Mercenary Frigate Eris – Kevrik System
Tensions were high on the command deck of the frigate Eris as a tunnel of light on its main viewscreen spun apart and melted away, revealing a rolling vista of stars. Watching from the center seat, Kohgish projected power and confidence. In front of him, the planet Alta rotated into view on the screen, its teal seas and ruddy continents draped in tattered sheets of white clouds.
Beautiful planet. It’d be a shame to have to kill it.
He swiveled his chair toward his tactical officer. “Raise shields. Arm all weapons.” With a look at the communications officer, he added, “Order the rest of our fleet to do the same.”
Muted acknowledgments of “Yes, sir” came back to him as he returned his attention to the main screen. “Sensors, assess their defenses.”
A young Antican at a forward station answered while reviewing the information appearing on his console. “Planetary shield grid is limited to the capital city and two military installations. No surface-based artillery, no capital ships in the system. Three orbital defense platforms, all powering up and targeting our fleet.”
Kohgish threw a look at his second-in-command. “Feeno, destroy those platforms.”
“Yes, General.” Feeno moved along the aft tactical stations, snapping out orders on the move. “Disruptors target platform one, torpedoes lock onto platforms two and three. Fire at will until they’re gone.”
Two large salvos of torpedoes raced away from the Eris as its forward disruptor batteries unleashed several beams that converged on the nearest of the planet’s orbital defense platforms. Seconds later, as the closest platform disintegrated into a fiery cloud of twisted metal, distant flashes from beyond the curve of the planet confirmed its twins had also been obliterated.
“Platforms neutralized,” the sensor officer confirmed.
“Well done. Comms, hail the planet’s government. Get their leader on-screen.”
“Opening hailing frequencies.”
While Kohgish waited for someone on the planet’s surface to respond, he noted the approach of his senior financial adviser, Rokkash Khol. Kohgish self-consciously avoided looking directly at the Betelgeusian, whose pallor and gruesome visage reminded him of myths of the reanimated dead. Khol’s saving grace was that he had exquisite taste in suits and sophisticated taste in cologne. He leaned toward Kohgish to confide, “We’re ready to receive an accelerated chain-code transfer.”
“Good. Let me know when it’s done.”
“Yes, General.”
Khol slipped away with the quiet grace of a professional domestic servant one who had spent a lifetime mastering the art of being inconspicuous but never far away.
The comms officer said to Kohgish, “I have Prime Minister Yaakola.”
“On-screen.” Kohgish straightened his back and lifted his chin just before the planet’s leader appeared on his viewscreen. She was a humanoid woman in her fifties, he guessed, and she appeared to be of mixed Bajoran and Vulcan ancestry, with pointed ears, nasal ridges, tawny skin, and long black hair. Her taste in clothes suggested a preference for utilitarian simplicity.
“Prime Minister Sofia Yaakola. I presume you know what happens next?”
She kept her expression and voice neutral, but Kohgish sensed that bitter contempt simmered behind her mask of calm. “You’re going to demand the contents of our treasury.”
“Correct. And I’m going to have to insist you comply quite promptly.”
“I regret to inform you that our treasury contains no hard currency of any kind.”
He bared his fangs in a predatory grin of warning. “Yes, I know. You switched over to a virtual deposit archive three months ago. Which is why, for your convenience, I’ve set up one of my own aboard my ship. We’re going to establish a secure FTL channel and initiate a chain-code transfer, from your server to ours.”
“And how much are you demanding as a ransom for my world’s safety?”
“All of it.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I want the full value of your treasury transferred to my server in the next few minutes, or else I’ll start laying waste your lovely little world.”
“General, I can’t let you take our entire treasury. How can we run a government without any reserves? How would we engage in foreign trade? It would be chaos.”
“That, Madam Prime Minister, is not my problem. Now, unless you want to get a taste of what the ancient Terrans used to call ‘nuclear winter,’ I suggest you—”
“Contact!” interrupted the sensors officer. “Incoming ships!”
Kohgish growled at his comms officer and made a slashing gesture across his throat, cueing the young Antican to put the prime minister’s channel on standby. Then he looked back at the tactical stations. “How many ships?”
Feeno studied the tactical screens. “A Fenris Rangers attack group.”
Clenching his forepaws into fists, Kohgish fought the urge to howl. No! Not here. Not now. Not when I’m so close to being able to bring some order to this damned sector.
He returned his attention to the forward stations and used his chair’s armrest controls to switch the secondary viewscreens to combat activity monitors. “How long until they arrive?”
