by Dan Moren
The smile overwhelmed Addy, so much so that it took a moment before she understood why all the hairs on the back of her neck had gone up. And by the time she realized that Xi had used her name – her real name – it was too late to do anything about it. The abort code was on her sleeve, out of reach in her bag. Too far.
“What I’d like to know is exactly how many of your team are onboard, and what their plan is. Do you think you can help me with that?”
CHAPTER 21
“A map,” Kovalic was still muttering to himself, fifteen minutes later, as he and Nat took a lift car to the esplanade. More importantly, a host of new planets, all human habitable, and no doubt with resources ripe for the taking. That wouldn’t just be a leg up in the war – it would be an insurmountable advantage.
“So, no chance we’re letting the Imperium have that,” said Nat.
“If we do, it’s game over,” agreed Kovalic, checking his sleeve. If he could have called in the navy to just impound the Queen Amina and the tablet, he’d have considered it, but they’d already left Commonwealth space behind, and it would take the better part of a day for a message to make its way back to the general and from him on to the nearest available naval unit, ceding precious time to Mirza and her team. Not to mention the political ramifications of the Commonwealth seizing a civilian ship outside of their jurisdiction.
No, the general had sent the SPT because he believed they could get the job done. This was down to them.
“Less than two hours until we hit the Hamza gate,” said Kovalic. “Can we be ready to go by then?”
“I’ll check in with Brody and Tapper.”
“Any word from Sayers?”
Nat shook her head. “She’d better be well on her way to getting Xi’s biometrics or this is all going to be for nothing.”
“I trust her. She’ll come through.”
“You say so.”
“Let’s just say I’m feeling more charitable toward her than I am toward our good friend the professor. If he decides to tell Xi about us, then this whole thing is over before it begins.”
“Look, I’m not going to argue for the altruism of academics, but this is his life’s work. From what he said, I don’t think he’s about to turn down a chance at the tablet in his hands, no matter how exactly that comes about.”
Privately, Kovalic had to agree with her. If al-Kitab was willing to make a deal with someone like Ofeibia Xi in the first place, changing his allegiance was hardly beyond the pale… provided they had the tablet.
More to the point, they needed the professor. There was certainly no one else aboard the Queen Amina – and quite possibly nobody else in the galaxy – who knew as much about the tablet as he did. If anybody was going to be able to authenticate the artifact and decode any data that might be stored on it, Kovalic was willing to bet it was Seku al-Kitab.
But first things first: they had to get the tablet.
Nat had tapped her earbud and was leaning against the wall, listening to a report from Tapper and Brody. “Copy that, Bruiser. We’re en route to your location and will be there in about fifteen.”
“Everything OK?”
“Brody said Tapper threatened to lock him in a supply closet.”
“The usual, then.”
The lift car slowed to a stop and Kovalic stepped up to the door as it began to slide open.
His ears popped suddenly and amid a deafening whooshing of air he felt a pressure differential pull him towards the door and the dark, empty void of a lift shaft beyond.
Nat grabbed his belt with one hand and a handrail with the other as his foot hovered over thin air, then managed to haul him back into the car, throwing them both to the floor.
“What the…” Kovalic managed.
“That first step’s a doozy,” gasped Nat, climbing to her feet while keeping a tight grip on the handrail. She punched an emergency override button on the control panel. Nothing happened. “Goddamnit,” she yelled, over the air whistling from the shaft, “somebody sabotaged the car.”
“Somebody,” said Kovalic.
“Your friend Mirza is quite the pain in the ass,” shouted Nat as she started to pry off the control panel with one hand.
“Can’t argue with that,” said Kovalic, unthreading his belt and lashing it through the waistband of Nat’s trousers and the nearest rail so she could use both hands. “What have we got?”
“I’ll have to do a local bypass,” said Nat. “Eyes clearly has a backdoor into the Queen Amina’s systems too, and it looks like they’ve been able to monitor us via the security feeds.” She raised her sleeve, then tapped a few commands as she waved it towards the control panel.
The doors on the lift car jerked closed and Kovalic let out the briefest sigh of relief. At least they wouldn’t be falling hundreds of feet towards an uncertain end. It was a hell of a lot quieter without the constant rushing air, too. He wiggled a finger in his ear.
“OK, I think I’ve got control,” said Nat. “I’m disabling the cameras and microphones in this particular car so they can’t keep tracking us, but there’s a good chance they’ll pick us up whenever we get off.”
“Great,” said Kovalic, retrieving his belt. “So I guess we need to find a blindspot in their coverage. The esplanade’s right out. Service levels?”
“I’ll see if I can reroute, but it’s going to play havoc with the lift tube traffic network.”
“So, we’ll have some angry passengers who can’t make it to the casino,” said Kovalic. “I think they’ll live.” Possibly more than could be said for them if Mirza had her way.
Mirza. Did she know exactly what she was jockeying for here? Al-Kitab had said he hadn’t told anybody else, not even Xi, about what the tablet might contain. It was, as he had stressed, a theory, even if he seemed to have personally bought into it.
