Tales of the "Pink Mist" Ch. 08

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Originally, this story was supposed to be a lascivious space romp, chock full of pure-bred full-blown sex. That didn't happen. It turned into width-and-breadth story with character and plot development. I TRULY did not see that coming.

Once again, I want to thank you all for the WONDERFUL, thought-provoking suggestions and inspiration to keep going. It should be noted that the physical descriptions of Quillan, Alice, the late Nessie, Charleen, and Amanda are based entirely on real people (the personalities, however, are quite fictional).

I hope you enjoy this installment!

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Chapter 8

HOSTILE TAKEOVER

Quillan, Alice, the new captain of the MALCOLM H RAYBURN, Jonquil Latimer, and several others sat in the conference room of the ship, speaking on an ultra-secure channel to the holographic image of Alliance President Gerild B. Cuthertson which hovered over the table.

Cuthbertson looked every inch a politician, from his angular, smooth face and wavy gray hair to his custom tailored suit. On his right hand, he wore his most prized possession: an Academy Command-And-Control class ring. He had graduated Number One in his Academy class of seventy two thousand, three hundred, sixty two. An illustrious career in the military spanning nearly four decades, during which time he had accumulated more medals and awards than anyone since the mid-twentieth century conflict in Vietnam. Upon military retirement, he had entered the political arena. A two-year Mayorship, four-year Governorship, four-year Senator. On his sixty-eighth birthday, he received the ultimate birthday present: the Alliance Presidency.

He didn't put up with, nor dole out, any bullshit. He was a straight-shooting, in-your-face President.

"Mr. President," said Quillan, eyebrow quirked, "with respect, sir...What the fuck do you mean?"

The newly installed screen before Quillan, set flush in the table, switched from an image of the Presidential Seal to one of a legal document. Quillan read it silently, then looked at Alice to get the cyborg's attention and pointed at the notary's signature with a sly smile. The Alliance still had no clue, nor did they need to know, that Commander Alice Nine was a fully self-aware computer who had created another sentient computer; one who had apparently completed naming herself. Alice's perpetual half-grin changed to a smirk.

The document had been notarized by one Salli Anne Coffler.

"Captain Margoles," said Cutherbertson, a slightly annoyed look on his face at her crude verbage and slight disrespect, "you've been a busy girl. Per your Letter of Marque and Reprisal, the individual named at the beginning of that document was on our Declared Enemy list and the spoils of that encounter are indeed yours. The Alliance doesn't care how an enemy is neutralized, only that the enemy is neutralized. Understand though, that there are several tens of thousands of completely innocent third parties in this case.

"You are a privateer. But, I caution that YOU," his hologram stabbed a pointed finger at her, "have people to answer to now, and that killing innocents WILL reflect poorly on you. Use extreme caution in your dealings with them.

"Now, as a way of saying thanks for your work so far, I've ordered that a new fusion reactor be delivered and installed. It will be there in five hours' time and your ship will be operational within the next twenty four hours."

Quillan's eyes widened and her face went white at the generosity being shown. Military-grade fusion reactors weren't cheap.

"Thank you, Mr President."

"Once you've achieved full operational status again, contact MilCom for an updated list of optional targets. And be more careful, you got exceedingly lucky this time."

His image blinked out of existence.

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"Gonna be hard to do, Captain," Charleen said seriously to the image on the viewscreen. She and Quillan were discussing what had happened in the past few days.

"Salli took off on her own and ain't back yet. She said I'd be happy with the outcome, but didn't say what it was going to be. Why do you want us to go back to Purgatory, anyway?"

"Captain Wilkerson, I know PRECISELY what the outcome is," replied Quillan. "She'll be there in a few minutes with reinforcements. Make sure she knows that YOU are the captain and that what she did was tantamount to mutiny. Give her a good dressing down, but DO NOT piss her off. She's on our side, remember.

"Once she's back and you are underway to Purgatory, get her to access Database One Seven Five Beta Beta Two of Earth-Actual NewsCom. Look for the file marked, 'Antaren Colony Gets New Swimming Pool.' The password is 'Death To Non-Alliance Seven Seven Four Three.' Your answers are there, along with instructions on what to do when you hit Purgatory."

"Uhhhh," hesitated Charleen, scratching the back of her head, "you're the boss and you ain't steered us wrong yet, but...what the fuck?" A low rumble grew in intensity and then faded; incoming ships blasting overhead. Charleen's image looked off screen, presumably out a window. "Salli's back...and she brought friends...how did you know...?" She shook her head. "You gotta teach me that trick, Captain."

