by M. D. Cooper
The man stiffened. Before Sergei quite realized the man’s intent, he declared, “Sorry, babe. You know I’ve never been very good at following rules.”
With that, the man shoved his companion hard, sending the woman sprawling headlong into the nearest soldier as he bolted back the way they’d come.
The woman must have been less graceful than most, for as she careened into the first soldier, she cartwheeled her arms in a mad effort to right herself. This sent the packages in her hands smashing into the face of the second soldier.
Just as the third member of Sergei’s team took off after the man, the woman’s feet slipped out from under her, tripping the soldier mid-stride. All four went down in a heap, but by then, Sergei had his hands full, endeavoring to intercept the man before he made it back into Godel territory.
Sergei reached for his own weapon, but Jason Andrews jostled his arm as he passed, and the weapon somehow went flying. Cursing to himself, he made a grab for the man’s arm, but he twisted out of the way at the last moment.
* * * * *
Jason was running hot. He’d dipped just far enough into his enhanced abilities to weave adroitly among the crowd, the faces of startled buyers barely registering as they looked up at him in shock when he raced past. He sprinted between vendors, upending tables to slow his pursuers, and sent silent apologies to merchants as their wares went flying.
He despised leaving Calista behind. It was a fine bit of irony that he’d actually meant the words he’d flung at the Barat soldiers. He didn’t handle authority all that well; it was why he’d never served in any military. Being a member of Task Force Phantom Blade didn’t count…. To his mind, the team’s structure was much more casual, its missions more straightforward.
He hated being given orders he fundamentally disagreed with, and he sure as hell disagreed with abandoning a fellow team member. The fact that it was Calista made things just that much worse.
But he couldn’t disagree with her argument that someone needed to make it back to the Avon Vale with the news that they’d been attacked. He just hated that he’d been the one to draw that assignment.
Jason pinged the Weapon Born as soon as he saw his Link handshake with the ship’s net and reestablish its connection. He knew, in his L2 state, his words tumbled out too rapidly for a non-augmented human to understand; he also knew the AI would have no trouble parsing it.
He charted an erratic course that kept his pursuers from getting the drop on him, sliding under displays and around tent flaps. The very randomness of his flight made him an impossible target for the soldiers pursuing him.
Or so he thought.
He swore as a flurry of flechettes went zinging past his head, ripping through the canvas of a nearby tent. His newly upgraded tactical combat mods immediately analyzed the trajectory, tagged the target, and plotted a firing solution—which might actually have been useful if he’d been carrying any kind of weapon.
As it was, the cry of pain that arose as one of the small darts hit an unintended victim unleashed a flare of fury inside him, directed at those intent on his capture to the exclusion of all else.
The Weapon Born came across the net, his voice steady and welcome.
The sounds of pursuit faded the deeper Jason went into Godel’s section of the bazaar, but he didn’t slow his pace. He was impressed by how effectively Calista had managed to gum up the works. The five soldiers had them dead to rights, their weapons trained unerringly upon them both, and yet she’d managed with little effort to take down the three in front of them long enough for him to make his escape. The other two had proven easy enough to evade—despite the casual loosing of firearms amongst a crowd of innocents.
Glancing behind him as he cleared the bazaar, he sized up his surroundings and made a break for a nearby alleyway he hoped might provide him rooftop access. Luck was with him, as he spotted a support spar that ran vertically up into the station’s dome. He twisted the cuff of his sleeve as he ran, releasing a puff of colloid jamming nano that clung to his shirt and should prevent station sensors from seeing what he was about to do.
Gathering himself, he dug deep into his enhanced state and poured on the speed, using the plascrete wall across from the spar as a pivot point to launch himself up much higher than any unaugmented human could. Just before he planted his foot, he shot a glance up at his objective, the seam that joined the spar to the roof’s flange.
The rapid mental calculation that allowed him to know exactly where to place his foot and how much force was required to achieve his goal was also thanks to his L2 abilities. He pushed off, propelled by the momentum transferred from his burst of speed, and his hand hit the exact spot he’d aimed for with a satisfying slap. Moments later, he’d swung himself onto the roof and was crouched over the far edge, checking for signs of pursuit.