But if Mirza did know what the tablet was – after all, the general had said Emperor Alaric had been after it, so he might have had an inkling of its true nature – then it was them or her, and all things being equal, Kovalic was going to choose them, thank you very much.
“Got it!” Nat said, and the lift car sped into motion. “Even if Eyes is tracking the car, I’ve spammed them with so much garbage it’ll take them a while to figure out where we’ve gone.”
Kovalic rubbed at his mouth. “Damn it, Nat, we’re still playing defense. We need to get a step ahead of Mirza and her team. We can’t be watching our backs while we’re trying to break into the vault; somebody’s going to get hurt.” Something tickled at his brain, something he’d missed. But the more he reached for it, the less substantial it seemed, like a dream that had already started to evaporate.
The lift tube slowed to a stop and Nat tapped a control on the panel to open the doors. This time, Kovalic made sure to check there was actually a floor to step onto.
“Where the hell are we?”
Nat swept a hand expansively. “You wanted off the grid, I give you off the grid. Sub-deck 19. Security coverage is sparse down here, and I’ve mapped out a path that avoids most of the cameras between here and our rendezvous. Just remember to keep your head down. And here.” Producing a mini tool, Nat unscrewed a couple of bolts and handed one to Kovalic. “Put this in your boot.”
“In my boot?” said Kovalic, eyeing it dubiously.
“This should disrupt the gait analysis part of the Amina’s security system.”
Twenty painful minutes later, when they limped into the locker room that Tapper and Brody had secured, Kovalic said nothing, just sat down on a bench and dumped the bolt out, then massaged his foot.
“I knew it,” said Brody.
Kovalic, Tapper, and Nat all eyed him.
“He’s, uh, got a screw loos… OK, tough room.”
“Well,” said Kovalic, “I’ve never fired anybody in the middle of a mission before, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.” He fished the baffle out of his pocket and flipped it on, feeling his ears pop.
“All right,
boys,” said Nat. “Show us what you’ve got.”
Tapper popped open a locker behind him. “Ta da. Kim Industries Mark VII environment suit, rated for hard vacuum. Built-in reaction control system, radiation shielded, primary and backup air supplies, high-power gravboots. This is the luxury groundcar of vacsuits.”
“I might never take it off,” said Kovalic, checking his sleeve.
“Any word from our inside woman?” Tapper asked.
Kovalic shook his head. “Maverick is still on radio silence. But we’ve got to assume she’s doing her job, which means we need to do ours. Run me through what else we’ve got.”
“The airlock the commander identified is just through there.” Tapper pointed at a hatch on the far end of the locker room.
“We’ve got just under an hour before the Queen Amina hits the wormhole,” said Brody, tossing up a holographic screen displaying a countdown timer. “I’ve sent it to your sleeves so we’re all on the same mission clock.”
Kovalic glanced down at his sleeve and thumbed an authorization to accept the clock sync request from Brody. “Copy that. Commander, where are we with accessing the vault maintenance hatch?”
“It’s not designed to be opened remotely. I’ll need to patch through an override via your comms once you’re in position.”
“Didn’t you say something about tremendous amounts of interference from the wormhole? Won’t that affect our communications?”
Nat exchanged a glance with Brody. “We’re hoping that it’s short range enough that it won’t get jammed.”
“‘Hoping’ isn’t quite as much assurance as I’d like. Do we have a backup plan?”
She glanced over at Tapper. “Sarge, show him the backup plan.”
Tapper popped open an equipment locker. “Plasma torch and an emergency airlock seal. Set up the e-lock, burn through the outer door, then cycle the airlock and pop the inner door. On the way out, secure yourself and pop the seal. Piece of cake.”
Kovalic pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m loving this less. Tell me we’ve got some good news in here somewhere? Brody?”
“Uh, I thought the commander’s news was pretty good?”
“Exfil, Brody. We all set?”
The lieutenant’s eyes darted, nervous, to a characteristically unflappable Tapper. “Uh, we had a minor setback there. But we’re working on a backup plan.”
As reassurances went, it barely qualified. “Do I want to know?”
“It’ll be fine, boss,” Tapper interjected, giving Brody a hard stare. “We’ve got it under control. You worry about the spacewalk, we’ll have the exit plan ready.”
Brody didn’t look any more confident than he had a minute ago, but if Tapper said they had it, then they had it. He’d been in enough jams with the sergeant to trust him.
“Any further run-ins with Eyes on your end?” Tapper asked.
“They already tried to kill us once in the last hour. I’m sure it won’t be the last attempt.” Still that weird memory in his brain. Something about Mirza’s team, about her warning. He didn’t like leaving her at their backs. It wasn’t like she was spending all of her time messing with them; somewhere in this she had her own agenda, but Kovalic was still groping around the edges, trying to figure it out. He just needed a different angle and a little more time – he could almost feel it ticking away on his wrist.
