Back on the ground

With a population of less than three million, Highgate was the third most populous world around Qing Long. The entire subsystem had a population of under twenty million, a third of which lived on the system capital of Meridian. Which made Blue Dragon, the star's other common name, by far the least populated star of the five that made up the 34 Tauri system. In contrast, the metro area around the Alliance capital city on Londinium, had roughly twice the population of the entire Qing Long system.

It hadn't helped that the Miranda incident had cost nearly all of that world's three million people. The thirty thousand odd "survivors" had become Reavers, who'd gone on to kill countless thousands more in the years since through the Rim and Border worlds. While the Reaver threat was active, and the Alliance was actively denying they existed, the population around Qing Long had dropped even more as people evacuated for more densely populated worlds. Or, at the very least, moved from remote communities that the Reavers could easily target into the major settlements.

That had left entire towns abandoned. With the Reaver threat abated, those towns became prime grounds for squatters of one form or another. Smugglers. Pirates. Political refuges. Communes. People trying to get away from active civilization, but not so far away that they were completely out of touch.

It was also a near ideal place to set up a clandestine research center. Ready made infrastructure. Far enough from the center of things to glide under the radar. Close enough to population centers and resources that you didn't have to bring in absolutely everything from the outside.

That was what brought us to Highgate.

Tracking down the transport with the stolen AR3 had been a challenge, but we'd done it. Fortunately for us, they hadn't bothered with extensive secondary precautions at the abandoned industrial complex they'd chosen as a remote base. Also working in our favor, they were close enough to Highgate's main city that we could do fly close enough to the facility to get a basic recon without arousing any suspicion. We were just another boat on final for the capital, rather than an ELINT boat doing a preliminary pass on a target.

There was still work to do on the ground before we could attempt an infiltration, but we knew where we were going and had a good idea what we would face when we got there. Now, it was ground work and arranging a transport of our own.

If we pulled this off as I intended, we'd be coming home with some very expensive kit.

Back into the Black

Anyone looking at the modern Alliance Military structure, from Infantry on the ground to the Cruisers in orbit supporting them, would think Electronic Warfare was a lost, neglected, art. For the most part, the Alliance relied more on throwing people at problems than technology. After all, people were cheap. For the cost of just the electronics package on my Ritter&Lau, the Alliance could equip a whole squad of line infantry. If you threw in the cost of training? A single well equipped sniper cost more to put in the field than an entire platoon.

Pound for pound, the sniper was more effective. But to the Alliance bean counters, losing one sniper meant the entire investment was lost, whereas losing, say, two fire teams, just meant the platoon was weakened. It was a lot cheaper to replace a few lost infantry than to train and equip a replacement sniper.

The view may not have been especially popular with the men and women on the line, but it was certainly practical. Which led to the lost art of Electronic Warfare. Top shelf equipment was anything but cheap and it took a well trained crew to interpret the results. Intel was important, to be sure, but when you didn't care about loses and your primary enemies were backwater colonists who were lucky to have rifles, let alone encrypted FTL comms, you could afford to skimp on the EW suite.

I wasn't in the mainstream military.

Electronic Warfare ships were a wildly mixed lot, based on a variety of hulls with an even larger variety of specialties. General purpose ELINT boats like Saule Silencieuse, for example, had a different mission and, thus, a different load out than, say, an Early Warning Picket or a dedicated communications monitoring ship. The differences lay as much in crew specialties as differences in antennas and signals processing equipment. Fortunately, a creative crew could gather quite a bit of information from a target regardless of what their arrays were originally designed for.

The Corvette's EW officer contacted me shortly after we cleared Beaumonde's traffic control area. Between intercepting navigation beacons and the ELINT Corvette's own arrays, they'd managed to identify and track the transport through two more stops before losing it to the deep Black between Kalidasa and Qing Long.

"They shut off their pulse beacon after the last port, but we were able to track their power plant signature until they got out of range. Our navigator worked out the probable destinations given their known course. Qing Long's navigational net is incomplete but we'll update you if they come across the net."

I thanked him, then signed off. Qing Long, Blue Sun, was the most sparsely inhabited, most distant, star in the 34 Tauri system. The isolation was a mixed blessing though. You were far from prying eyes, but you were also far from resources and support, and travel times could become tedious.

"You play chess, Seana?" Niki asked after I set course and filled her in on our destination.

"I little. Though I suspect I'm about to be schooled on the finer points." I had to laugh. Even with Wave Equation's performance it would be a long flight, but I could think of worse ways to spend the time than learning chess from a rated master.

Could think of better ways too. But that was neither here nor there.

Recruiting

Nicolasi Mombasa was a compact woman, maybe 5 centimeters and 3 kilos bigger than I am. Short curly dark hair, dark eyes, and nearly as dark skin. Quite pretty, in a rugged, athletic, sort of way. We were much alike on some levels, from a lethality out of proportion to our compact size, to a military background neither of us publicly acknowledged. But we were also very, very, different.

