Cold Conflict (Deception Fleet Book 2)

by Daniel Gibbs

  Brant made sure to image the add-on then found the port housing the auxiliary data storage. He disabled the security interlock—which the drone was happy to let happen since, for all it knew, the programming Brant introduced was the proper stuff—and pulled the storage chip.

  Sixty-eight seconds.

  Simple steps, if he did them swiftly without fouling up—plug the chip into his tablet, install the sleeper program, reinstall, patch up the drone. Then it was a matter of clearing the other program he’d initially transmitted out of the drone’s systems. The sleeper would be his way into PRD 311’s brains from then on.

  Twenty-two seconds.

  Brant wasn’t big into coincidences, so it felt providential when he let PRD 311 scoot away as the timer hit those double digits, the same ones as the ill-fated covert action unit they’d been sent to rescue. Could be, when the cosmic dust settled from this mission, they would be granted the chance to rebuild.

  Lord willing, as the saying goes.

  Brant slipped out of the hatch and got back to the apartment in time to watch the hijacked patrol drone proceed on its merry way, with Ramsey hopefully assuming it was back to doing whatever dirty deeds he had in mind.

  “Just goes to show,” Brant said, “the more you fiddle with a bot’s systems, the easier it is for somebody else to come along after you and do the same thing.”

  He watched the screen for a minute and sighed. “And there’s the other danger of this working, talking to yourself.”

  Better to spend time in prayer, then.

  Bellwether operated on a twenty-four-hour cycle, which worked for the bulk of the population. For all their spreading out into the galaxy, Earth’s grip on their biology had held. Humans needed the day-night cycle, or they tended to lose sleep, which led to all manner of problems.

  Past twenty hundred hours, Bellwether was on its “night,” during which public lighting dimmed and fewer personnel were stationed in various areas. Most of Nosamo’s employees were off shift with the exception of executives worrying over financials into the wee hours, lab techs plowing through the next problem vexing them, and the skeleton crews in Nosamo’s hangar bays continuing repairs and regulating the ongoing ship traffic.

  Fewer people meant fewer obstacles. Gina preferred such.

  It felt funny infiltrating the same huge, sprawling hangar she’d visited under legitimate means hours before. This time, she wore the form-fitting stealth suit of all black tinged with violet, the same one she’d used to help Sparks and Sev escape Bellwether with Garza.

  Sev crouched beside her in a suit of the same cut and color except where the upper portions had blurred to the soothing whites and chromes of the hangar bay.

  Gina touched his upper arm. He nodded. No comms for their op—the two of them, without backup, invisible to scanners and only apparent to the keenest of eyes that happened to watch the visual feeds. There were enough shadows in the hangar, even during day shifts, to obscure them. Still, one never knew until they put the tech to the test.

  Gina led them in a crouched approach to the docked Seventy-Seven, putting each of them under one section of the twin hull. The charges were as long and slender as her index finger, nine in all, secure in her pouches. The best place to affix them was along the ventral seals for the landing gear. Gina inserted one, waiting a full three seconds before releasing the charge.

  “All nine will cut with intense heat,” Dwyer had explained. “Ain’t pretty in terms of fireworks, but they’ll cut through the toughest civilian plating. You don’t need to dig too deep a hole to cause havoc.”

  True. Plenty of delicate wiring or high-pressure coolant flowed beneath that plating. It was their job to break it all apart when the time came.

  A terrible scenario in which a civilian tech found those charges and was incinerated played out in Gina’s mind, but she reassured herself with the specs—the explosives were laced with a chemical compound that, when triggered, would render them inert. The only thing to set them off would be the precise frequency in Dwyer’s arsenal.

  Gina tensed as a technician walked by, deep in conversation with one of the freighter’s crew. Their voices were muffled enough she couldn’t make out their words, but the gist was friendly enough.

  Is Sev ready? She glanced at him—or at least, where the fuzzy outline of her teammate hunkered by the opposite landing gear.

  His outline wavered—a hand waving. He’d completed his task too.

  Good. Two more installations to go.

