Captain James Heron: First into the Fray: Prequel to Harry Heron: Into the Unknown of the Harry Heron Series

by Patrick G Cox

  “I did not know that. Have you an ID for her?”

  “For what it’s worth, yes. Calls herself Cardington, and she also appears as her twin brother. The family exists, as do the brother and sister, and so does the corporation they supposedly represent, but whether Bast is actually the real Ms Cardington is another matter.”

  “Okay, that’s not our problem.” He paused. “So what is the problem?”

  “She’s after me.”

  “What?! Why? Does she know you might have identified her?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, but she may be looking for an ID to get away from here undetected. Her own identity must be compromised. I think she may have been preparing something—she’s been calling on me regularly, ostensibly for business, and I know that someone has been in my quarters because I put several security checks in place. She may need my authorisation for transport—as me.” She stopped, recalling another visitor. “Her brother Selwyn has also been a regular caller in the office.”

  “Selwyn?” The Head of Security frowned. “Selwyn Cardington is dead. He died as a result of an accident about five years ago, maybe longer. I was at the funeral.” His eyes grew wide. “Yelendi, get the hell out of there. Get on the first ship leaving for anywhere, but get out tonight. Let me know where you are when you’re clear.”

  It took very little time to gather the essentials and head for the shuttle dock. She took a route through the leisure deck, pausing at the restaurant run by one of her agents to make a brief call. After that, she exited through the rear and made her way directly to the shuttle dock.

  “Ms Dysson?” The Security Corporal held her ID. “Could you step this way, please?”

  “Is there a problem, officer?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, ma’am. My Chief just wants a word before you go.” He handed her the ID chip. “If you’ll step this way, please.”

  For a moment she considered refusing. Then she smiled. “Lead the way, officer. As long as I catch my shuttle.”

  Piet Brandeis greeted her as she entered. “I got your call, Ms Dysson, and my boss has a proposition. We’ve checked your suite, by the way. Lucky for you that you didn’t use the shower. Let’s just say you’d be moaning in agony in a burn unit right now if you had survived it.” He opened an inner door. “Ms Dysson is here, sir.”

  The Admiral stood to greet her. “Good evening, Ms Dysson. Admiral Burton.” Unrecognisable as Mr Brown in his full uniform and with the facial modifiers removed, the Admiral indicated a chair. “Let’s get right to it, shall we? You’ve been on my radar for some time now, so I think we can be frank with one another.”

  Something about the voice bothered her, but she dismissed it. She’d never seen her informer, as he’d always left little messages and encrypted files for her, but he’d never met her in person.

  Hedging, she proffered, “I could deny everything.”

  “True, and I could let you leave and allow Bast to carry out her little scheme.” He smiled. “I have my own plans for that woman, and we owe you a little something for the help you gave us in finding and recovering Ms Rowanberg.”

  “You got her out in one piece?”

  “Oh, yes. We had an advantage—your information and some useful material from another source.” He settled more comfortably in his desk chair. “She’ll have to be debriefed, of course, and undergo a full medical workup, but she is well and in one piece physically and mentally. She’s a strong woman. I trained her myself.” He held her gaze. “We look after our own, unlike some, and we honor our word. So, we owe you some assistance. There’s a private yacht, Hyperion, waiting to take you to a safe location. Lieutenant Rainier will escort you to the yacht and ensure you are looked after. He’ll give you my proposal. Consider it carefully. If you accept it, we’ll arrange to collect you and take it from there. If you choose to reject it, this conversation never took place.” He stood. “Enjoy the Hyperion. It comes with no obligation.”

  Chapter 24

  Take Her Off the Dock

  When Yelendi Dysson boarded the yacht, she knew right away that this was no ordinary form of transport, even for a yacht. It was luxuriously decorated with understated elegance that oozed good taste and sophistication. But something about it told Yelendi that it had a wider purpose than to provide luxurious transport for wealthy or important passengers, and its crew were very definitely not ordinary yachtsmen.

  “The Admiral’s orders are that you are to have access to any com system you need, Ms Dysson.” The Lieutenant-Commander ushered her into the beautifully appointed accommodation. “The SUs will provide anything you want.” He smiled. “And I am ordered to assure you that there are no video recorders and no audio monitors anywhere. Anyone you contact and anything you say while aboard this ship will not be recorded or listened to by anyone else.”

  “Thank you for reassuring me.” She hesitated. “What is this vessel? Some sort of secret spy ship?”

  “We’re a diplomatic yacht. Sometimes diplomatic missions require travel that is less conspicuous than the usual modes of transport.”

  Yelendi smiled knowingly. There were rumours that at least one yacht like this existed, but as far as she knew, none had ever been identified. “I’m impressed,” she said. “I suppose I should be flattered. The Admiral seems to have resources available to him way beyond any other flag officer, but I’m not complaining!”

  The Lieutenant-Commander smiled. “He has a few useful things available when he needs them.”

  Yelendi smiled. “Can I ask where we’re going?”

  “We’re already there. Until further notice, we’re on the Kuiper Belt patrol line.” He smiled at her stunned reaction. “You must’ve annoyed someone,” he offered with a grin. “I’ll be told when it is safe to take you to a destination of your choice, but until then, we’re in the Pluto orbital region.”