There was a beat of silence, and then the Weapon Born’s avatar slowly shook his head.
The next moment, a feed came across the net, showing Calista surrounded by almost two dozen soldiers that formed a phalanx three meters deep. As he watched, they pushed her head down, forcing her into a maglev car. The soldiers jumped on, weapons raised and pointed outward, ready for any attack.
Jason grimaced as he dragged himself into a standing position.
He stepped to the roof’s edge and glanced down three stories to the alleyway below, then swung a leg around the spar and began to slide down to the first level. Tobias’s parting comment reached him just as he hit the street and began a steady jog back to the marina.
SLEEPING BLADE WAKES
STELLAR DATE: 03.08.3272 (Adjusted Gregorian)
LOCATION: ESS Avon Vale, Slip 512, Godel Trade Marina
REGION: Phaethon Duty Station, Little River
Landon paced the dimly-lit perimeter of the Avon Vale’s bridge, the hands of his humanoid frame clasped behind him. His measured stride was meant to convey assurance, his separation from his crew a confidence in their abilities. Accessible, should they need him, yet removed from their day-to-day activities.
And then his brother promptly disabused him of that notion.
Landon pivoted, shooting a glare at the back of his twin’s head.
Without missing a beat, Logan added,
> Landon sent his brother a flare of annoyance.
Logan responded with a thread of exasperation, but then the team’s profiler let the matter drop. Landon went back to his stroll, his optics sweeping the bridge, assessing each station individually.
The human, Hailey—one of Terrance’s Enfield employees, who had volunteered for bridge duty back in Tau Ceti—was the only veteran on today’s detail.
The over-large Proxima cat, stretched out languorously at her feet, didn’t count. Tobi was intelligent—uplifted, in fact—but her position on the ship’s bridge was more as a morale booster. Not having opposable thumbs was a bit limiting, as the feline reminded them all frequently.
Florence, the AI running the navigation station, had recently rotated in for third shift duty after expressing an interest in learning to be a navigator. The senior staff had decided to allow her to spend some time on the boards running simulations while the Vale was docked on Phaethon.
Another AI was shadowing Hailey at communications, and a human from Proxima who had opted to stay aboard at Tau Ceti and continue on to Epsilon Eridani was on scan.
Landon adjusted his path and began to angle toward his brother, seated at the security station in the back of the bridge near the exit. The moment he did so, he noticed the tension leave the shoulders of the woman at scan. He paused, dismayed that he had been its cause. Then he sensed a glimmer of amusement from his brother and realized Logan had caught him noticing.
Landon shot his brother a glare that Jason had coined his ‘no shit Sherlock’ look.
Logan toyed with something on the security console and shortly, a link to a data file hovered over the connection between them.
Landon swept through the file, assimilating the data in an instant.
Landon sent him a shrug.
Logan sent his assent.
The AI highlighted a string of data, information Landon knew his brother could not possibly have been able to access from the duty station’s public net. His brother had managed to insinuate himself behind the firewalls of one or both of the nations within the Epsilon system.
Landon sent resigned assent.
Logan didn’t respond, and Landon let the silence between them build for a few more nanoseconds.
In the silence that fell between them, he saw Tobi rise up on her haunches, then reach first one and then another massive paw out in a stretch, her two-centimeter-long claws clicking on the sole of the deck with a tinny snicking sound.
Shaking herself thoroughly, she stood and padded back toward the twins.
Tobi chuffed and sent him a scoffing sound over the Link as she turned to rub up against Logan. The big cat was always careful to divide her attention equally between the twins, something Landon had always found amusing.
Tobi’s mental voice was smug.
Landon conceded, and sent her a laugh in response to the disdainful glare she shot at him.
He’d had no idea prior to meeting Tobi—and later, Beck, the Proxima cat who had bonded with Terrance—how expressive cats could be. He saw a wealth of opinion in that look, none of it flattering.