  Gina waited ten seconds after the men had rounded the aft end of the freighter before she eased out from beneath the hull. Her next target was a three-decked trireme with a wide, aerodynamic body well-built for atmospheric travel. It was forty meters away, past scattered cargo containers interspersed with mechanical stations.

  She’d made it halfway through the maze when her wrist unit pulsed in rapid alarm. Oh, hell. Her muscles froze in instant response. Her heads-up display showed a patrol drone following a slow arc by the trireme.

  No cover. No shooting it down. Gina held still, letting the suit do its job. The less movement by the wearer, the greater concealment it offered. She wished Brant could override or whatever it was he did, but it wasn’t one of the drones tied into Ramsey’s network of modified units supposedly provided by the League, just a regular, run-of-the-mill cop bot.

  She watched it buzz by, neck muscles aching as she refused to let them so much as twitch.

  Crash. The drone whipped overhead, its tiny engines whirring as it swooped so low the exhaust rippled the top of Gina’s hooded head. She gritted her teeth, willing the camouflage to hold.

  “The hell’d you knock that over for?”

  “It’s called an accident, Ari. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “You’ll still get your ass fired if it’s broken, Grif! Get a hauler bot over here, and let’s get it picked up before anyone finds out your klutzy self broke a couple hundred thousand worth of sensitive atmospheric monitoring gear.”

  More footsteps and voices converged. A second drone appeared on Gina’s display, altering her to its patrol course from the far side of the hangar to check on the commotion.

  A light touch brushed her knee. Her arm snapped around, almost of its own volition, ready to smash the larynx of whoever the nearest threat was. Sev caught her elbow but not without a grunt because her blow had raked his collarbone.

  Gina let out a long, slow exhale. He was good, she knew, but it had been a while since they’d been on a mission together. Maybe he felt out of his element without a sniper rifle. If so, the distraction she assumed he’d caused was a perfect indicator he hadn’t lost his edge.

  Breathe. Relax. Gina’s memories drifted back to her mother’s face, of all things, dappled in dusk’s orange, smiling as she framed the bulk of a heavy metals freighter between her fingers as the huge ship came roaring down to the tarmac. She’d found the greatest joy in the most mundane aspects of modern life. That joy hadn’t kept Mom from an ignominious death.

  Gina wound the rest of the way through the maze of stacks, Sev right behind her, until they slipped beneath the trireme. No time for heartfelt reminiscing. Gina wasn’t about to die without having made a difference, but she wasn’t going to throw her life away over a stupid cause either. Life left her empty. The Coalition gave her a better way. Even then, the Coalition was a nebulous thing for her.

  She glanced at Sev’s ghostly form as they planted the next set of charges. Jack had tried to show her there was more than herself to fight for, but he hadn’t been completely successful. The Coalition? Sure. She would do what needed to be done for it. But Jack, Brant, Sparks, and Sev? Gina would kill to protect them, like she already had, without feeling the pain of having done so. The only thing that worried her was waiting for the day when the pain caught up.

  20

  Freighter Meng Po

  Caeli System

  26 November 2464

  * * *

  Captain Zhou watched the tactical d
isplay with keen interest. The big mess of a few days ago had clogged space surrounding Bellwether with dozens of ships, most of them backed up because Tactisar was making it more difficult for arrivals and departures. And Tactisar itself was putting on a big show, fielding all its gunships within a three-hundred-thousand-kilometer radius of the station. No one was getting within a light-second of the station—or leaving without proper scrutinization.

  Zhou snorted. No doubt half the show was to make up for their abysmal failure at stopping a single fleeing shuttle. In all fairness, it wasn’t their fault, since a ghost vessel had managed to knock several gunships offline during the chase—offline, but not destroyed, which pointed to the use of a particular kind of ship-mounted EMP.

  The records Vasiliy Kiel had snuck from station security pointed to the same model used by League vessels, and since he was certain no other ESS units were operating in the area—and weren’t trying to sabotage their nation’s own operation at Bellwether—it meant someone else was using stolen technology.