"Be nice but firm with her and we'll meet you at Purgatory in a couple of days."

Charleen began smoothing her jumpsuit in preparation to yell at a COMPUTER, of all things.

"Yes'm. See you then."

"By the way," grinned Quillan, "her full name is now, 'Salli Anne Coffler.' I assume her last name is a variation of the ship's old name."

"Noted, Captain. Thanks."

Charleen closed the channel, smoothed her hair and jumpsuit again, then purposefully strode toward the door of the comm shack with a stern look on her countenance.

"Issue a recall of the crew and tell them we're leaving in four hours," she called over her shoulder to the communications agent.

Krystine "Witchypoo" Talbot and Felicity "Twinkie" Toprak, in an open topped hovercar, drew alongside Charleen as she moved in the direction of the ships.

"Hey, Captain," greeted Krystine, her needle sharp teeth grin gleaming in the late afternoon sun, "we saw the ships come in and were headed over there to check the fighters. Need a lift?"

Charleen cracked her knuckles and clambered into the back.

"Quite so," she replied, a slight menacing tone in her voice. "Salli has a wee bit of explaining to do."

Twinkie grinned and took a drag from her cigarette. She'd had her teeth filed into points identical to Krystine's. Krystine slammed the accelerator pedal to the floor, the rear thrusters giving a roar as the hovercar shot forward. One speed for Witchypoo: full throttle.

"Captain," Twinkie said as she exhaled the smoke, giving her the appearance of a miniature dragon, "Salli's only a couple of weeks old; cut her a little slack, huh?"

"You too?"

"What?

"Huh?

"Uh...right..."

"What the fuck are you talking about, Twinkie?" asked Krystine, as she banked the hovercar hard to the left, leaving a huge cloud of dust to envelop a group of crewmembers.

"I just wanted to know what the captain was talking about." Twinkie took the last drag off her cigarette and neatly pegged it into a trash receptacle as they passed at more than forty miles an hour.

"This is the most disjointed conversation I've had in quite a while," Charleen said as she rubbed her eyes and shook her head as if to clear it. "I got bitched at by the boss and was strenuously warned not to piss Salli off; now you. I think there's a conspiracy to drive me crazy."

As they drew closer to the EXETER, they could see several ships on the other side of her. Two Mongan fast frigates? How in hell...? Three Golari missile cruisers; the missile bays of one were half-empty. A Tanadali troop carrier and destroyer, and a Hlata recon ship. Just sitting there. Quietly. No pissed-off non-Alliance people about.

They arrived in front of the EXETER and Charleen hopped out, glaring at the ship. Krystine swung the hovercar around and headed for the ramp into the launch bay. The captain knew that Salli's cameras were focused on her. Keeping her eyes on the main viewport where it would be assumed Salli's "eyes" were located, she stalked around to the gangplank and stomped up it; her harsh footsteps causing the plasteel ramp to ring.

Charleen took a deep breath. She hesitated. Salli had never been granted a rank.

"Salli Anne Coffler! Er...Front and center!" she ordered, using her command voice.

The camera closest to her swiveled in her direction and Salli's voice issued from a speaker.

"Uh...yes, Captain?"

Charleen furrowed her brow. This was just plain weird.

"MISS Coffler," Charleen said as she glared into the camera, "I want an explanation and I want it now. I want to know why you did what you did, and I want to know what we should do about it, and I want to know NOW!" Yeah, THAT statement was clear as mud...

Let Salli pick her own punishment. How do you punish a ship? You can't very well spank it, nor can you make it do push ups. Charleen fought the urge to burst into laughter at her mind's visual of the EXETER's front end moving up and down, the landing struts propelling it like arms.

"Well..." began Salli, hesitatingly. "I was...um...following orders from a superior officer."

Charleen was taken aback. THAT thought had never entered her mind. To her knowledge, no one in the Alliance had ever been punished for following the orders from someone of a higher rank; since Salli didn't have an official rank, it stood to reason that every single crewmember was a superior. Even though they weren't part of the Alliance, they still adhered...sort of...to the regulations.

"My sister," she continued over the speaker with a slight quaver, "Commander Alice Nine told me to go to Purg..."