“Five seconds,” Feeno said. “Dropping out of warp in three. Two. One.”
Dozens of signals popped into existence on the secondary screens. An entire squadron of Starfire 500 prowlers, supported by a trio of Ranger corsairs, all of them already in combat formation as they entered orbit on an intercept course for Kohgish’s fleet.
The comms officer sounded almost sheepish as he reported, “They’re hailing us.”
“Put it on holo.”
A ghostly figure of a gray-bearded male Fenris Ranger appeared a couple of meters in front of the command chair. “General Kohgish, this is Fenris Ranger Keon Harper, commanding the corsair Mjolnir. You and your fleet have sixty seconds in which to stand down and withdraw from this star system.”
“And if we don’t? Then what?”
“We’ll make you leave. We’re done letting you run roughshod over entire planets. Done letting you just take whatever you want. It ends here, and now.”
“Brave words. If you’re lucky, you might live to regret them. Like you did on Soroya IV.”
“Forty-five seconds, General. Stand down or be destroyed. Harper out.”
The hologram flickered and faded away.
From the tactical station, Feeno said, “The corsairs are spreading out, and the prowlers are separating into squads and accelerating to attack speed.”
Incensed, Kohgish bolted from his chair. “Blow them to bits! Every damn one! We haven’t come this far to be scared off by a bunch of vigilante trash.”
Fuming, he kept the rest of his rant to himself.
One more score and I’ll be able to trade this frigate for a Talarian battleship. Once I have that, I can end this pointless fighting and rule the Qiris sector. And we’ll finally have peace.
He returned to his command chair and composed himself. “Put the prime minister back on.” He continued as soon as she reappeared on the viewscreen. “Prime Minister. I don’t know if you summoned the Rangers or if their arrival was a coincidence. What I do know is that their intervention won’t save you, or prevent me from taking what I want. You have two minutes to comply with my demands. If you refuse, I will vaporize the colony settlements on your planet’s surface, one by one. No more games, Prime Minister. The choice is yours. Kohgish out.”
Fenris Ranger Corsair Mjolnir
There was too much motion for Harper to track at once. A full squadron of prowlers, a fleet of nearly a dozen enemy warships, and three Ranger corsairs were all maneuvering for advantage. Mjolnir and its companion corsairs, Gungnir and Ancile, formed a blockade to defend Alta’s capital from an enemy barrage. The prowlers circled the enemy ships at high speed like an angry swarm, peppering them with particle-beam fire while the enemy ships rolled, yawed, and broke away on erratic headings, clearly bereft of direction from their command ship.
Then Kohgish’s fleet struck back with broad sprays of disruptor pulses meant to engulf the prowlers. Harper had to change tactics, fast. “Tactical! Increase the prowlers’ speed ten percent and switch to attack pattern Echo Wide.”
Kayd’s longtime partner Lucan Sagasta looked up from his combat station, which was next to Harper’s. “Kee? Echo uses precision maneuvers at three-quarter impulse. Push ’em that hard and Kohgish might figure out what we’re doing.”
“Then don’t give him time to think.” Harper turned away and raised his voice: “Tactical! All corsairs: Target the enemy frigate Eris! Full broadsides, three salvos. Fire!”
The entire ship thundered and quaked as its main guns unleashed hell. On the main screen, Eris’s shields flickered and dimpled beneath one brutal barrage after another.
Harper checked his chrono. Sixty seconds since Kohgish’s ultimatum. Only another sixty seconds until the warlord would make good on his next genocidal threat.
I just have to keep him busy and off-balance.
Sagasta silenced a shrill alert on his console. “Enemy fleet splitting up, flanking us.”
“Comms! Give the signal to abandon the blockade. Helm, come about, bearing one-one-seven mark nine, thirty degrees starboard yaw, half impulse! Tactical, shields double-front!”
A Ranger monitoring the sensors called out, “Torpedoes inbound!”
“Launch countermeasures! Helm, all ahead full!”
Sagasta winced as he declared, “Brace for impact!”
Deafening booms resounded inside Mjolnir and rocked its spaceframe, hurling half the command crew across the deck and into bulkheads, consoles, and one another. The overhead lights and the viewscreens all went dark for half a second, and the consoles dimmed until the rumbling in the ship’s hull abated.
“Shields holding,” Sagasta said. “But another hit like that could cripple us.”
“Understood.” Harper pulled himself up, using his console for support. “Tactical! Prowlers to full speed, active defense, attack pattern Victor!”