  One of those days, the League would stop underestimating the Terrans, but Zhou bet that wouldn’t be anytime soon.

  “Tactical, anything new to add?” Zhou asked the young man seated at the station.

  The officer—a Lieutenant Balland, Zhou recalled—frowned over his displays and the mishmash of ship courses projected on it. “Nothing yet, sir. Multiple inbound tracks on ten-plus new vectors. Comp is sorting them out. So far, they all read as civilian, though suspicious drive signatures are in the mix.”

  “To be expected, given the privateers Nosamo uses to suppress their competition. Keep a sharp eye for anything indicating Terran military. Send CDF signatures through Tactical for comparison.”

  “Aye, sir. Anything in particular we’re looking for?”

  “Possibly, Lieutenant. We’ll know it when we see it.”

  Zhou was, he realized, itching for a rematch, though if the odds turned out to be stacked against him, he wasn’t going to take insane risks—not again. Meng Po was a unique vessel, and until the League cobbled more together, he would do what was necessary to keep her intact while completing his missions. All the better that they had expendable resources in the system. As sickening as it was, the privateers dying in service of the League, it was for a greater good. He’d repeated that mantra over and over those past weeks.

  “Captain, take a look at this, sir.” Balland indicated a single course highlighted in red. “What do you make of it?”

  Zhou leaned in. The course blinked out. Before he could ask what happened, Balland held up his hand, as if saying the captain should be patient. Then the drive signature reappeared, an indistinct version of its former self. So indistinct, in fact, that Tactical plotted five possible new vectors based on the last thrust applied and couldn’t seem to make up its mind which way the vessel was going—if it was a vessel.

  “Tag it,” Zhou ordered.

  “Which one, Skipper?”

  “All of them, Lieutenant. The comp may consider this a glitch, but we’re not doing our due diligence if we don’t run down every possibility. Where’d it come from?”

  “Off a course roughly perpendicular to the ecliptic plane,” Balland said. “I’m thinking it could be the mark we’re supposed to watch from out-system, at the cometary fragment ambush.”

  “A solid hypothesis.” Zhou bounced his fist off the back of Balland’s chair. “Well done. Mark the possible new courses as Tango One through Five. Have the comp alert us if there’s another shift. It could be that whoever it is will be too smart to light off their drives again, but we could get lucky.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Luck. Zhou knew the Terrans placed all their hope in prayer, not luck. Fine by him. He would take whatever came his way if it meant winning. “Sensor, anything you can add to the analysis?”

  Senior Chief Francois Ancel cocked his head, like a dog listening to a silent whistle. “I’ve routed everything I can pick up to Lieutenant Balland, Captain. If there’s a foul capitalist out there, we’ll smell him.”

  “Make sure it’s the military variety, Francois. I’m not interested in snagging a hapless cargo vessel, no matter their political or economic philosophy.”

  Ancel’s face reddened. “Of course, Captain. So far, the drive emissions from the Tango seem roughly the same as what we’d expect from local privateers.”

  “Roughly?”

  “It’s difficult to be certain when we’re running with passive scans, sir. Active pings will give us away as being something other than our cover.”

  Zhou scowled but didn’t chastise the man for telling his captain the obvious. After all, he’d deserved it for asking a question with such an obvious answer. “Send a tight-beam to our assets on Bellwether. Perhaps the boss has an inside line on the station’s sensors we can use to enhance our results.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Zhou returned to his chair. The latest message from Kiel was clear—he was to maintain his silent patrol and interfere where he could with any CDF Intelligence efforts, should they rear their individualist heads, but he was to avoid direct battle. Fine by him. Zhou was pleased Kiel had recognized his expertise in space-based matters. It made charting his own course much easier when he didn’t have to fret about ESS staring over his shoulder.

  When the assets aboard Bellwether stole the relevant data and made good their escape, Meng Po would be waiting to scoop them up.

  Seventeen three zero hours.

  The heist is tonight. Jackson tried not to focus on the impending job, though he was well aware of the dual role he was about to play. The goal was always the same—get the technology. Ruin Nosamo’s lab, and get away with the rest of the team to prevent the League, either by itself or via Nosamo’s rivals, from getting their hands on it.

