by Terry Mixon
“Can this thing go any faster?” she demanded. “I want her in my sights, and I want it now.”
He grinned wolfishly. “Let’s see just how fast this thing can go, shall we?”
39
Page raced out of his office with Gunnarsdotter hot on his heels. He ignored the lifts and ran straight up the stairs toward the Fleet control center. He didn’t have time to waste standing around.
The marine guards at the control room hatch stopped him. He wanted to rage at them, but he knew that that was their duty. He controlled himself as much as he could and urgently requested that the officer of the watch see him.
It dismayed the hell out of him when the officer refused, and a harried-looking lieutenant stepped out of the control area instead, frowning at him.
“Whatever your problem is, Senior Sergeant, we don’t have time to deal with it right now. We’ve got a crisis on our hands.”
He started to snap at the man, but then he realized that he might be missing something. Besides, screaming at an officer wasn’t a good way to get things done, no matter how much he wanted to. Officers made the strategic decisions, and if he tried to force this, the man could send him away. What the hell would he do then?
“We have trainees out aboard the training ship, sir,” he said as calmly as he could. “We’ve lost communication with them, and I’m afraid that something has gone terribly wrong. We need a rescue team on its way there right now. An entire platoon full of recruits is at risk.”
“Everyone has lost communication, Senior Sergeant,” the man said distractedly. “We’re not sure exactly what’s going on, but there’s some kind of jamming source in orbit, and Fleet is going to alert status in case we’re under attack. I wish I could send someone to check on your recruits, but I’m sure they’re okay.
“Right now, all of our ships are deploying into defensive positions, and we don’t have anything to spare. You’re just going to have to wait until we restore communications or take care of the problem yourself.”
Without saying another word, the officer turned on his heel and went back into the control center.
“Well, that went well,” Gunnarsdotter said grimly. “You heard the man. He said we could take care of the problem ourselves, and I’m sure this is a situation where it’s going to be much easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission.”
“Damn right,” he said as he headed back toward marine country. “We’re going to take one of the pinnaces, but we need to be armed. Let’s get everyone to the armory and take care of that. We can also draw armored vacuum suits to make sure that we’re covered once we get there.
“I hate spending the time, but it won’t help them for us to rush into a hail of flechettes and die gloriously. The ship is empty right now, but you can bet somebody is bringing troops to bear. We’ve got to beat them to the punch.”
A pinnace could hold seventy people, so long as they weren’t in powered armor. With the drill instructors and half a dozen support staff, they weren’t going to be close to that.
There was already a pinnace on-site with two pilots and two crew chiefs aboard. If he could figure out a way to get a message to them, they might be able to get inside the ship and retrieve Tolliver and the rest before things went straight to hell.
He wasn’t going to count on that, though. With communications jammed, the only way to tell the pilots what was going on was face-to-face. Unless, of course, Fleet figured out where the jamming signals were coming from and stopped them.
It would be a point source of some kind, but it had to be powerful if it stopped all communications around the planet. Fleet was going on defense because that was what the book said to do. The odds of there actually being an attack here were so low that they were ludicrous.
This had to be something to distract Fleet to the point that they wouldn’t react to someone coming in to kill Tolliver and the rest of the recruits. How those people planned to escape once the deed was done, he had no idea.
He supposed if they got back to New Dallas, they could scatter. Even identifying them might be impossible.
Right now, though, he had to focus on doing what he could. That meant drawing weapons and armor and getting his ass to that ship as fast as possible. He was responsible for those recruits, and he’d do everything in his power to keep them safe.
The armorer gave him shit, but he put a stop to that fast. With Gunnarsdotter at his side, they browbeat him into releasing the weapons and armored vacuum suits. By then, the remaining drill instructors and support staff were already there.
Everyone armored up and drew weapons, including the armorer. Every single marine on this orbital was going on this mission.
That took ten long minutes that felt like four times the length. Yet it was time they had no choice but to spend. As soon as everyone was ready, he and the rest raced to the boat bay. It was home to several cutters and the now-absent pinnace and its twin that had brought Gunnarsdotter and her people back. It would provide them their ride.
Only when they got into the bay, it was empty. There wasn’t a single small craft in sight.
“Those bastards!” Gunnarsdotter shouted. “They commandeered all our small craft. How the hell are we going to get out there now?”
Page turned toward the wall where the vacuum suits were stored and sighed. “We’re going to have to do this the hard way. Grab thruster packs, everyone. I understand that we’re going to be short on fuel for something like this, so we’ll have to get it right the first time.
“I’ll take a light and try to signal the pinnace pilots if the angle is good. No guarantees there, but it’s worth a try.”
Even as the marines were rushing to put the thruster packs on, Gunnarsdotter faced him. “The chances of us beating the bad guys there are pretty damn low.”
He nodded. “What else can we do? Our only hope is that the bad guys are slower than we are. Come on. Let’s get geared up and get on our way. The enemy waits for no one.”
Andrea cycled through the airlock and examined the area just inside the ship. The lighting was dim, but there was more illumination than just the emergency lights. Gravity was on, but something was wrong with the atmosphere. The pressure was low, and it wouldn’t be safe to remove their helmets.
That was fine, since she didn’t intend to put anybody at risk anyway. Thankfully, the pressure was high enough to use the external speakers on her suit to get her orders out to everyone simultaneously. That was necessary because the jamming still had their com systems locked up.
As each squad came through the airlock, she made sure they understood where they’d be searching. They’d gone over this already, but it never hurt to reinforce the plan.
Diana and her squad would head for engineering, Claudio and his people would head for the bridge, and JR was responsible for the crew quarters. As the platoon leader, she’d be coordinating the overall rescue effort, and, sadly for her, that meant the best place to go was the bridge.
The last thing she wanted to do was have to deal with Claudio, but those were the breaks. He knew what he had to do, and if he screwed around, then it was going to reflect poorly on him too.
Diana raced off with hardly a glance back. Her friend was utterly focused on the task at hand, like she had a mental checklist of things that she needed to accomplish. That probably wasn’t far off the mark.
JR was a lot looser in his command style—if “style” was even the appropriate word. He gestured toward the corridor he intended to use, and his squad and he raced away in more of a mob than an orderly procession.
She stood against the bulkhead with Riggio as Claudio ordered his people to proceed toward the bridge, checking every hatch they came across for pressure on the other side as well as for injured or dead.
They began encountering those almost immediately, starting with a pair of dummies in the corridor with red bands around their necks. They represented dead crewmen, so Claudio had one of his people note where they’d found the bodies, and they a
ll continued on. Things would get more complicated when they started encountering survivors.
If there were any survivors.
At the moment, the pressure was too low to support life, and anyone trapped in this particular section who wasn’t in a vacuum suit was already dead.
To her surprise, they didn’t encounter any wounded at all on the way to the bridge. In fact, all they found were dummies representing the dead. That included the bridge itself because every station had a dummy strapped in to represent a deceased crewmember.
The bridge was rather cramped compared to some of the ones she’d seen when she was younger. Of course, the bridge of a heavy cruiser was much bigger than that of a civilian freighter. So was the one on the Singularity freighter that had been used as the raiding ship.
“Let’s see if we can figure out why we have no power,” she said as she moved over to one of the control panels. It was powered, and she was able to configure it to use the ship’s internal communications array.
She started out with engineering and opened a channel to the central console back there. “What’s the situation back there, Diana? Everyone on the bridge is gone. Why are we without power?”
A few seconds later, the channel came fully to life as Diana answered. Her friend’s face appeared on the screen, still framed inside of her helmet.
“Engineering is in vacuum, but I spotted the flashing light on the console. I’m close enough to it that my suit com is connecting. Barely.
“It looks like the aft airlock is open, both doors. I suppose that’s meant to represent some type of puncture. There aren’t any dummies back here at all. I guess we’re meant to assume that they were sucked out with the air.
“As for power, I’m not certain. My experience with that kind of equipment is almost zero. Do you want me to dig in and try to find an answer?”
Andrea shook her head. “Don’t bother. Start bringing your people forward. Search every compartment, looking for survivors, and make note of any dead. If you happen across the drill instructors, pretend that they aren’t there.”
Her friend smiled. “Where do you think they’re hiding?”
She answered with a shrug. “There’s no telling. Probably the last place we’d look. Use one of the com consoles to call the bridge if you run into anything unexpected. Bridge out.”
Her next call was more generalized because she wasn’t sure exactly where JR and his people were. Instead of trying to speak to them, she made each of the com consoles in the crew area chime, hoping to draw one of his people over so that they could answer the call.
That worked because the screen cleared a couple of seconds later and showed JR grinning at her. “That’s pretty smart, platoon leader. Good job.”
She ignored the compliment and got right down to business. “What’s going on in the crew quarters? Have you found any survivors?”
He shook his head. “All of the dummies we found so far indicate that they’re dead, but I think we’re about to find some survivors. Real ones. I see a couple of lights coming around the far end of the corridor. Maybe the drill instructors came looking for us.”
Andrea frowned. Why would the drill instructors be interfering with the exercise? That didn’t make any sense.
Well, she supposed she’d find out soon enough. If JR could see them, it would only be a few seconds before they’d be at the com console too.
JR turned his head and raised an arm, waving at someone. “Hey! It’s not the drill instructors. It’s the crew chiefs from the pinnace. Can we help you guys?”
The answer to his question turned out to be a hail of flechettes, which tore his torso apart in a bloody explosion.
40
Fei would’ve preferred to go straight to the penthouse suite and kick the doors open, but they had to have a special key to get the lift to take them all the way up. So, they made their way to the front desk at the head of a group of Imperial Intelligence agents.
