Cold Conflict (Deception Fleet Book 2)

by Daniel Gibbs

  “Don’t worry. We’ll give them a target to go after, provided enough debris was left over at the cometary fragment.” Kiel glanced at Ferenc for affirmation.

  “Plenty of serial numbers pointing to Nosamo purchases, but it will take them time to unravel the bills of lading,” Ferenc said. “The Saurians haven’t exactly been bashful on the news networks—they’ve been hunting privateers across this region for a while now.”

  “True. I suspect they’d happily jump at a new enemy to devour, even if the intelligence comes to them from their Terran friends. And it’s a sure fact—though an odd one—that the Terran capitalists despise megacorporations like Nosamo.” Kiel scowled. “I suppose that’s their damnable religiosity and so-called ‘moral code’ coming into play against greed, avarice, and all the things that make their economy function.”

  “It’s a miracle they haven’t destroyed themselves,” Yahanotov mused.

  “Try not to use that word with a commissar in earshot,” Kiel said coolly. “Have you worked out the signal issue yet?”

  “Er—no.” Yahanotov fidgeted with his main display board. “The Terrans—if that’s who we were really spiking—figured out our interception fast and shut their frequency down, hard. Not so much as a ping. I’m scanning all wavelengths, even the ones drones use for location verification, but if they have a new signal up and running, it’s a damned quiet one.”

  “It did produce the desired effect.” Kiel stood and stretched his arms, taking care not to slosh his cold tea. He could use a long soak in a hot tub right about then. “It brought someone out of the woodwork—the wraith who stunned the Tactisar oafs that should have stopped Nels’s partner from fleeing. You noticed the pattern, didn’t you?”

  Ferenc grimaced. “Short-term stuns, like at the Aphendrika consulate.”

  “Indeed they were. Which means we’ve goaded CDF Intelligence into tipping their hand. Fingers crossed they continue their sloppiness, but that doesn’t mean we can assume further slipups—they’re, in general, too careful a bunch, as the outcome of our last venture proved. No, we shall have to continue quiet provocations.”

  “And Ramsey, sir? He and his people expect payment.”

  Kiel chuckled. “They’d be fools not to. I thought of unraveling that threat myself, but let’s have Ciara do the honors. I’m sure she’ll enjoy the look on her besotted detective’s face when she’s the one to space him.”

  Sinclair didn’t like the results of the scans. They were too easy, too simple.

  “Two of the five recovered serial numbers came back as matching those routed through Nosamo inventories,” Captain Tamir said. “And they were definitely manufacturing tricionite in the lab. It will take the techs some time to confirm the chemical composition is a precise match to that used in the privateer’s self-destruction, but the odds look good.”

  “They certainly do, Butter Bars,” Sinclair murmured.

  Tamir glanced over his shoulder. “Colonel? You don’t sound happy about it.”

  “And why would that be, do you suppose?”

  “Because it dumps the privateer destruction, the murders in the lab, and the attacks on both Master Chief MacDonald’s team and Tuscon herself right at Nosamo’s doorstep.” Tamir frowned. “Which is a lot of figurative fingers pointing their way all of a sudden.”

  “Quite right. I daresay we’re seeing the handiwork of our League counterparts again. What of the drive signature scans you’ve been running? Any chance of snaring that wild hare?”

  Tamir rubbed his eyes. He wasn’t the only one fighting a headache, Sinclair was certain. How many hours of sleep have I lost obsessing over competing theories? Matters had only gotten worse since MacDonald’s team had returned with PO1 Rostami in critical condition. The young soldier was recovering but was, for all intents and purposes, out of the coming fight—wherever it might be next. Major Mancini, meanwhile, had been fortunate to suffer no fatalities aboard his boat, though a dozen casualties needed serious care in Oxford’s more extensive sickbay.

  “What he’s trying to say, Colonel, via his eloquent gestures, is he’s as tired as I am but that we think we can spot the enemy ship if it makes its reappearance.” CWO Eldred rubbed the center of her forehead as she spun through endless results compiled by the sensor room and TAO. “Captain Tamir spotted the drive signature anomaly first. I ran it through the databases to crosscheck with possible previous appearances. We got a few hits along the Coalition-League demilitarized zones half a year back then again at Aphendrika.”