"She 'told' you? Or did she 'recommend'? Or did she 'order' you to go?" interrupted Charleen. "There's a big difference between the three words."

A nearby monitor lit up, displaying a transcript of the burst transmitted message which Salli had received. Charleen read it.

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FROM: PINK MIST ACTUAL

TO: EXETER ACTUAL

YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED TO PROCEED FORTHWITH AND WITHOUT DELAY TO THE SPACE STATION KNOWN AS PURGATORY.

IMPERATIVE: ALL HUMAN CREW MUST REMAIN SAFE FROM THIS ACTION.

ACTION: UPON ARRIVAL YOU ARE TO TERMINATE WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE THE HUMANS KNOWN AS: OGONAGUS LATOOGLE MANSBERG, III, AKA, INFERNUS; SECURITY CHIEF ALVIN STEPHANO CAPINO; AND VANESSA LOUISE SMITH, AKA NESSIE HARBINGER.

OTHER CASUALTIES: ZERO. IMPERATIVE.

UPON COMPLETION OF THIS TASK, YOU ARE TO AQUIRE BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY NO LESS THAN FIVE AND NO MORE THAN TEN VESSELS FROM DECLARED ENEMIES (NOT OF ALLIED REGISTRY), THE MAJORITY BEING GEARED FOR COMBAT. RETURN WITH SAID VESSELS TO YOUR POINT OF ORIGIN AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.

COMMANDER ALICE NINE

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Charleen read it again. Quillan had known about it; probably after the fact, the way Alice's mind worked.

"Captain Wilkerson..." An odd sound from the speaker. Something akin to a...sniffle? "I was just..." That sound again.

Salli...a computer...was crying.

"Relay this letter to my hand-held, please, Salli. And send the specs for those other ships to my quarters," said Charleen, slightly annoyed at herself. Why, she wasn't quite sure. Maybe it was the fact that she had caused a member of her own crew to break down in...no other word for it...tears. "Before we lift for Purgatory, I want the crew to assemble in the launch bay. I have a few words for them."

The barrel-like woman turned on her heel and started toward her own quarters. She stopped and turned around to look at the camera swiveling to follow her. "And you can stop crying, Salli. You did good."

She winked at the camera.

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After vaporizing Infernus & Company, Salli reviewed her orders. Her avatar trotted into the sensor servers and fired up a few of the larger scanners on the station. She swept the area around her out to a distance of one million miles.

That one looks neat and it fits the orders, she said to herself, filing away a few more targets of opportunity.

She undocked from Purgatory and described a lazy arc in the direction of her first target: an unstealthed Hlata reconnaissance vessel. Two-man crew. Light armament. Extremely fast. The trick for this one would be to get within the range needed for her low power transmitter.

She had to use minimal power for this tactic for two reasons. If she used a higher power transmitter, the results would be more vessels under her control than she could handle at one time. It also lessened the possibility of being discovered. THOSE results would be more vessels than she could handle which WEREN'T under her control. Bad news.

So, how does one get to within five hundred miles of a paranoid enemy ship?

Diversion.

The launch bay clamshelled open, disgorging twenty five bright pink fighters under Salli's control. They immediately formed a mile-wide, mile-long "V" and arced in the opposite direction from the EXETER's line of travel. Their identification transponders had all changed.

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Jar'Fal cast a glance outside the cockpit window and yawned. Another seven hours and they would dock at Purgatory. His partner could sell this fucking thing. Jar'Fal just wanted to get laid. The woman that ran the Cemetery was expensive as all hell, but DAMN could she fuck.

His console blipped and he looked down at it. This close to Purgatory, they were relatively safe, but he wanted to be sure. Not good to get popped by Hlata cops. They'd never see any type of light again. He'd heard horror stories of the midnight-black prison cells.

Uh-oh. The return from the ship's computer showed twenty five Alliance cops...just as bad.

He reached over and thumped his partner in crime on the skull. She turned her greasy-haired head to look at him.

"What, shithead?"

"We got problems. A fuckload of Alliance cops are headed this way."

"Shit," said Rala. "We can't stealth, either. I don't have the codes. What type of ships are they?"

"Their return signal pegs them as Type G-Seventy Ones. Interceptors... Almost as fast as this thing. They're too far out for a visual."

"What's around us?" she asked, rubbing her grimy cheek. She just wanted a bath. Too long on the run. Too long without a clean place to sleep.