The Ranger executed the order as he confirmed it: “Active defense, attack pattern Victor, aye.” Looking up from his console he added, “Prowlers engaging enemy fleet.”
“On-screen.”
It was beautiful sight, one of the loveliest Harper had ever seen: two dozen prowlers dodging and banking through flurries of pulsed disruptor fire at breakneck speeds, slashing fiery wounds in the enemy ships’ hulls with elegant sweeping blasts from their particle cannons, and then spiraling away in seemingly random directions before regrouping and attacking again from a completely different vector. On the prowlers’ next pass, one of Kohgish’s ships broke in half and exploded, destroying another of the warlord’s vessels as collateral damage.
Harper couldn’t help but smile. I love when a plan comes together.
He stole a glance at the chrono. “All right, folks, we’re down to the wire! Thirty seconds to go. Stay sharp, and make this look good.”
Mercenary Frigate Eris
Feeno shouted to be heard over the crackling of flames and keening of sirens on Eris’s command deck, as well as the panicked chatter issuing from the comms. “Direct hits, General! We’ve lost the Tirnaq and the Aristan! Prowler squadron is coming around for another pass!”
Fury and frustration collided in Kohgish’s thoughts and churned into embarrassment. The damned Fenris Rangers, previously a persistent nuisance, had just become an existential threat to his fleet and his future, one he needed to deal with immediately. He turned and searched through the thickening smoke for his Orion second-in-command.
“Feeno! Tell our gunners and the other ships in our fleet to target only the lead prowler and the corsair Mjolnir. Ignore the others—just hit the leaders, with all we’ve got.”
“Yes, General. Sending new orders now.”
The image on the main viewscreen crackled with static and distorted with interference, but despite its deprecated resolution Kohgish still saw the moment his entire fleet converged all their disruptor pulses into an inescapable trap that closed around the lead prowler and blasted it into slag that sublimated into superheated vapor.
“Lead prowler destroyed,” Feeno announced.
“Target the next one in formation.”
The tactical officer interjected, “Torpedoes locked on the Mjolnir.”
“Fire!”
Through his bared fangs Kohgish coughed blood, a consequence of the toxic haze filling his command deck, but he didn’t care. It was still pure joy to watch dozens of torpedoes spiral toward the Mjolnir, tracking it even as it rolled away into a full-impulse evasive maneuver. The Ranger corsair launched another cloud of its active torpedo countermeasures, destroying or misdirecting all but the last five torpedoes—but those five were enough to collapse its shields, breach its hull, and send it tumbling through Alta’s upper atmosphere while trailing plasma flames and ionized gas. Not so smug now, eh? Serves you right, you sanctimonious fools.
The countdown on the armrest of Kohgish’s command chair ticked down to zero. “Tactical, lock plasma torpedoes onto the six largest, unshielded colony settlements on the planet’s surface.”
“Torpedoes locked,” the officer said.
“Comms, open a channel, all frequencies.” He waited until the comms officer confirmed with a nod that the hailing channel was open, and then he continued in his most imperious tone of voice. “Attention, Fenris Ranger intruders. My ship has plasma torpedoes locked onto six defenseless civilian settlements on the surface. Break off your attack immediately, or else I will vaporize all six—and then target another six. If you think I’m bluffing, remember what I did a few days ago at Soroya IV. And ask yourselves if that’s an outcome you want to repeat.”
The prowlers circling Kohgish’s fleet ceased fire and veered away from their attack run. They fell into formation around the corsairs, which limped hastily out of orbit. Over the open channel, Kohgish heard Ranger Harper grumble, “Your day will come, Kohgish. Count on it.” Then, in the wink of an eye, the Ranger attack group jumped to warp speed and was gone.
Feeno checked the sensors and reported, “The Rangers are in retreat, General.”
“Good. Comms, get me Prime Minister Yaakola.”
The Vulcan-Bajoran woman’s visage appeared on the main viewscreen, almost as if she had been standing by the entire time. Kohgish spoke first, in the name of efficiency. “Madam Prime Minister—the Rangers have fled. No one is coming to save you. And my fleet stands ready to vaporize your most vulnerable communities. Unless you meet my demands now.”
“Very well. I’ve ordered our minister of finance to surrender the contents of our treasury by means of whatever frequency and protocol you direct.”
With a nod, Kohgish delegated the work of transmitting the necessary details to Feeno. “A wise decision, Madam Prime Minister. We’ve sent you the details. Initiate the transfer.”
“Transfer commencing.”
