The Fringe Wars

1.23

Phantom Tricks

Critch was right. The Eagle was a slow piece of shit that took over two weeks to cover the same distance the Gryphon could've covered in five days at jump speed. Within the first two days, the crews had sorted through all the shipments, finding only fabric and useless electronic parts. The tenured bunks had nothing to offer except trinkets, most of which were hidden under mattresses. The Myrad bunks had luxuries—silver, jewelry and fancy clothes—but nothing of any value to Reyne.

Two captains sharing one ship led to constantly butting heads, which did not make things any easier. Reyne tried to share decisions, but it was hard. He'd been in charge for much of his adult life. Critch was even worse—he didn't even try to share command. They finally settled into fifteen-hour shifts, running into each other only at shift change briefings and planning meetings.

Myrad food and wine helped pass the hours, but Reyne worried that the CUF would strike another fringe station while they made their slow way to Myr. They had the Collective news on constantly. Myr hadn't released the blight again, but Ausyar had been busy. The news replayed footage of the CUF taking down fringe "terrorists" and foiling obviously staged bioterrorist attempts. Genics Corp continued to promise that they were working around the clock to create a fungicide.

If their plan was to make everyone fearful and clamor for Myr's help, it was working flawlessly. Every Collective world pledged credits to Genics Corp. Myr had managed to milk people's pocketbooks while pulling on their heartstrings at the same time.

Midway through Reyne's shift on the sixteenth day, Birk pinged him. "We're within three hours of the space barrier."

"On my way." He left Boden in the engine room where they'd been running down one of the thousands of gremlins the ship seemed to have.

On the bridge, Reyne found Birk at the controls. "Are we close enough to see radar?" Reyne asked as he took a seat.

The lean pirate sighed. "Not with the outdated software on this beast. I have no idea if we'll see something in five minutes or if it'll be two hours."

Reyne frowned. "We're already cutting it close if we have to change plans. They likely have us located on their systems already." He inhaled. "Let's hope an old Myrad hauler won't raise any red flags." Reyne put his hand on Birk's shoulder. "Ping me as soon as you can see where the CUF patrols are along the barrier."

"Wilco," Birk replied without looking up from his panel.

Reyne headed back to his quarters and went through his gear. He strapped on his holster and sheaths and checked his weapons. After he was all set, he took a seat and closed his eyes. In three hours, they would either be through Myr's EMP space barrier and landing on the planet's surface, or the barrier's electromagnetic pulse would fry the ship's systems and life support, making them sitting ducks to be blown up by CUF patrols—or left to die in their cold Myrad coffin. He wasn't sure which option offered the worse prospects.

When he returned to the bridge, he reviewed the mission schematics that Heid had sent them. He tried not to think about what could go wrong. Instead, he focused on what needed to be done when they landed on Myr's surface.

At two hours to go, Reyne was ready to bang his head against the panel. The ship's blasted computers still hadn't picked up any traffic, let alone the massive space barrier. It wasn't until ninety-six minutes out that Birk finally picked up hints of the space barrier.

Reyne headed to the commons to grab them some food. On his way back, he pounded on the door to Critch's quarters. "Rise and shine. Ninety minutes out."

He smiled at the string of profanity that was shouted from the other side of the door.

Critch arrived on the bridge roughly ten minutes later, wearing full gear. "What do we have?" he asked, his voice rough from sleep.

"We're a little over seventy-five minutes out," Reyne said. "We haven't picked up any CUF patrols yet."

Critch grimaced. "This damn ship belongs in a junkyard. If we were on my ship, we'd be close enough to pick up the hair on their asses by now."

Reyne ate as they waited. Critch disappeared briefly and returned with a meal of his own.

Fifteen minutes later, Birk still hadn't found any signs of CUF ships.

Critch wiped his hands and pushed off the wall to take over Birk's seat as pilot. "Go get ready. I'll take it from here."

As Critch strapped in, Reyne remembered meeting him for the first time. He'd still gone by his real name—Drake Fender—at that time, a talented young pilot ready to take on the universe. Reyne had seen his potential and took him under his wing. The Uprising was a year in, and they discovered hell together. They were brothers-in-arms...until Critch emerged from the Uprising with the belief that Reyne had betrayed everything they'd fought for.

Shaking off the old memories, Reyne broadcast to the ship, "Attention crew. We have one hour until we reach the barrier. Gear up and grab some grub. It might be some time before you eat or sleep once we pass through. Then, get yourselves to your stations. If we get scanned, I don't want them seeing heat signatures of the entire crew all hanging out on the bridge. Everything about us has to look run-of-the-mill."

"I'm picking up something," Critch said finally, frowning.

"What do you have?" Reyne asked.

"Not sure yet." After a long moment, he leaned back. "Fuck."

Reyne rushed over to see what the other man was looking at. He frowned. "That can't be."

"That's what I thought, too, but I double-checked. The data's right."

Reyne stared at the view screen, expecting to see everything that was on their radar, even though they were still too far out for the feeble view screen to zoom in on. "It's too late to run. They probably locked onto us hours ago."

"I don't know why they haven't hailed us."

"You think they're onto us?" Reyne asked.

"Don't know."

A chime alerted them to a new notification. Critch checked it first. "Ah, here comes an automated code request from the space barrier."

Reyne inhaled.

"Let's find out if we're going to live beyond the next sixty seconds," Critch said as he fed the ship's authentication codes to the space barrier's system.

The tension throughout the bridge was stifling, and Reyne found his joints complaining.

After a long delay, Critch blew out a breath. "It accepted the code. We're approved to pass through the barrier."

Reyne, too, let out the breath he'd been holding and pointed at the view screen. "The bigger question is, will they let us pass?"

Faint dots appeared and slowly grew to form ships. Not CUF patrol ships, but huge warships. From the looks of things, the entire CUF fleet was out there waiting for them.