was never pretty in vacuum.

In tightbeam, the Bizi Kei ships were broadcasting another message though. It was more of the same, really, 'stop for questioning and contraband search,' but it was also directed specifically at the Space Queen and the One Piece so they'd know they were the ships who were supposed to be stopping. That was pretty normal. The thing was, the Bizi Kei ships already knew their ships' names. A usual message described the ship's class and incoming vector, unless the ship was known as an outlaw's ship--or at least suspected to be an outlaw's ship. This wasn't a bad break, the freighters selected at random for a search. This was Bizi Kei guessing who they were and planning to come aboard.

Neither freighter slowed at all, though they did change course, angling away from the station to come up on the small cluster of system defense ships currently on duty instead. Koyama recorded a quick distress message and set it to loop, requesting Hoshiwo Mezashite Defense aid. They didn't have time to get to the local government's line, though, before a small force of nearby Jimsho ships broke away from their approach for the station and headed to intercept the Bizi Kei contingent. It was a military convoy, but traveling openly, the kind that only ever stopped at independent nations' ports for emergency refueling. The speed they were traveling towards the Bizi Kei ships, though, put the lie to the idea that they needed fuel desperately enough to stop, and Yamapi realized belatedly that Jimsho must have been keeping tabs on them even when they weren't on specifically Jimsho runs. Two frigates and a slew of fighters were already in the air, more boiling out of the fighter bays as the ships advanced, and the Bizi Kei anti-smuggling vessels backed down without Jimsho having to say anything to them at all.

The Jimsho ships continued out of the system, doing a flyby so close to the Bizi Kei Alliance ships that it made Yamapi wince in sympathy. They hadn't technically done anything, and the two sets of warring military ships never exchanged a single word or shot, but the message was clear to everyone except maybe the local defense force. Back off. It wasn't much, but it gave the two Manta class freighters a chance to get to the Hoshiwo Mezashite line. They searched them very thoroughly--thank Brahe they weren't carrying anything questionable this time--but Bizi Kei didn't make another move on them, just hovered ominously on the edges of the proceedings until the One Piece and the Space Queen had docked with the station.

It had been a close call, and it left both crews shaken.

***

Tsubasa caught the tail end of the hack, which is what surprised him. It had the same signatures as the coding done on the systems programmed with the malicious information collection algorithms, but wasn't executed with any of the finesse Tsubasa had come to associate with Moriuchi's work. Either way, the hacker had been searching for information on the two freighters Takki had taken a shine to, the One Piece and the Space Queen, and that was enough to give Tsubasa a good guess at the hacker's identity--or at least their boss's. Tsubasa had all the information he needed on the rogue system specs, was just about to shut the whole thing down, and he decided it was time to clean up some loose ends in Bizi Kei's camp as well. Might as well.

It was kind of spur of the moment, not the way Tsubasa usually operated, but he couldn't see any glaring problems with the idea. He thought about it carefully for a moment, and then started typing furiously, a combination of faulty code and accurate information, and then watched as Moriuchi's system pulled the location of the One Piece and the Space Queen away down the rabbit's hole, straight to wherever Moriuchi cached it.

***

The One Piece came in system a little behind the Space Queen, right on course--not that Ryo thought they wouldn't be--and Ryo felt good about this whole mess for the first time in a long time. Takki hadn't said anything definitely--to be honest, hadn't said anything to him at all; Yamapi took that conversation--but according to Yamapi, he had seemed to be hinting that they might be done with this whole 'business arrangement' and back to their normal lives and their normal, all-civilian, mostly-legal runs soon. At the other console, Koyama made a routine call to the Space Queen to make sure everything was checking out over there and got Kame. Ryo was in a good enough mood to ask Koyama to toggle the comm over to his console for a moment, just so he could insult Kame's ugly ship.