Seconds later, a pleasant-sounding chime from a nearby console inside Eris’s command center confirmed the receipt of all funds from the Alta treasury.
Kohgish exulted silently. One step closer to total control. To a lasting peace.
Feeno sidled over to Kohgish’s command chair to whisper, “Success, General. As soon as the Ferengi wash the money, we’ll be ready to meet the Talarian broker.”
“Well done,” Kohgish whispered back. “Take us into the Neutral Zone so we can use the Romulans’ comms network to contact Qulla.” As Feeno stepped away to execute that command, Kohgish faced Yaakola once more. “This is a fortunate day for you, Madam Prime Minister. Because of your swift compliance, rather than use a few of your settlements for target practice as a warning to anyone else who might want to risk calling the Fenris Rangers, I’m going to take my fleet and go, leaving your world intact. But my judgments aren’t always so charitable. So, for the sake of your world and your people, don’t give me any reason to return.”
Kohgish signaled his comms officer to close the channel, and then he found his first officer. Leaving a world un-plundered after a victory felt to Kohgish like leaving a buffet without eating, but he had things to do and places to be.
“Feeno, deposit all our virtual currency on hand with the Ferengi, including today’s haul. Then confirm the rendezvous with the Talarians. Now, get us out of here, maximum warp.”
“Yes, General.”
“And, Feeno? Remind the Ferengi not to cheat us on the interest we’re owed. It’d be a shame if they had to replace their Qiris sector branch manager. Again.”
Fenris Ranger Corsair Mjolnir
Ninety minutes after leaving the Kevrik system in what had been meant to look like a hasty retreat, the Mjolnir and its attack group dropped out of warp, back in orbit of Alta.
Harper turned an anxious look toward Sagasta. “Any sign of Kohgish’s fleet?”
The younger Ranger checked his console. “No contacts within two light-years. Our outriders report his fleet dispersed after leaving the system, and his command ship is bound for the Ulrika system at high warp.”
“So far, so good. Comms, hail the prime minister’s office.”
“Aye, sir.” Within moments, the young woman at comms added, “I have them.”
“On-screen.”
The image of Alta’s northern hemisphere switched to one of Prime Minister Yaakola in her government’s situation room, hidden somewhere beneath the planet’s surface. “Ranger Harper. It’s good to see you again.”
“Feels good to be seen, Madam Prime Minister. Is everyone okay down there?”
“Thanks to your warnings and intervention, yes.”
“Dare I ask how much virtual currency Kohgish stole?”
The answer seemed to pain the prime minister. “More than we would have liked, but your colleagues insisted it needed to be a convincing sum lest the general become suspicious.”
“Unfortunately, true. But I trust you were able to conceal some kind of reserve?”
“Again, yes, thanks to your fellow Rangers. It should be enough to keep our economy from total collapse for at least a week, maybe two. After that, however—”
“We’ll do our best to have your money back to you before then. And if not all of it, as much as we can recover.”
Yaakola looked dubious. “I hope, so, Ranger Harper. We’ve taken a terrible risk.”
“I assure you, the outcome would have been far worse if we hadn’t stepped in.” Harper noted a look from Sagasta, who silently prompted him to move on to the next item of business. “Forgive me, Madam Prime Minister: May I have a word with Rangers Kayd and Seven?”
“Of course.” Yaakola tapped a control panel on the desktop in front of her, and the vid feed switched to an angle that showed Ellory and Seven, who were in the situation room with the prime minister and her inner circle of civilian and military advisers.
“Nice work, Ell. You gamed out Kohgish’s responses almost perfectly.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And, Seven? Were you able to hide your malware inside the currency transfer?”
“Affirmative.”
“Any reason to think Kohgish or his people noticed it?”
“None. Both sides verified the transfer as valid.”
Ellory leaned forward to add, “But we won’t know for certain if our plan worked until after Kohgish deposits that block of VC into an account at a bank with links to the IFN.”
“Seven: Any chance the Interstellar Financial Network might flag our code?”
“Negative. The executable function will be completed before contact is made with the IFN. From their perspective, it will be an ordinary transaction.”
Harper permitted himself a moment of satisfaction. “Well done, both of you. Get to your prowler—we leave for Fenris in five minutes. Mjolnir out.”
Fenris – Ranger Headquarters
Back where we started, Seven mused, sitting with Harper and Ellory inside the operations center, looking across the tactical table at the senior Rangers. Ellory’s eyes were fixed upon the comms screen, while the bosses’ attention had wandered. Deputy Chief Shren had taken to passing the time by reviewing patrol reports that had piled up over the last few days, while Chief Yivv had put their focus on drafting two press releases: one singing the Rangers’ praises in the event of success, and the other groveling with abject remorse in the event of a failure.