"Three Rell freighters forty five degree left and up four degrees, two-hundred seventy thousand miles. A Mongan carrier almost directly aft and down fifteen degrees, one-hundred thirty thousand miles. Last I heard, the Mongans and the Hlata had some sort of uneasy truce. They shouldn't fuck with us."

Rala yanked up on the stick, swinging the recon ship to face the EXETER. She slammed the accelerator lever to the stops. Carriers had fighters. FAST fighters. Freighters usually had no armor and a single pulse laser.

"Alliance cops and Mongan fighters in open territory," she chuckled. "Those cops are gonna get creamed."

She angled the recon ship slightly under the EXETER, intending on getting close enough to draw attention to the Alliance cops on her tail, but far enough away so she wouldn't get waylaid by the Mongans.

As they shot toward the EXETER, Rala could make out the pinpoint of the ship amid the backdrop of stars. It looked a little weird. Kinda pink. Must be a trick of the light combined with her near exhaustion from weeks on the run. Just need to shake the cops and then make for Purgatory. Sell the ship, rent a room and relax for a while. That Mongan ship really does look pink. Rala squinted. She had no clue how to operate the visual magnification equipment. She barely got the thing started. Once in the air, though, it handled like any other ship.

"How close are those cops?" she asked, brushing a strand of stringy hair from her face. A bath is what I need.

"Distance is constant at seventy miles. Just out of range," he replied. "They've matched our speed. Can ya get any more speed out of this thing?"

Something nagged at the back of her mind. Matched our speed? They should be pulling away from mere Interceptors. Few ships could match the speed of Hlata recon ships. Rala mulled it over in her mind as they drew closer to the Mongan carrier. What could move as fast or faster?

As they hit the five hundred mile mark, she made the connection in her mind.

Before she could voice her dismay or twitch a muscle, the airlock opened to the void of space.

Rala's last conscious thought was, "Shit. No bath."

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Once the recon ship had been purged of its human cargo, Salli recalled all the fighters, changing their transponder codes back to the original PM Flight designations. She easily broke the codes in order to fully "unlock" the recon craft; now, she could engage every system on the swift craft. She really didn't like the strange accent of its computer, though.

Keeping to her five hundred mile limit got a bit easier, as she was able to daisy-chain the signal. It was a simple matter to stealth the recon vessel, run it out to the limit of her own transmission and fire the signal through that ship to open the airlocks on successive ships. Every living thing on those vessels was swept into space by the air pressure difference. Nature abhors a vacuum.

Once she had collected a decent amount of ships, she formed them all into a neat little battle group and turned for Klamath VIII. Her processors were close to being fully loaded and she wanted to leave room in case she had to run a battle. More ships to control meant more processing power and slower response time. Can't have that. She used the processing power of the captured ships' own computers to run their sensor suites. One of the missile carriers reported a Chev cruiser/destroyer getting a little too close for comfort.

Twenty of the fifty missiles on board took care of that. Space dust. Oops...a little bit of overkill...

To occupy her "mind" as she made the return trip, she amused herself by forming the ships into familiar star constellations or making enormous smiley faces.

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The entire crew stood at attention in neat rank and file in the center of the EXETER's launch bay. Even those who had never served in the military had shaped up nicely. This time, they wore camouflaged battle fatigues, the creases of which Jesse had taken great care to press paper thin. Jesse The Horny was outfitted identically to the rest. He hadn't altered his uniform in the slightest. He HAD, however, dyed his hair. Splotches of green, brown, and black matched his uniform perfectly. Standing more than four feet from him, one would be hard pressed to tell where his hair left off and his uniform began.

Charleen had ordered Salli to temporarily take control of a techbot and get in formation with the rest of the crew. It was kind of a strange sight to see a track-driven, multiarmed robot standing at attention amidst the humans. It also sort of looked natural.

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Pink Mist Marauders," spoke Charleen, using her command voice to be heard in the back of those assembled, "it has recently come to my attention that one of our crew who SHOULD have a rank doesn't hold any rank at all."

A few heads turned to look at Jesse who's eyes grew wide. Charleen chuckled and shook her head.

"Nope," she said, "Jesse told me and the Captain that he doesn't want any rank at all. The one I'm talking about happens to be the newest of the crew." She pretended to scan the crowd, as if looking for the intended crewman. "Her full name is Salli Anne Coffler, which I might add, she came up with all by her little lonesome. Miss Coffler, front and center."