He didn't get the chance to though, because the moment the comm toggled over to his console, Kame jerked and said "Erzot!" head ducked low as he looked off to the side. The picture shook and fuzzed out for a second before coming back, then flickered madly for a moment and Ryo thought they were going to lose the connection altogether.

"What the frap is happening over there?" Ryo yelled into the comm anyway, and Kame turned back to look at his vidview. His lips moved, but only part of every third word came through. "...king......ele......ines," Ryo made out, before the One Piece shook a little, like they'd hit something small but stationary, and then the overhead lights flickered off, then back on. The electrical short was short enough that the emergency lights didn't have time to kick in, so there was just the moment of utter blackness filled with panic that hadn't had enough time to figure out what it was before the overhead lights were back up again. Another thunk, and a flash near the nose of the ship that got lost as the lights flickered again, this time only dimming, but Ryo thought he was starting to figure out what was going on.

Overhead lights were a non-critical system, emergency lights ready to cut in if they went down permanently, and because of that the circuitry wasn't heavily shielded. The One Piece was a working freighter, not some upscale passenger shuttle where the customers would panic and run amok if the lights didn't stay on. Ryo cut his speed though, easing the throttle back until he'd directed the engine thrust to push the other way long enough to stop them dead in space.

The comm had cut out as Ryo was maneuvering, and Ryo assumed that Koyama had transferred the vidview back to his own console so Ryo could concentrate on flying. "Tell them to stop!" Ryo yelled, but when he glanced out the front viewport at the other ship, the Space Queen had already stopped ahead of them. "Are they responding?" he asked as everything around them seemed to slow down, suspended in a strange lull as the immediate threat recedes a little.

Koyama looked at him, eyes wide and worried, "Nothing. We were cut off. Their comm isn't transmitting." Even as he said it though, Ryo's eyes were drawn back to his vidview screen, and he cut Koyama off with a joyous whoop. The feed was still being patched through Ryo's console, so they could both see Koki's scowling face and sparkly eye patch as he peered into the comm. The screen flickered and did the dancing line thing for a moment--presumably as Koki whacked the side of the vidview on the Space Queen with his hand.

"There, ok," Koki said, then, into the vidview, "You all alive over there?"

Koyama glanced down at the life-support system viewscreen and smiled. "Looks like," Ryo said back. "Gimmie Kame. He probably figured it out, but we nearly flew straight into a field of electro-mines." Electromagnetic pulse mines were used to disable ships who flew into them. About the size of a breadbox, each electro-mine was designed to send out a burst of electromagnetic energy upon impact with an object moving quickly enough, shorting out electrical systems within its sphere of energy. Technically, they could be used on any object that depended on electrical circuitry to work. The pulse had a very limited range--and heavy shielding could serve to ground the energy and keep electrical systems intact longer--but if you threw enough of them at one, they would be able to take even a space station down. Getting enough electro-mines to do that would be prohibitively expensive, even if you weren't getting them from black market shills, so Ryo was pretty sure no one had ever tried.

"I don't know about you, but the One Piece is not equipped to pick up those mines on scans. We're basically flying blind," Ryo said after Kame's face replaced Koki's on the vidview.

"We get a little blip of something right before impact, but by then it's basically too late. One hit our comm array directly. Koki did some tweaking and got it back up, but I'd prefer to avoid any other major damage."

Ryo thought about making a comment about how he just loved when his ship took damage, but held his tongue. "So, you're telling me we have no way to know for sure how big the mine field is. Back is probably our best bet out."

Kame nodded. "If we go slowly enough the mines shouldn't register the impact and detonate." He bit his lip, as though he didn't really want to consider whatever he was about to say enough to actually say it. "How long do you think we have until whoever planted these show up to pick up their prize?" Electro-mines worked to disable a ship without doing irreversible damage. Regular bullets cost a lot less, but a misplaced shot and you'd have to replace the whole engine--not the most cost-effective way to pirate a ship. You also had to be there to use regular bullets--you couldn't count on your prey to just wander into your line of fire.