Ranger Commander Zhang simply glared at Ellory and Seven as she asked for the ninth time in under an hour, “How much longer will this take?”
Ellory summoned her best tone of appeasement. “There’s no way to know for certain, Commander. The malware won’t activate while it’s still in Kohgish’s virtual depository. Only after it confirms transfer to an account in an IFN-certified institution will it trigger its executable function, which Seven disguised as a verification checksum packet. Then it—”
“I don’t want your life story, Ranger. I just want an ETA.”
From the comms panel came a bright, loud ping.
Ellory grinned. “Approximately now, Commander.”
Seven activated her console and watched her and Ellory’s mission of deception bear fruit in real time. “The malware has activated from inside Kohgish’s account at the Bank of Ferenginar and has linked to Kohgish’s accounts at several other financial institutions throughout the quadrant. Transfers are being initiated…. Transfers complete. Malware package is self-deleting.” The financial account data on Seven’s screen vanished, and her screen reverted to its default configuration. Seven looked up. “Operation complete.”
Zhang looked confused. “That’s it? What just happened?”
With a smile, Ellory cued Seven to answer the commander. “We just emptied all of General Kohgish’s many financial portfolios—and transferred those sums into our own primary operations account.”
Harper smirked. “In other words, we bankrupted a warlord and got rich doing it.”
At first, the bosses didn’t seem to believe it. Yivv pivoted to a nearby console and keyed in some codes until a screen of information appeared. Their face went slack for a moment, and then a slightly manic gleam lit up their expression as they faced their peers. “Confirmed. Our operations account just received a virtual currency deposit large enough to fund our operations for the next several years—even after we return Alta’s treasury funds and make donations to many of Kohgish’s other victims.” They flashed a broad smile. “We just pulled off a heist.”
Ellory soaked up the praise. “And all it cost us was one uncrewed prowler and some repairs to Mjolnir. Not too shabby, if I say so myself.”
Harper arched an eyebrow at her. “You did say so yourself.”
“Oh, shut up.”
Seven caught Ellory’s eye and held her attention with a smile. “I, too, am quite impressed. How did you think of striking at Kohgish through his finances?”
“I used to work as an investigator for the planetary tax-collection service on Trill. Part of my training was in forensic accounting, so I could track money launderers. Once you know how they do it, it becomes a lot easier to recognize.”
“The Rangers are lucky to have someone like you.”
Ellory shrugged. “I’m not that special. Most of us had a life before we signed up.”
“Were many of them also civil servants?”
“More than you might think. A few were peace officers. And we’ve got at least a few veterans from Starfleet and the Klingon Imperial Defense Forces. But plenty of Rangers used to be just ordinary folks: teachers, clerks, artists. The one thing we all have in common: we don’t like to see good people get hurt, or bad guys win.”
At the tactical table, Saszyk pored through the seemingly endless stream of metadata connected to the virtual chain currency transfer. “This is incredible. You didn’t just steal a warlord’s war chest—by taking it in virtual currency, you also captured a detailed transaction log. We can track the provenance of every credit in Kohgish’s account. See how much of it was stolen, and how much he might have received from other criminals.”
“And implicate ourselves in the process,” Ellory said. “Now that we have possession of the chain currency, our name is in its metadata. So unless we want to answer some very tough questions about our sudden flush of wealth, we’d better get these funds off Fenris and into a bank that’ll let us wash it clean before we move it someplace safer.”
Zhang seemed suspicious. “Someplace safer? Such as…?”
“An anonymous account at a mercantile bank in Stardust City on Freecloud.”
“As long as we make a copy of the metadata for our own use,” Saszyk said. “With this kind of information, we’ll be able to break interstellar rings engaged in sentient trafficking, smuggling, illegal arms sales, bribery…” The deputy commander’s voice fell quiet as his thought trailed off, and when the others looked to see what had muted him, they found him staring in silent horror at a highlighted patch of data on his screen.
Yivv put their hand on Saszyk’s shoulder. “What’s wrong, Saz?”
Saszyk pointed at the data cluster.
“Patterns of funding. Lots of Federation-based NGOs acted as intermediaries, funneling money directly to Kohgish. But look at where all these funds originated.”
Seven looked over Saszyk’s shoulder and felt nauseated with horror when she saw the payer Saszyk had identified as the general’s chief financier:
The Federation Security Agency.