  “Me, annoy someone?” She faked a surprised pause, but clearly the Lieutenant-Commander already knew the full story. “Oh, that!” She laughed. “I’m afraid so. At least it seems I have. There’s a rather dangerous assassin on the Dock, and the Admiral feels they might be after me.” She paused. “I hope I can look forward to some human company while I’m aboard this vessel.”

  “Of course.” He smiled. “My officers and I will be happy to provide it.” He hesitated for a moment. “We do know who you are, Ms Dysson, and your position with the opposition, but the Admiral believes we owe you this.”

  Captain Heron took his seat in the command chair. The last three days had been intense, but he focussed on the task in hand: to take his new ship, the Vanguard, off the dock and manoeuvre her under her own power for the very first time.

  The Command Centre seemed crowded. All the stations were manned, and the Heads of Department and representatives of the Fleet were present as well, each here to witness the performance of their installations and advise on any troubleshooting that may be needed. Still, it was a pity they couldn’t all have been consigned to the Flag Command Centre further aft, but it was as yet not operational.

  Captain Heron keyed his link. “Engineering to stand by.”

  “Engineering standing by.” Mary Allison’s confident voice brought a smile.

  “Docking Party, release all but the lateral tethers and confirm.”

  “Releasing bow and fin tethers; bow and fin tethers released, lateral tethers still engaged.”

  “All tugs, confirm your lines are engaged.”

  “Tug Powerful here, Captain,” reported the senior tug commander. “We’re ready to draw you out.”

  “Very good, Powerful.” The Captain made one more check of his readouts and glanced at his Executive Commander with a smile, who returned the Captain’s enthusiasm with a big thumbs-up and a smile of his own.

  “Release the lateral tethers,” the Captain ordered. “Powerful and consorts, take us off the dock if you please.”

  At first nothing appeared to be happening, but then the Dock arms moved slowly past, and as they did, the view of
the planet below changed and the light brightened. And then the ship was clear of the Dock and turning majestically until the Building Dock filled the Port side of the display.

  “Powerful to Vanguard, we’re casting off now, Captain. Your head is at three-four-nine lateral, zero-one-five positive angle. We’ll be stood by if you need us.”

  “Thank you, Captain. We hope we won’t need you until we berth again.” To his team he said, “Navigation, set course for the trial zone. Engineering, set manoeuvring power to three-quarter output.”

  In Navigation, Commander Curran watched his chart displays and checked the waypoints against his plotted course. He made a small adjustment and said to the helm operator, “Watch your heading, we seem to have a propulsion imbalance.” He contacted Engineering. “Mary, we have a helm bias to starboard. Can you check output for the port and starboard lateral thrusters? The port thruster seems to be delivering a little more than the starboard.”

  “On it,” Mary responded. “Starboard cluster was giving around one percent less than portside. Is that better?”

  Ben checked the helm. “That’s got it, now she’s behaving perfectly. Everything ready for the first transit?”

  “Ready when you are. The pods are online any time you want them.”

  “Stand by, we’ll be on the marker to go to transit in four minutes.” Ben Curran rechecked the navigation solutions then contacted the Command Centre. “Navigation to Command, ship is approaching marker for first transit, all systems checked and ready on your order.”

  “Thank you, count us in and enter transit on my mark.” The Captain listened to the countdown, and at zero, he ordered, “Engage Hyperpods.”

  The sensation of acceleration presaged a change in the display to a swirling greyness that surrounded the ship. A few of the passengers expressed surprise, as this was a new experience for them, but soon refocused on their tasks. With everyone busy, the ship hung suspended in her envelope of grey, then an alert sounded and the voice of Commander Curran announced, “Dropout in thirty seconds.”

  “Very well,” the Captain acknowledged. Around him the various TechRates checked and rechecked their consoles as data streamed through the ship’s neural net.

  Captain Heron looked at the Construction Chief. “Everything working as planned?”

  “It’s all functioning as expected, Captain.” The relief in his voice reflected the feelings of everyone present. “Of course, we don’t have the weapons online, but the particle shields are functioning as designed, and the power plant is stable and performing better than specification.” He smiled. “After the battles we’ve had with Commander Allison, that’s a relief!”

  On a monitor in the canteen where she sat alone, Bast watched the Vanguard depart. Her plans now botched because the Dysson woman had been tipped off, she weighed her alternatives. There was still Dysson’s deputy—Dylan Raddeck. Idly watching the monitor, she recalled what she’d observed of the man.

  Height? Maybe 5’8”–5’9”, close enough to her own. Build? Similar enough to pass scrutiny with a few small additions of muscle mass. He’d have priority access to a shuttle passage, probably also to long distance passages—but that meant keeping up the deception longer than she was comfortable doing. No, it would have to be a short trip to Earth, another switch to one of her alternate IDs, and then …

  Wait a minute…

  Another option occurred to her.

  If she held off a little longer, perhaps let them think she’d left, she might be able to have her revenge as well. The Captain had taken out three of her team. They may have been careless, though it didn’t sound like it. Yes, she liked the thought. Take down the Captain when he least expected it, switch IDs with Dysson’s deputy Raddeck, get to Earth, and then claim her payment on delivery of the data on Vanguard’s primary weapon.

  Yes, a suitable revenge. Now to get to work preparing to become Dylan Raddeck. She needed his background, his habits, his friends. She had a lot of work to do. Maintaining her current character as the angry loner, she thrust back her chair, slammed her utensils into the recycler, and stalked from the canteen, not bothering to smile or speak to the few who acknowledged her in passing.

  Yelendi Dysson had not expected to be given completely free access to the coms system, even down to being allowed to put through her call to her chief in the Consortium.

  “You have complete access through this interface, ma’am. Your authorisation is by iris recognition at the interface,” the young coms Lieutenant told her. “I must warn you that your private comlink has been piggybacked. Someone has cloned it, and may still be able to follow any communication you make with it. As a precaution, any communication from this ship will be put through the Carousel so that no interlopers will be able to track a location of origin.”

  Yelendi felt a chill ripple up her spine. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask why she was getting such courtesy—after all, Fleet knew who she was and who she worked for—but she pushed it aside. “Thanks for the warning. I do need to contact my employer. They’ll be worried about my silence by now.”

  She checked her living compartment for any sign of monitoring and tracing devices, and was surprised to find the Lieutenant-Commander’s statement was true: there were none, at least as far as she could determine. Then she called Dylan to warn him of the danger from Bast and to get his report on the trials for the Vanguard. Then she made a call to the Director of Security in the Consortium headquarters.

  “The Vanguard’s first trials have shown that she is even more capable than we were led to believe,” Yelendi reported. “She’s just completed her full power and transit trials, and has proved faster and more manoeuvrable than the required specification.”

  “That shouldn’t be possible. Even though your team in DockCor haven’t been able to carry out everything we planned, they did enough to reduce her capabilities. What happened?”

  “Her Engineering Commander, Mary Allison, picked up the underspec on just about everything, as I reported.” Yelendi paused. “I warned that it was too ambitious to think anyone could change almost everything in the specification. Ribble was exposed, and the investigation has probably exposed everything else. Fleet are playing a deep game though, and they’ve kept a lot of it quiet as they’ve swopped it back to what it should have been. I could have recovered at least some of it, but when Bast and her team interfered, the whole place was practically put in lockdown, and now, everything is under the control of a Fleet Flag Officer. They’ve also replaced everything in the propulsion systems and engineering that we’d managed to downrate.”

  “The Chairman isn’t going to like that at all,” said the Security Director. “He doesn’t like failure, and Bast seems to have vanished, but leave that one with me. I still have a couple of aces in my hand, including some changes we slipped into the weapons fit their Construction Section agreed.” He paused. “You managed to get off the Dock without a problem?”

  Yelendi smiled. “Called in a favour or two.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “If you don’t mind, I don’t want to reveal that or how I got here. I’m not sure my coms are secure enough.”

  “Oh?” The Director hesitated. “You think this Bast might have a monitor on you?”

  “She seemed to be able to get into areas and into information systems that should have been secure, so, yes, it is possible.” She wasn’t going to tell him she’d had the assistance of Fleet Security, or that she was currently being very well looked after on one of their secret yachts.

  “That’ll be best then. What’s the programme for Vanguard now?”

  “She’s going back onto the dock to complete the fitting out, and then she goes into workup. They may have changed the schedules now, but they’re saying she’ll be operational in nine months, and her full complement of strike craft is to be shipped in the next two.”

  “Right. What about her sister ship Vengeance?”

  “She’s been brought forward. By the time the Van
guard starts her workup, Vengeance will be fully plated and under atmosphere. Twelve months tops and she’ll be operational.” Yelendi took a deep breath. “That team the Chairman hired have really screwed up our operation now. Their little game of kidnapping the Rowanberg woman ruined my attempt to recruit her. And Fleet Security are tearing the place apart. Bast must be a bloody lunatic—her demand that Captain Heron take part in a survival challenge on the planet must have been a ruse, but regardless, it failed. Security took down all of her assistants.”

  “They took out an entire Pantheon team?” The Director’s expression showed his concern. “Were they betrayed?”

  “Possibly. They managed to kill two of my people in setting up this game, but Heron took down three of theirs, and Fleet’s security teams took out the rest, while another two were killed protecting Bast on the Vanguard.”

  The Director hesitated. “Did Bast get away? Did she get the schematics?”

  “She got away, but I think she’s still on the Dock. She may have the plans, but there’s no way of knowing. The worst aspect is that everything we had on the Dock is now compromised. They’ve been pulling our people off and replacing them with their own. I’m going to have to move on once it’s safe to do so, and Dylan will need replacing as well—they’re getting way too close to both of us.”

  “You’re right, that is bad. Bloody hell. I’ll have to warn the Chairman.” The Director of Security cut his link and leaned back. He’d done his best and his agents had worked hard, but Yelendi was right, someone had been far too ambitious. Now the whole plan had unravelled. It didn’t help that a large part of the failure was down to the Chairman intervening where he should have left things alone—but he would never accept responsibility.