Ryo shrugged. They had no way of knowing. "We don't even know how long this field's been here. Can't be too long though--this route's pretty heavily traveled." No other ships were hanging dead in space, victims of the same electro-mines, and there hadn't been any reports of a rash of ships going missing along the route, or even of ships traveling this route taking unusual damage.

Kame quirked a grin then, but it was a little cynical. "Or they're just efficient about coming to collect. Either way, let's get out of here." Kame paused, and his expression lightened considerably, from jaded to mischievous in the space of a moment. "You think we could scoop up some of these mines on the way out? We could make a bundle, even if we just got a handful."

Ryo laughed outright at that. "You want to send someone out on a tether in a vacuum suit when pirates could show up any minute to check their trap and haul our not-so-broken ships away. I bet whoever you volunteer for that duty will love you."

***

Taka had had to do a little hacking of Bizi Kei's system--or rather, he had had to do a little hacking of Bizi Kei's system to find out where to start hacking into Jimsho's system--to find out exactly where the survivors from the crew of the Arashi had been reassigned. It had been a kind of sloppy job, much less careful than he usually did, but he was running short on time and he had to know before the assignment. Forty-eight hours before any mission Bizi Kei had a radio silence policy--it was a good idea, reducing the possibility for security leaks, either accidental or on purpose, by reducing the opportunity for one to occur--so he had had to get everything done before then. Lieutenant Matsumoto Jun had been promoted to Captain, given command of a strike cruiser named the Love So Sweet. Lieutenant Aiba was stationed there with him as his second. The other three survivors were all stationed to the ground base, Pikanchi. Taka wouldn't be able to get to any of them--he'd have enough trouble taking on a strike cruiser in his fighter; ONE OK ROCK Squadron wasn't up to full strength yet since Alex had died--but judging from the other forces assigned to this mission--information he had gotten by hacking his own military's systems this time--they looked like they might be willing to take the base if the opportunity presented itself, so Taka could only hope they'd die when Bizi Kei's ships pounded the ground base from high atmosphere.

Now that he knew where the rest of the crew from the Arashi had gone, he didn't need to milk the information from the crews of the two freighters that had picked them up. Still, that chance encounter near Hoshiwo Mezashite demonstrated that Jimsho wanted to protect them, and they might be tricked into devoting valuable resources to that end, distracting Jimsho from the strike they didn't know was going to come to the base at Kefera.

The run up to the Jimsho base was tense, but not more than usual--ONE OK ROCK Squadron was alert, comm chatter kept to a minimum but generally light-hearted, the other pilots relaxed and ready for whatever Jimsho would throw at them. Taka kept a light hand on the fighter's controls; locking up would get him killed once the fight opened up. The strike force had stopped at the edge of the system to arrange themselves, a line of smaller, more maneuverable capital ships--mostly frigates like the Arashi had been--in front, followed by the fighters, which could speed up to cut in front of the capitals when the base scrambled fighters itself, and then finally the heavy battle cruisers at the back, holding the door open if they needed to get out of the Kefera system in a hurry. The big guns would move in to strike at the base's ground defenses after the major space fighting was over. Nestled safely between the two battle cruisers, and with its own contingent of four armored assault shuttles, was a small medical frigate and two medishuttles. Two of the assault shuttles would stay with the medical frigate, and each medishuttle would get a assault shuttle partner for the battle. Part of the Liu Shen Treaty included agreements not to fire on medical vessels, but it paid to be careful with your soldiers' lives.

Taka wondered just how far out the base's surveillance systems ran. Mission briefing had said they shouldn't have to worry about enemy hostiles until they were at least within a visual line of sight of the base, but Taka knew from bitter experience that mission briefings weren't always accurate. The fleet ghosted through space, though, without any sign that the Jimsho forces stationed on Kefera had any idea they were coming.

“Tighten it up,” Taka told the rest of his squadron through the comm. No accidents this time. He kept his eyes open, and his hand light on the stick, and the Bizi Kei Alliance strike force glided closer to their target, roar of engines lost in the vacuum of space.