Since leaving the service some years ago, she'd settled on Beaumonde and taken a job at a Tier II university as a Lacrosse coach. Kind of like me taking a job as a small town Mayor. No one would really look too deeply into that buried military background. Her affiliation with the university was, outwardly, the hook I'd used to arrange the meeting, claiming the local KHI parts warehouse was looking to get some advertising and good will by sponsoring the uni's Lacrosse program.

It was a thin cover, but plausible: something she'd see through but would hold up for the uni and anyone who asked.

"Miss Kawanishi, why are we really here? This isn't about new equipment and logo jerseys for the Lacrosse team."

She'd taken roughly fifteen minutes to get to the question, doing an excellent job of staying with her new identity the whole time. I smiled cheerfully and slid another couple of flimsies over to her across the table to join the list of gear and logo jerseys we'd been talking about. She gave it a cursory glance, then looked back over, trying to hide her recognition.

"Unit insignia and part of a tractor on a pallet? Not sure I understand."

ADG9, " The Chessmasters," were nearly as obscure as my own final unit had been, and their unit insignia was the kind of thing that showed up on Cortex shows about elite military units that were usually nothing more than rumors. Overall, the Advanced Defense Group was its own animal in the military. A combat evaluation unit specializing in exotic hardware, they tested new equipment and developed tactics to utilize it if it looked promising. The Chessmasters had been formed to test some very specific equipment, which was what had brought me to Beaumonde to meet Niki Mombasa.

She was doing a good job of concealing her reaction, but I could still tell what was going through her mind. I'd have been thinking much the same thing: how much does she know, and will I have to kill her? Not exactly a comfortable situation but one I was familiar with on either side of the table. It went with the job.

"Captain Mombasa. Let's just skip the rest of the game, OK? We're on the same side. At least were. I'm hoping we will be again. Give me a few more minutes of your time and, if you don't like what I have to say, we walk away. You go back to coaching Lacrosse and I try to find someone else who can do what you do."

"What is it exactly you think I do? And why the . . . ?" she replied, motioning to the images, deciding to not try and kill me for the time being.

I smiled faintly. She wanted to know ow much I really knew about her, the unit, and the piece of equipment on the pallet. All questions I'd be asking myself if our positions were reversed. "Captain, I know you recognize the unit insignia and the vehicle. At least by type."

She paused, then nodded towards the image. "Core of an AR3b. Minus the manipulators and legs. I'd guess it was Buskirk's rig from the partial markings, if Buskirk's rig wasn't in a warehouse. Where was this taken?"

"That was taken two weeks ago at a loading facility on Notterdam. Got loaded onto a small transport and shipped out here to the Kalidasa system, but it's not the only one that's missing."

She looked at me curiously for a long moment, then frowned, obviously not liking what I was implying. "Most of them got shipped back to the Fab when our mission ended and they idled the Chessmasters. They mothballed a Lance worth. Eight rigs."

"Yes. Four of them are missing from the warehouse. Dessault-Nissan can account for the rest of the ones that were returned, but there's four AR3b's on the loose. And you know the kind of threat that poses."

The AR3b "Archer" was, more or less, an anthropomorphic Roller. Based on a rough terrain construction vehicle, it had legs rather than tracks or wheels and manipulators for moving equipment. Unlike its marginally useful civilian kin, the AR3 mounted anti-personnel armaments, auto-cannon, and enough racked missiles to level several city blocks. As a military weapon, they weren't especially useful. More expensive and easier to hit than a Roller with the same firepower. But for pure shock value? An Archer shouldering a house out of the way was a good deal scarier than, say, a pack of Reavers.

"You're here because you want to get them back. I get it. But why me? Why not Buskirk or Sandoval?"

"Buskirk and Sandoval both have more covert operations experience than you do, true, but you've got as much experience piloting one of these things as anyone alive. Besides, Buskirk's on Sihnon and Sandoval's with another ADG unit. Who, I might add, doesn't know about this. Leaves you as my first and best choice for this recovery op. So. Are you in? You can say no, Captain. No threats. No coercion. You say no, I head to Sihnon and see if your old CO will come."

I'm sure her decision was made as soon as she realized why I was here. Lacrosse coach or not now, she was still a soldier at heart.

"I'm in. And call me Niki. Not active military any more so rank's don't matter. Just need to grab my jump pack and let the Uni know I'm taking some leave."

"OK, Niki. My boat's at the municipal pad. You be ready in eight hours?"

"I'll be ready in two. Just wonder where we're going."

Where we were going? First step was easy. Saule Silencieuse to get a final destination for the transport. Then? Then we would see.