  “Ah. Major Mancini’s ghost vessel.” Sinclair folded his arms. “The one he was convinced gave us the slip rather than suffering destruction while under attack during a wormhole jump.”

  “The very same,” Tamir said. “Right now, we don’t have enough data for a full comparison, but the partials are promising.”

  “What’s the best way to get the data you need? Sending Tuscon back into the mix as soon as she’s able?”

  “Yes, but also positioning Oxford so the two of us can triangulate.”

  “Maths were never my strong suit, Captain, but I did rather well at geometry. We need three points to triangulate.”

  Tamir grinned. “Absolutely, Colonel, which is why we’re working on tapping Bellwether’s detection grid.”

  Eldred snorted softly.

  “I certainly don’t recall hearing you say any such thing.” Sinclair nodded. “I’ll be curious to see what your further investigation turns up. As soon as you’re ready, let me know, and I’ll see to it we get underway for Bellwether.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Anything further from Captain Garza?”

  “We’ve dumped everything he saved on the tablet into our computers. Lieutenant Guinto practically wept across the comms when we forwarded it to him. It looks like the links he analyzed with the modified drones verify League tech buried deep in their command structure.” Eldred grinned. “Guinto promises us a souvenir when this is all over.”

  “I shall have to hold him to his word. Very good.”

  “Understood, Colonel. And about the signal interference…”

  “From Vasiliy, about whom Captain Jackson has become quite single-minded.” Sinclair’s tone cooled. He’d seen the summary of Lieutenant Garza’s escape, read Jackson’s account of his and his team’s actions. There was much to be desired. While protocol should never rule an undercover operation with an iron fist, safeguards existed for good reason. For Jackson to ignore one key aspect of those in the heat of the moment was troubling. “I take it Lieutenant Guinto is continuing to rely on your assistance.”

  “I’m helping the best I can, sir, but Vasiliy—whoever he is—isn’t the typical ESS slouch. He’s switched frequencies, too, avoiding the band he used to track down the team’s communications network.”

  “So, the dance continues,” Sinclair murmured. “The sooner we get Nosamo’s atmospheric project out of the League’s reach, the better.”

  19

  Sector A, Bellwether Station

  Caeli System

  25 November 2464

  * * *

  Gina Wilkes left her office with Nosamo corporate, tablet at the ready, humming a tune to herself. Where did I learn it? It must have been something her brother had done when Mom had dragged them out to the spaceport to gaze for hours in the evening at approaching and departing ships.

  The message gleaming at her from her tablet was written in gibberish—gibberish to the untrained eye. It was actually an obscure dialect of Saurian, one rarely used outside two planets but which Gina could read provided the syntax was simple. She couldn’t do complex messages, more like, “The ship is pretty,” and such.

  Brant had sent it. One of the many algorithms he had running had been busy rifling through the coded manifest Gina had uncovered. The results were intriguing. They indicated Nosamo was not only supplying privateers but occasionally granting them safe harbor for repairs.

  The trick was getting visual proof. The cameras were no good�
��privateer vessels wouldn’t be very useful if they looked like what they did for a living. Gina had plowed through hours of footage until she’d gotten bored, so it was a good thing Brant’s computers had shared the workload.

  All those freighters looked the same. Gina smiled. Well, not entirely the same. Thanks to Mom, she could eyeball the subtle difference between armed and unarmed vessels. Besides, a live inspection would help in other ways. Jackson was having a tough time keeping Ciara happy.

  Gina made sure she appeared oblivious to her surroundings, especially Jackson in his Tactisar gear shadowing her from so far back he was practically an afterimage. It wasn’t difficult to maintain the illusion he wasn’t following because a handful of other Tactisar officers milled about.

  Nosamo’s private hangar bays gleamed with white panels and chrome finishings, the floors polished black metal. Between freighters and Tactisar gunships, Gina spotted nine distinct classes, forty-two vessels in total. She was interested in three and only because the decoded manifest hinted these three often carried cargos of a suspicious nature. Gina’s examination of the security images revealed staff loading and offloading containers from those three ships. The problem was that a clerical snafu made those containers disappear once they left the ship. Odds were, they were empty.

  “Ah, I see you’ve finally gotten away from your desk.” Ciara strolled her way—right in her path to the hangar. Not that someone as slender as Ciara could block a pair of transparent hatch doors big enough to admit a shuttle in a corridor twice as wide.

  “And you’ve managed to escape Mr. Noor.” Gina added her sweetest smile. “What brings you to the hangar?”

  “Mr. Noor relies on me to periodically check on all aspects of his business, including hangar operations. Especially when Tactisar has blundered a simple apprehension of criminals.”

  “Oh, I heard about that.” Gina made sure to move aside in the corridor, both to allow staff walking back and forth unimpeded paths but also to guarantee Ciara saw Jackson doing what he was supposed to do—spy on Gina. She didn’t mind being the rival in someone else’s eyes as long as they thought of her as a conniving ladder climber within the organization.

  Still, she allowed herself a daydream in which she throat punched Ciara and left her gasping in a heap—anything to ruin that ridiculously perfect hair and outfit. Especially the hair. “I can’t believe anyone living aboard Bellwether would be so ungrateful. They must be transient scum—not clients, obviously.”

  “Obviously. To borrow your question, what brings you to the hangar?”

  “Mr. Noor thinks it vital I’m passingly familiar with all aspects of Nosamo’s operations.” It shaded the truth. Noor had said so while Ciara was in earshot. Gina flicked her tablet like she was shooing and insect. “Not that the hangar is appealing. If I had a desire to walk around clunky cargo containers and avoid toxic solvents, I would have applied for a deckhand’s job. How much am I expected to spend getting this dress laundered if something spills on it?”

  Ciara’s responding smile was sympathetic but only just. The woman didn’t miss a single soul passing them in the corridor during their conversation. Of that much Gina was sure. Only Gina’s best performance as equal parts snooty and competent would pass muster.

  “Try to avoid the more caustic substances. They devour flesh,” Ciara said.

  Gina wrinkled her nose. “I will, thank you.”

  “Not at all. I’ll meet you at thirteen three zero for the Blackpoint LLC conference.”

  “Yes, I reviewed your notes. Do they really require a bow or curtsey every time they stand?”

  Ciara sighed. “Unfortunately, they do. I’d practice.” She was off, clearing a path through the streams of staff and their accompanying bot assistants without so much as a word or gesture.

  Gina caught sight of Jackson sidling into an alcove near a water dispenser. Ciara stopped a few seconds later to take a drink.

  “She really is watching you,” Brant muttered. “I suppose if I were Ardalion Noor, I’d value a key assistant who had as much zeal for my commercial empire as I did.”

  “All the more reason she needs a swift strike to the ribs.” Gina smiled at the technicians who passed, adding a wink to the more handsome of the pair for good measure. “Commencing scans.”

  She wound her way among the parked craft, mindful to stay within the striped lanes designating safe passage. A Tactisar gunship rumbled off its berth, heading for the nearest hatch. But Gina had her eyes set on a Mark Seven Seven twin-hull freighter, not unlike six others currently in port. Ungainly but sporting powerful engines for a civilian model, the Mark Seven Seven was known for its modular nature and reinforced hull spars, perfect for all manner of legitimate industry as well as more unsavory roles.

  “Keep your wrist unit scanner still, Echo Two,” Brant reminded her. “You’ll have to come back and do all the work over if I can’t get a steady read.”

  “I can’t very well wave my wrist over the target ships in a subtle manner.” The complaint was more to needle him than express real displeasure. She could stand by a ship and fake notetaking on her tablet while scanning the next berth without looking suspicious. Doing so also gave her the chance to get a closer look at the men and women unloading the Mark Seven Seven.