***

Matsujun was the official Captain of Love So Sweet, but with Takki and Tsubasa ensconced in Pikanchi Base, Ohno--technically in command of Pikanchi Base--and the rest of the command crew from the Arashi found themselves drifting towards the ship as a temporary 'home' for the duration of Sector Commander Takki's stay. If it were anyone else, Matsujun might have pitched a fit, but his soft spot for "Leader" reared its head again and Matsujun had unofficially ceded command without a second thought or comment--particularly because his crew was not suicidal enough to make an issue of it. That was how they ended up on Love So Sweet when the alarm sounded.

The Love So Sweet was in orbit--Ohno, Nino, and Sho having come up together on a small shuttle, now either nestled somewhere safely in the large ship's hold, or already sent back down to Pikanchi Base with a load of cruiser personnel on shore leave. There wasn't time to take one of those shuttles back down to the main base, no time to get back to their stations, not with the ship's alarms all blaring battle warnings and a voice over the ship's intercom system ordering all hands to their stations.

Nino didn't have a battle station, not on the Love So Sweet. His was technically down on base, but there wasn't anything he could do about that at the moment. He was technically off duty now anyway, which wouldn't have mattered under normal battle conditions, but with Takki in command on base at least Nino didn't have to worry about the chain of command breaking down in his absence.

He rushed to the command center on the bridge anyway; he didn’t want anyone to have to be spared to come hunt for him if it turned out they needed him after all. Ohno and Sho were already there, along with Matsujun, wordlessly in charge again now that battle was imminent. They understood the chain of command; the crew didn’t need any distractions, couldn’t afford hesitation about whose orders to follow, and so Ohno was merely an observer for this battle unless something happened that would keep Matsujun from being able to act.

Sho flagged Nino over to the small knot of people clustered around the edge of Matsujun’s command console. Sho smiled when he got closer and gestured to a chair next to Ohno’s where he could sit. It was a comm console, used to monitor and direct the fighters that were launching themselves out of Love So Sweet’s fighter bays at that very moment. “Commander Ohno’s already relayed the situation to Sector Commander Takki in command. Our people know not to expect us. I figured that if we’re stuck here, we might as well make ourselves useful, and got Matsujun to assign us bridge positions,” Sho explained.

Nino grinned rakishly and dropped into his chair. He had two and three flights. Other than relaying orders from Love So Sweet command, mostly he’d be in charge of making sure their comm traffic was routed properly. It would be an almost painfully boring task if the battle went in their favor, but it could get tricky if the enemy were using jammers to interfere with communication. A little message popped up above his console: orders.

Nino scanned them quickly, then toggled his comm on and set it his fighters’ designated frequency. “Two flight, three flight, you have permission to engage the other fighters at will. Watch out and don’t get too close to the big guns. Four flight will be taking care of any fighters aiming for strafing runs on the cruiser, so you concentrate on the rest of them. Copy?”

“Two flight copies,” buzzed back through the comm, followed by three flight’s acknowledgement a few beats later. Nino turned his attention to his monitor--green blips for Jimsho ships, the other side picked out in orange-as the battle broke in the middle like pixilated waves across a beach.

***

Kame was pretty certain they were clear of the minefield when the frigate came in system directly in front of them. Jin pulled hard to port the moment it came into sight in the front view port, but Kame still had a moment where he knew in his gut they were going to crash into the bigger ship and die horrible, messy, hopefully quick deaths. Rationally, Kame knew the ship was minutes away even at full speed, and that thought sunk in slowly as the ship receded a little in the front view now that Jin had changed course.