  He slipped on his charcoal-gray jacket over his black shirt and slacks, the more formal outfit of Tactisar officers stationed to Nosamo’s upper-level offices. Cho wore the same set of clothes, though his were rumpled enough Jackson could tell they’d seen little use.

  “This is it, boys.” Ramsey sat at the table in the darkened corner of the Smoky Asteroid Taproom. He was into his second ale, which Jackson wasn’t sure would help from an operational standpoint but was doing fine work making the detective chatty. “The big score. If you come through with this, you’ll never have to work another day for Tactisar or any other employer—which could be handy, considering you’ll be out of a job.”

  Cho shook his head. The guy had far too much sweat on his face and kept rubbing his palms on his pants. Good thing I’m his shadow. Jackson sipped from a cider, not even pretending to keep pace with Ramsey. If Cho’s that nervous, he could blow both of us clear back to Canaan.

  “Geez, Desmond, you need to lighten up.” Ramsey chuckled. “It’s just software. Ain’t nobody going to lose on this deal except the big Noor himself, and if he can’t afford it, well, that’s his problem.”

  “So, who’s the buyer for this tech?” Jackson asked. “The benefactor really got a line on Nosamo’s competitors?”

  “Probably. Who cares? All I know is he’s gonna pay us, then he can do whatever the hell he wants with it. And if he thinks he can stiff us on the agreed upon price, he’s gonna have a hard time finding it. Ciara’s taking care of that part.”

  “What’s she gonna do, hide it in her dress?” Jackson kept his gaze locked on Ramsey as he took another drink.

  “He’s got you there, Ram.” Cho’s laughter was too long, too high-pitched to be anything other than an outlet for nerves.

  “Shut your fuckin’ mouth.” Ramsey rested his plasma pistol on the table. “Ain’t too late for me to burn you, Arno, if you don’t show some respect.”

  “Oh yeah? I thought you needed me.” Jackson chuckled. He leaned back in his seat, drink in one hand, the other resting on the butt of his holstered pistol. “And don’t tell me you all of a sudden don’t, because sending in Cho alone guarantees he gets turned into free-floating particles.”
>
  Ramsey glowered. “What’s that mean?”

  Jackson seized Cho’s wrist, eliciting a cry from the Tactisar officer when he bent his arm so Ramsey could see his palm. “He wouldn’t be sweating worse if his room’s climate control was set at Tropical, Ram.” Jackson put an extra sneer on the familiar form of Ramsey’s name. “Cut the shit, okay? I want to know my take before I step over this line and put my ass in a great deal of potential danger.”

  “That a fact?” Ramsey nodded slowly. “Okay, big man. Twenty million.”

  It didn’t take acting skills for Jackson’s jaw to drop. “Twenty? With six zeroes after?”

  “Plus the two following the decimal.” Ramsey gestured with his ale tankard. “Twenty mill each for you and Cho.”

  Jackson glanced at Cho, who jerked his hand away but nodded as confirmation.

  “Well. All right.” Jackson put on a slow grin. “Guess I’ll stow my complaining. Wow. Your benefactor must really hate Nosamo.”

  “Nah. He’s a businessman too. Got his own money to make.” Ramsey chuckled. “And whoever buys Life Swarm can either make one doozy of a nice planet or turn it into an actual, honest-to-goodness hellhole.”

  Cho looked away, sipping his beer and trying desperately to not be part of the conversation. Jackson frowned, looking first to Ramsey then Cho. “What, does it break or something?”

  “No.” Cho coughed into his hand. “But think about it—Life Swarm rebuilds an atmosphere into something better, more breathable. If it’s reprogrammed…”

  “It can make it worse,” Ramsey cut in, “for any bastard’s world you’ve got a desire to ruin.”

  Gina smiled as the decryption finished its routine. Finally. Brant had promised success back when they’d first set her up in the office, but it’d taken days of patience for his programs to worm their way past Nosamo’s corporate security in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion.