Ghosts of the Republic by William S Frisbee Jr

Author:William S Frisbee Jr [Frisbee Jr, William S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chakram Publishing
Published: 2020-07-03T16:00:00+00:00

❖ ❖ ❖

The next morning Jamison left me an e-mail letting me know the other ships arrived. They would lurk near the heliopause while reviewing my report and the data we’d collected. Things were looking good so far. The challenge would be to find what could go wrong with enough time to minimize the damage. It’s when everything was going smoothly that I got worried.

Doreen was already working when I got up. She’d gotten at least four hours of sleep, so I wasn’t going to push it. Her body would have kept her down longer if she really needed it.

“How’s it going?” I asked when I plugged into her VR instance.

“I’m going to try transmitting in a few,” Knight said in her sexless digitized voice, which I did not find endearing, and so I modified my filters to use her regular voice. “It looks like they have a total of twelve ground to space batteries in the area. I’ve got the approximate coordinates, which I’ve sent to Blackbeard, and I should be able to shut them down. There’s also five other defense shield grids that I might be able to shut down when the time comes.”

“Good job,” I said. She was doing a hell of a lot better than I would have I had to admit to myself, but only to myself. Well, maybe not.

Knight turned to me. A sexless, digitized kiss is something that can send shivers of fear down a person’s spine. I tried to take it in good stride and wondered how I could modify the voice filters a bit more to make that less creepy, the voice filters did have their limits.

“Well, I do know Rentak network architecture inside out,” she said.

“I know,” I said. “You’re still doing a damn good job. I know Blackbeard will be impressed.”

“Thank you,” she said and went back to her work.

“Okay BugEye,” I said, leaving the instance and appearing in another VR chamber. “Time to try and get a drone into the Rentak perimeter. Prep an infiltrator with some network roaches. Full level two self-destruct packages for all.”

Level two self-destruct packages would destroy the drones and a few meters around it.

“Incoming ship,” Ripper reported, and I brought up the display. “It is approaching the planet and entering atmosphere.”

“ID?” I said, sending Knight a ping to let her know.

“Confed military courier, unknown ship name. ID on the prow is 7C332. Looks like one of the newer Minnow class ships,” Ripper said.

I checked the plot. It was coming in opposite the space station and appeared to be trying to minimize detection, slipping into an orbit that would allow it to land at the Rentak base.

“Holy hell,” I said. “What is a Confed courier doing here and what do they want with Rentak?”

“Shall I open hailing frequencies and ask?” Ripper said, and with droids you could never tell if they were serious, Ripper had a sense of humor so that made it harder.

“Um, no,” I said, and Ripper chuckled.

It wouldn’t land for a few hours yet.

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