He was so busy getting his breathing under control he almost didn't notice the two assault shuttles that had hopped in behind the frigate, gun and armor heavy on their small frames. He noticed when they adjusted course immediately, one for the Space Queen, and one toward where, presumably, the One Piece was. Jin adjusted course again, this time deliberate instead of pure reflex, trying to angle below the line of flight the frigate had taken into the system. The assault shuttle on them adjusted course too, and Jin's face settled into grim lines. "As soon as I get a chance, I'm making a run for it. We need to hold them off until I can get a vector out of the system," Jin told Kame.

Kame considered yelling back into the belly of the ship itself, but belatedly realized that the comm system would be more efficient. "Someone's coming in on us," he shouted, switching the ship's intercom on. "Get down to the guns and hold on!"

A light pinged on above the vidview, and Koyama's face stretched out from the center of the screen as it warmed up. "Those aren't pirate ships," Koyama said. "They're in way too good condition to be some freeloaders trying to score clueless merchant ships."

Kame nodded. "The minefield should have been our first clue. Probably pretty lucrative in the long run, but kind of costly to set up in the first place." Koyama nodded back. "Look, we're making a break for it first chance we get. You do the same. We're not getting out of this if we have to stick together like there's a cord strung between us. Meet up at Pikanchi after?"

"Got it. See you on the other side." Koyama ended the call and the screen flickered back to black. Jin swerved suddenly, evident more through the sudden swing of the stars in the viewport and the enemy ships sliding rapidly out of view, than through any sense of motion. The One Piece swung into view, bullets sparking off its reinforced hull. It didn't look like any penetrated, but it was too far away to tell for sure. One of the guns on the One Piece opened up enthusiastic return fire as the assault shuttles closed in--must have been Tegoshi. The percussive rattle of the Space Queen's own guns echoed up from the gunnery stations as Junno and Ueda followed suit.

Jin turned the ship again, aiming for a course out of the system, but the frigate started correcting course to intercept them. Their options were limited because of the mine field behind them. They were effectively cut off from most of the system and any way out except the one they'd come in, the one currently being blocked by a Bizi Kei Alliance frigate and a couple of assault shuttles.

The ship shook for a moment, lights flickering violently, and Kame grabbed the arm of his console chair for support. In the pilot's seat, Jin grimaced. "Must have let them back us up too far--hit a mine," he said. He maneuvered them forward again, but now the ship was shaking with skittering bullet impacts, and the louder reverberations of return fire from their own guns. His comm blipped, and Kame turned up the reception, but left his own screen blank. "Cease fire, power down your engines, and prepare to be boarded. No one needs to get hurt here," the pilot of the shuttle was saying.

Kame fingered the grip on the raging bull Koki had given him as a present--it matched Koki's and Nakamaru's own guns, but in a different color--and considered the possibility of letting them be boarded. It wasn't looking good. They had held out longer than, by rights, a Manta 52 should have been able to, thanks to the upgrades Jimsho had given them as part of their deal--they had almost certainly held out longer than the Bizi Kei ships thought they would. They'd probably been hoping to come in system and find a couple of disabled freighters in the middle of their little minefield. Still, even functional, and with that extra edge, they were more than outmatched in terms of firepower. If they didn't get a vector out system soon, they'd be in a lot of trouble. Kame called the One Piece.

"Seems like they want to cut a deal," Kame said after Koyama answered. On the vidview, Koyama opened his mouth to respond when half a squadron of Jimsho Confederacy fighters dropped into the system. They lit up one of the assault shuttles immediately, the one closer to the One Piece and the edge of the system. The frigate fired on them calmly, as though they'd been told to expect company, but the fighters were drastically more maneuverable than the frigate's guns, and if they took any damage at all it was minor.

Kame got a voice-only message from one of the pilots as the fighters broke into two groups--one creating a screen near the frigate like a swarm of gnats, and the other winging quickly towards the Space Queen's position and the assault shuttle making yet another run on them. "This is Venus Lead. We're here to rescue you. Space Queen, One Piece, are you good for flight? Over." As he watched, the assault shuttle juked straight into a cluster of mines--only visible as they shot sparks upon impact--and then stopped moving.