  There were three of them, two female and one male, human, but despite their generic civilian togs, they had an air of danger about them. Clearly not cut out for infiltration. No, they were used to criminal work—watching over their shoulders, all sharp movements and stark stares at other techs who got too close to their loading areas.

  Speaking of loading, the hauler bots moved the containers onto the ship with far too much ease. Gina called a young technician over and leaned in closer than was comfortable while she requested—eyelashes batting—he sign off on her inspection records. Doing so allowed her to shift the wrist scanner toward those containers.

  “A gift from on high for the both of us, Two.” Brant chuckled. “Those crates? Empty—or at least, stuffed with air-filled packing pouches. I think we can ping this one as a privateer or another dirty Nosamo craft.”

  Gina caressed the young tech’s arm as he left, having fulfilled his duty as an unwitting distraction. She enjoyed the way sweat beaded on his dark-brown skin. Any outward sign she was successful in her role was a good thing.

  Cheered by the thought, she turned her attention to where Sparks’s explosives could cause the most chaos.

  Brant considered it the highlight of his day when he got to run comms with Gina on a field op. She was so pleasant about the whole thing while still treating her work with the utmost seriousness. He always got a laugh out of the way men in particular melted out of her way, like she was clearing a path through a tray of ice cubes using a flamethrower. He wished he could have it so easy.

  Tracing which of the modified Tactisar drones to hijack was a delicate operation, which was why the task had been foremost on his list ever since Lieutenant Garza’s report had filtered down from Oxford. Getting the proper codes and writing the program to use in the hijacking was manageable. But Brant had to pay close attention to the routes used by dozens of drones scattered across Bellwether’s square kilometers so he could reroute one that wouldn’t draw attention. Finally, he compiled enough data to pick PRD 311 and narrowed the time slot in which it could go missing.

  Brant felt a bit ridiculous hunched over his screens, watching the tracking marker for PRD 311 as it approached the final intersection on its patrol. Standard procedure for the modified drone was to go dark from Tactisar’s view so it could head toward whatever nefarious task Ramsey had programmed it for—a perfect time to send it his way. Five seconds later, PRD 311 blinked out.

  Brant’s program transmitted the next second. He dug under his collar for the medal of Saint Joshua then kissed it. Come on. Make your face to shine upon me, Father in heaven.

  Not for the first time, he wondered if heavenly blessing for espionage actions that were considered crimes in any other
line of work was a tactic God frowned upon. He decided further inquiry could wait until he reached the pearly gates and Saint Peter himself cracked a look at the books of Brant Guinto’s life.

  A chime interrupted his musings. PRD 311 reappeared on his tracking scope. It skipped through ventilation ducts, bypassing corridors in which it might be seen, just like Ramsey and the League intended. Except the destination was the access tunnels behind Brant’s apartment.

  A timer flashed into being across the top of the screen. Brant duplicated it on his wrist unit—eight minutes, seventeen seconds until the drone was expected back at the Tactisar drone bay where Jackson said Ramsey stored the drones. Subtracting travel time left Brant a minute and forty seconds in which to complete his next steps.

  “Piece of cake, Lieutenant,” Brant muttered as he hurried out of the apartment and took the back stairs to the access hatches wreathed in shadow. “Like final quarter examinations, only with more of a life-and-death pressure instead of facing failing out.”

  He received no answer to his pithy comment except his heart’s pounding and his boot steps scraping along the deck plating. He found the necessary access hatch, heaved it aside with his shoulder, and ducked as he crouched inside.

  Tiny pinpricks of light grew into the familiar flashers of a patrol drone. The floating bot came to a hover a meter from his face. Brant, careful to wear thin gloves, pried open the components port on the drone’s left side, between two ducts. Once inside, it was easy to spot where the League had inserted the proper hardware to house new subroutines that would go unnoticed if uncorrupted branches of Tactisar decided to inspect the bot. If he hadn’t known the bot had been tampered with, he would have overlooked the tiny round module painted with black-and-yellow warning hashes. It was a dead ringer for the sensor buffer unit next to it. It could have been a backup except, when Brant checked his diagnostic tools, they told him it was drawing power on a different cycle than the true component.