Still Water displayed his identification to the young man smiling at him from behind the counter. “I am Director J. Russell Macumber of the Imperial Department of Justice. I have a warrant to search the penthouse suite and another one of your rooms. I require a key to get into the rooms and use the lift to get to them.
“Here is the warrant. I require you not to tell anyone other than your direct supervisor, whom you can summon here before you tell only him or her, under penalty of immediate arrest for tampering with evidence and assisting a fugitive. Do you understand?”
The young man examined the identification closely and then took the old-fashioned paper warrant in his hand, frowning as he read it. “I’ll call my supervisor, but there’s not going to be any problem with this. Both those suites are empty. The occupants checked out perhaps half an hour ago.”
Fei wanted to scream. They’d finally located the damned woman, and she’d flown the coop before they could pick her up.
“Do you have any idea where they went?” Still Water asked.
“Let me summon the bellhop and see if she can give you any information while I talk to my supervisor.”
A young woman in a hotel uniform appeared moments later and listened to Still Water ask his questions and then nodded. “Even though they were in two separate rooms, the occupants left together. I called them a large air car and heard the woman in charge order the driver to head for the port.
“Apparently, they have a small craft there that’s going to take them to a ship in orbit. From the way she was talking, the woman in charge expected them to be leaving the system in a few hours.”
The young woman cast a glance over at the man behind the counter, who was explaining the situation to his supervisor, and lowered her voice. “I really shouldn’t be saying, but they used a car from the Jackson Group. I recognized the driver. I can provide you with their number, but please don’t tell my boss. He’d fire me for sure.”
“Then why tell us?” Still Water asked.
“She was arrogant and a terrible tipper. She wanted every service possible but never left a tip. If she’s a criminal, I really hope that you catch her because she was a bitch.”
“We’ll do everything we can to catch her,” Still Water assured the girl. “You’ve been a terrific help, and if we can get our hands on her, you’ll be eligible for part of the reward. The Empire is in your debt.”
He turned toward Fei, his expression grim. “Whatever is going on in orbit, it looks like her doing. They’re making their play now, and she expects everything to be finished in time for her to leave. I think we need to get to the port and find a ride of our own if we can’t stop her.”
Fei nodded. “Let’s get moving. We’re out of time.”
The car company told them the area they’d dropped Dayton off, but that was where all the chartered craft left from, so it wasn’t much help.
They sped to the port with Still Water talking to someone over the com, trying to identify which craft they needed to stop, but getting through to the right person proved particularly difficult. Perhaps they’d been paid to make sure that no one interrupted Dayton’s escape. The woman certainly had enough money to spread it around for things like that.
The earl cursed as they pulled into the parking area. Once their vehicle was grounded, he turned to her and grimaced.
“I finally tracked down the cutter that she’s using, and it lifted off fifteen minutes ago. She’s already in orbit, and with all of this nonsense going on up there, we’re not going to be able to isolate her transponder.”
“Then we’re just going to have to chase her,” Fei said grimly. “There’s only so many outgoing ships, and I’ll assume that you can commandeer some of those Fleet vessels that are running around with their hair on fire.
“Better yet, we know that she’s going to be involved in attacking Andrea in some way, so doesn’t that narrow the range of potential locations?”
“Not if her contractors are the ones conducting the attack, which seems likely. If she were kidnapping her, ye
s. Honestly, I’m not certain that we’ll be able to get our hands on her before she escapes. We might be best served going directly to the orbital.”
“No. We won’t let Dayton escape. Page and Riggio will keep Andrea safe.”
“Then I’d best find us something to get us up into orbit.”
Fei wished they had another choice, but they were out of time. She just had to hope that Andrea could save herself from what was coming so that they could swoop in and pick up the pieces once it was all over.
Page and the marines had to keep a tight formation because the jamming kept them from using anything but hand signals. Fortunately, all marines trained in them simply because there were times when it was too dangerous to use even short-range coms.
The problem with the suits was that they were limited to what they could see because they didn’t have long-range scanners. Normally for space operations, there would be a larger vehicle providing telemetry, or they’d have practiced going in blind to a specific kind of location.
They couldn’t even home in on the pinnace’s transponder with all this jamming. They were just going to have to wing it.
The ship that the recruits were on was fully operational, but engineering had been shut down. The ship was operating on battery power and was more than capable of doing so for days.
When it was time to charge the batteries back up, a skeleton crew would come aboard, bring everything back to life and give it a good look before powering it back down.
Luckily, its location was well known, and the batteries were more than capable of maintaining running lights to be absolutely sure that no other vessels came close, in addition to the transponder signals that couldn’t be heard over the jamming. Those lights were the only thing the marines could use to home in on it.
Gunnarsdotter was right about how slowly things were going. At this rate, it would take them another half an hour to get to the training ship. Whatever was going on might be over by then. Hopefully, the pinnace’s crew would be of some use.