Kame toggled his comm, targeting the half squadron's frequency, and came on line just as Koyama was finishing confirming the One Piece's flight readiness. "This is the Space Queen. We are also good to go. Let's get out of here!"

***

The ground shook under Takki, dust knocked down from the ceiling, but no cracks had appeared yet in the reinforced steel and concrete that made up the command center. The front wall was taken up entirely by viewscreens--camera views, and sensor scans from the base and space, and feeds from every single ship currently under Takki's command. The Love So Sweet moved to engage with one of the two big battle cruisers Bizi Kei had brought; Takki ordered a cluster of three Jimsho frigates and a handful of mid-class ships to swarm the other. Bizi Kei's big capital ship could easily take out any one of the smaller ships moving to engage it if it could get in a few good volleys. They weren't designed to take the kind of damage a cruiser that size could dole out.

As long as they kept moving though, they had a decent shot of wearing it down slowly and keeping it occupied until the Love So Sweet was free to take it on. Takki had orders sent to all of the smaller ships dancing around the big Bizi Kei cruiser--the Renai, an ensign carrying a sheaf of print-outs of battle data informed him--to make sure to pull back if they took extensive damage, and to do it before they ended up dead in space and dead in the cross-hairs of the gunners of the big ship. He got a slew of acknowledgments back from the various officers tasked with communications with the fleet, but resolved to keep one of his own eyes on that part of the battle as well. Not all the captains up there were as experienced as Takki would have liked, and it was easy to get distracted by the shot you think will come your way in just a moment until it was too late for you to get out of danger yourself. Takki was too seasoned to think they'd come out of this unscathed, but he didn't want any more losses than necessary.

None of the enemy ships were close enough to the planet yet for Takki to use the surface-to-space rockets, but one of Bizi Kei's smaller cruisers seemed to be edging that way. He set the lieutenant in charge of the S2S to monitor that ship in particular, and to start working out firing solutions now. He had orders to launch the moment that cruiser came into range.

Takki was rewarded a few minutes later, and the whole base shook--more dust drifting down from the roof--with the force of the launch. A hole blossomed in the side of the Bizi Kei ship, spewing atmosphere and fire, and that half of the ship went dark, a cord somewhere severed, cutting it off from the energy the engines were producing. The room shook again a few minutes later, the S2S finally reloaded and firing again. This shot drilled into the hole the first rocket created in the small cruiser, and the ship on the viewscreen shivered, and then cracked in half. Escape pods jetted out from the less damaged side, and then the ship started flaking and breaking apart as it skimmed the planet's atmosphere.

Two more cruisers come into the S2S's range, but it was still being reloaded. The ground shook, and an ensign lost his footing as the cruisers started pummeling the base from space, dancing back out of range before the rocket launcher had a chance to fix on a firing solution. It wasn't a long barrage, but the base had taken some damage from it; one of the tunnels connecting the southern compound to the rest of the base had collapsed, and when this was over, they'd have to spend some time digging their way out.

The cruisers pulled back; someone up there must have used the death of the first cruiser to time the amount of time it took for Pikanchi's S2S to reload. Takki didn't think they'd be getting another shot at them, not for a while at least. Suddenly, a squadron of fighters pulled away from the main battle where the fighters had been swarming, and jetted towards the planet's surface. Takki watched, fascinated. He wasn't entirely sure what they thought they're doing, but he reckoned Pikanchi could withstand four fighters. Calmly, Takki helped the ensign back to his feet, and ordered the Jimsho frigates to concentrate their fire on the two cruisers that had gotten away.

***

It was unusual to ask fighters to make strafing runs on ground targets--a waste of their speed and maneuverability, really, but the Sid was still busy trading blows with the Love So Sweet, and the Renai was hanging dead in space. It wasn't still leaking atmosphere, as far as Taka knew, which on a ship that size meant that the hull breaches had been patched or contained, but all their systems seemed to be down, from engines to basic life support. The damage could be repaired if they got the ship out of there, but there was no way the Renai would be rejoining the battle.