Before he had a chance to compose a suitable response, his connection with the ship’s sensors alerted him to a communication coming from the station. He turned to Hailey expectantly and awaited the human’s slower response.
He only had a few agonizingly slow seconds to wait.
“Sir!” Hailey gasped, and Landon abandoned politeness—and protocol—to access the missive directly. Tossing the message to Logan, he began rifling through his brother’s hacked access to Godel’s servers as the human on comm declared to the bridge, “Captain Rhinehart’s been arrested!”
Logan shot Landon a query, and at his nod, shunted the feed of Jason’s progress to the bridge’s main holo. The bridge was deathly still, except for Hailey, whose fingers moved feverishly over her board, as she tried to break through Barat’s jamming and reacquire their connection with Calista.
The bridge doors slid open to admit a slight, raven-haired man who approached Scan. A quiet hand placed on the shoulder of the seat’s occupant caused the station to be relinquished with a grateful nod. Moments later, he spoke.
“They’re on the move.”
The words were delivered in an almost inhumanly calm tone. That they were conveyed by a human made it even more incongruous to Landon. Noa Sakai’s materialization on the bridge not long after Hailey’s panicked announcement didn’t surprise the AI; the human had a knack for being where he was most needed at just the right time—as the people of Tau Ceti knew quite well.
Landon had seen firsthand how the man’s composure, courage, and brilliant mind had enabled Noa to find a cure that saved the nanophage-ravaged planet of Galene—and quite possibly the entire star system—from utter destruction. He turned now to face the physicist, waiting for him to elaborate.
“We’re picking up the colloids Jason placed in her hair. They’re floating off—and outside the jamming radius—as she moves. The trail is thinning….” Noa paused, his voice trailing off in thought as he worked the board.
Landon knew the man wasn’t as dispassionate as he sounded; Sakai simply imbued a zen-like calm to everything he did. But, stars…. Landon had to force himself to rein in the impulse to prod the nanophysicist for more information.
Thinning did not sound good.
Landon wasn’t the only one to think so. At Noa’s words, he saw Tobi’s ears flatten and heard her soft hiss, just as the avatar for Shannon, the ship’s AI, sprang into life next to the bridge’s front holotank.
As always happened when Shannon was agitated, her long, silvery-white hair snapped wildly in a nonexistent breeze.
Noa looked up suddenly as if he had only just realized how his words might have been construed. Before he could speak, Shannon laid into him.
Landon held up a restraining hand, but before he could intercede, Noa’s voice reached her, strong and assured.
“We haven’t lost her trail, Shannon—and we won’t.” The physicist’s eyes held hers, a quiet confidence in their depths.
“Thinning merely indicates that the rate at which her captors are walking has increased. While they were standing still, a clump of colloids collected, but now that they are on the move, they are farther apart. Our breadcrumb trail is still quite intact,” he assured her.
Landon sent the physicist a nod of thanks and then shunted a duplicate of Noa’s feed to the ship’s main holo for them all to see.
Shannon hesitated, and then nodded.
Of all Phantom Blade’s members, Shannon was the one least accustomed to combat. To top it off, Calista was one of her closest friends. A situation like this one had to be difficult for her to handle, Landon knew.
“Give it some time. The duty station is five hundred kilometers in diameter, and they’re taking her deeper into it,” Landon pointed out, gesturing to the glittering line of dots floating in the holotank that indicated the colloid trail. “I don’t think we need to worry about them spiriting her off-station any time soon.”
Shannon glanced from Noa to Landon and then over to Logan. Landon could just make out the faint nod his twin sent before Shannon gave a dramatic sigh, crossed her virtual arms and shot him a pointed look.
“Fine. But don’t make me go find a humanoid frame to wear in order to drag her back myself. Because I’ll do it,” she threatened. “Don’t think I won’t.” And with that, her avatar winked out.
Although she was out of sight, Landon knew she hadn’t stopped her own private monitoring of Phaethon.