The Otegami and the Ajisai were engaged with several smaller capital ships, keeping them off the two big cruisers, and Karasu Squadron--also technically under Taka's command for this battle--had been assigned to keep Pikanchi's fighters from taking down any more of their smaller ships. Ground defenses were still launching the occasional rocket up past the planet's atmosphere into the fray. The smaller capital ships made very sure to stay out of the rockets' range, and the frigates were generally maneuverable enough to get out of the way if they ventured too close to the planet, but without the Renai, the engagement was quickly turning into a stalemate--and a costly one at that. That was where Taka and his ONE OK ROCK Squadron came in.

They weren't equipped with heavy enough firepower to take out the rocket emplacement themselves--you couldn't get bullets of a high enough caliber to take out a surface-to-space tower on a fighter and still expect it to fly--but you could create an awful lot of chaos on the ground. Blow up enough nearby buildings, even unimportant ones, stir up enough smoke, keep enough people pinned or kill them outright, and they wouldn't be able to operate the defense emplacement efficiently enough for it to make trouble for their ships up above. And while a fighter, or even a whole squadron of fighters wouldn't be able to take the building out themselves, they were also way too fast for the rocket launcher's targeting system to hit. The only way the surface-to-space launcher could take one of them out was by pure accident--and really bad luck, on the fighter pilot's part, because those rockets were actually bigger than the fighters themselves.

"Break off into pairs and set up for strafing runs," Taka ordered the rest of ONE OK ROCK. "Go for whatever structures look like you can take out--non-critical buildings, latrines, fuel tankers if we're lucky; whatever, all go. Shoot anything that shoots back." ONE OK ROCK Squadron copied, and they streaked in from high in the atmosphere towards Pikanchi Base.

They made a few strafing runs, part suppression fire, and part targets of opportunity. The buildings were mostly reinforced concrete, and didn't take a lot of damage, but Toru caught a few barrels of fuel stacked neatly against one building's corner. They exploded, and the building next to them caught fire.

They didn't get much longer than that to work with. Taka was barely through the smoke billowing from that corner of the base when his comm lit up with a fleet-wide message. Retreat.

Taka growled in frustration. He knew, logically, that they weren't going to take Pikanchi at that point. They'd suffered too many losses to be able to hold it--they had just been buying time to try to get the Renai back to functional enough to limp her way out of the system. Taking the base had never been a main objective to anyone but Taka anyway--more a target of opportunity than anything; the intent of the strike was more to cripple the forces there, and leaving it under Jimsho command would then force the Confederacy to devote more troops to rebolstering its defenses. They'd hit Pikanchi Base hard, and Pikanchi had struck back, but ultimately retreat was the only and best option now--staying any longer would defeat the purpose of the attack.

Even knowing this, it grated on Taka's nerves, not knowing if his own personal mission had been accomplished or not, and not being able to find out, but there was nothing he could do about it here. Get out, first thing. He'd found them before, and if they'd lived, he could find them again. Ultimately, all it came down to was a matter of time, but he'd avenge Alex in the end. He couldn't do that if he died in a foolhardy solo attack in direct disobedience to his orders on Pikanchi.

"You heard them, fastest way out you can find," Taka reiterated to his squadron. "The Renai isn't in any condition to be hauling our tails out of here, so we'll have to leave the system ourselves. Does everyone have enough fuel to make it to the rendezvous point?"

There was a burst of comm chatter, a mixture of Ryouta and Tomoya confirming their fuel gauges between themselves, and Toru telling him he was good to go. "Ryouta and I have enough, but not much more than that," Tomoya confirmed a moment later.

"Alright then. Try not to get sidetracked mopping up any hostiles on the way out. If you run out of fuel we've got no way of coming back for you," Taka said, pointing his nose to the sky, and suddenly down became back and ONE OK ROCK Squadron shot off like arrows aimed for space.

That was when Taka hit a piece of falling debris. It was a piece of the ROSE BLOOD, the first ship Pikanchi's S2S rocket launcher had taken out, and the ship had been breaking up on the outer edge of the planet's atmosphere ever since. It wasn't large compared to the fighter--maybe the size of a man, and only a few centimeters thick. If Taka had been going more slowly, it would have done some damage, but nothing too dramatic. Moving at full speed, he hadn't even had a chance to see it before it crashed into his right wing, shearing it right off, and sending his fighter into a dizzying spin.

Taka smashed his head against the side of the cockpit, pain ripping through him as the centripetal force slammed him around inside his fighter, and forced the blood out of his head. There was an orange indicator light lit up above his head: life support was out. Taka tried to right his ship, pulling hard on the controls, but the right wing and engine were just gone, and he couldn't regain control. Nothing he could do, the thought sinking in even as Taka blacked out. He wouldn't be conscious for the crash.

***

"So that's it?" Kame asked, a little suspiciously. It was maybe the third time he'd asked it, a little more explicitly each time. Ryo couldn't really blame him; it was hard to believe that, just like that, Jimsho was calling the upgrades paid for, particularly with the mess Pikanchi Base was in now. Takki was all smiles though.

"Tsubasa says he's got all the bugs in our systems worked out. I'm not saying we wouldn't appreciate a little, um, help with supplies to repair the damage here, but our deal was for as long as it took to get Bizi Kei off your backs and firmly out of our network. So, Tsubasa says he's got everything fixed up there, I can't keep you any longer. You were pretty good at fetching though, gotta say."

"I'd say it was a pleasure doing business with you," Ryo sneered, "but I really hope this never happens again."

Getting ready for take off didn't take either freighter long after that. Yamapi had gotten a list of supplies they'd want from Commander Ohno, but Ryo had insisted they weren't promising to get anything. They'd pass it along to Toma, see if he knew anyone looking for that kind of job. Honestly, Ryo couldn't be happier to get out of there at last--the recycled air on the One Piece tasting inexplicably better knowing it was mixed with freedom. Off to new places, new runs, and the limitless bounds of space.

"Well, I'm certainly glad to be rid of your ugly face," Kame teased. Ryo swatted at him good-naturedly. After everything, he might actually miss the other crew. Somehow he didn't think they could go back to just being business rivals again.

Still. Ryo took a deep breath. Definitely tasted better. This was spacing again, just the way Ryo liked it.

***

Epilogue:

Taka came to slowly, woozy and groggy in a way that didn't seem related to the concussion he knew he'd gotten. In fact, Taka was remarkably free of actual pain, considering his last memories after having his head slammed into the side of the cockpit were of his fighter breaking up in atmosphere, and the surface of the planet rushing up at him at several hundred kilometers per hour. He remembered an orange light, glowing at him balefully--life support down, it was telling him, but there was nothing he could do, and besides, he was crashing anyway. That orange light had swum in and out of focus for a few pain-filled moments; but then a combination of inertia and gravity pulled the blood from his brain and even his tenuous focus had greyed out to darkness.

He could still see that orange glow behind his eyelids, and had to blink his eyes to clear it away. It was a light, shining into his eyes, white now that his eyelids weren't in the way. He was in a room, not his cockpit, and that didn't make any sense. The room still swam and dipped crazily, and it wasn't anywhere he recognized.

"So," said a slim man as he stepped forward to stand next to the head of the bed Taka was propped up in. Taka tried to brush his hair from his eyes, as though that was the reason the world around him wouldn't seem to stand still, and realized that his arms were restrained, cuffed to the rails on the bed. "I see you're awake. We have a lot to talk about."

This is the original ending to Per Ardua, and one of it's most unique qualities, I think, is that it can actually fit anywhere in the story and still make sense. Feel free to end with this ending at any time:

AND THEN EVERYTHING EXPLODED THE END

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