The Illyricans had already gotten the drop on them. If it were Kovalic, he’d be pressing that advantage, not making half-hearted attempts to kill them and definitely not warning them… off.
A bass drum thumped, once, in his chest. Shit. He’d missed it. He’d taken his eye off the ball, too wrapped up with the drama with Sayers and navigating things with Nat. Idiot.
He patted his coat. Where would it be? He’d ditched his sleeve. Changed clothes.
The rest of the team were watching him now, quizzical looks on their faces. He’d taken all possible precautions, hadn’t he? Watched for tails. Used eavesdropping countermeasures. He glanced at the ovoid on the bench in front of him.
And froze.
That clever…
“Simon?” said Nat. “You OK?”
Not even remotely. His brain spun as if trying to rebalance a particularly difficult equation, moving variables from one side to the other. Maybe he could still salvage this. “Yeah, just… I had an idea. Nat, where’s the closest lifeboat station?”
Frowning, Nat tossed up the schematics and tapped a square. “About a hundred meters away. Standard cluster of five.”
Kovalic nodded. “OK, here’s the deal: once we bring the lockbox back onboard, Nat will disable the surveillance systems in the cluster, and we’ll stow the tablet in one of the lifeboats. As soon as we enter the Hamza system, Nat, you’ll fire all five lifeboats – make it look like some kind of malfunction. Nobody but us will know which one has the tablet, so we have time to make our escape and scoop up the lifeboat on our way back through the gate.”
Tapper’s brow furrowed. “That seems like a lot of moving pieces, boss.”
He wasn’t wrong, but he also wasn’t seeing the same big picture as Kovalic. “Trust me, sergeant. It’s the safest play. We get grabbed or separated, we still have the tablet. That’s the priority.”
The sergeant looked like he wanted to argue, but they’d worked together long enough that he recognized when Kovalic had made a decision. “Yes, sir.”
OK. Good. That was that sorted. Fingers crossed. “All right, let’s get this show on the roa–” A chime sounded on his sleeve, echoed by the same alert from the rest of the teams’ sleeves, followed by an alert box displaying a single word: CRUSADE.
One word that blew away all those careful plans like somebody had opened an airlock into hard vacuum.
“That’s Maverick’s abort code,” said Kovalic. “She’s in trouble.”
CHAPTER 22
“In trouble?” said Eli. “What the hell are we waiting for?” He started for the door, but Tapper slid in front of him, one hand raised towards Eli’s chest.
Kovalic silenced his sleeve, his eyes taking on that faraway look that Eli had learned meant he was working on an idea.
I hope he works fast. We can’t hang Sayers out to dry. His jaw clenched. Not after what had happened to Page. He couldn’t sit idly by again.
“What’s our move, boss?” said Tapper, not moving from Eli’s path. “Are we aborting?”
The major seemed to arrive at a conclusion. “No. We go on.”
“Simon,” said Taylor, “that’s the abort signal. We can’t just go on with the op.”
“This job’s too important. We can’t afford to cede the tablet to the Illyricans. Besides, if she felt safe enough to send up a flare, then there’s still time for us to help her. Mission proceeds. But,” Kovalic said, holding up a hand to forestall Eli’s objections, “I’ll go help Maverick.”
Taylor’s brow creased. “Who’s doing the EVA, then? I’m going to need to quarterback this in case we run into problems, and Tapper’s watching the airlock, so…” she trailed off.
The hair on the back of Eli’s neck went up as three pairs of eyes swiveled to him. “Whoa, wait just one second…”
“You were in the Illyrican Navy,” said Kovalic. “Surely you’ve had EVA training.”
“I mean, like emergency training once. And that was like seven years ago.”
“Good news: they haven’t changed space that much.”
“You’re a pilot,” said Tapper. “You should be totally fine.”
“See, the thing about being a pilot is that generally you’re inside the ship.”
“OK,” said Kovalic. “Settled.”
“No! Not settled! Why doesn’t Tapper do it?”
“No can do, kid. I get claustrophobic in the spacesuit. Then agoraphobic in the vacuum. It ain’t pretty.”
Kovalic pulled the vacsuit out of the locker and tossed it to Eli, who mostly caught it. “Suit up.”
“Come on, I’ll give you a hand,” said Tapp
er, dragging him over to the staging area while Kovalic and Taylor continued to hash out the rest of the changes to the mission plan.
Eli’s stomach did somersaults as Tapper helped him struggle into the vacsuit, which hung baggy on his lanky frame. He hadn’t been kidding: it had been at least seven years since the last time he’d had to suit up and go outdoors.
And he’d never done so while in a wormhole – hell, he wasn’t sure he knew anybody who had. He’d heard, back when he’d been in the academy, of those foolish enough to venture outside in a wormhole, contorted by gravity pockets or just vanished into subspace; ghost stories told around the bar late at night.
Ships the size of a cruiser or the Queen Amina could plow through the eddies of real-space anomalies without too much trouble. By yourself in a spacesuit it was a different story. Get too far away from the ship’s mass, and you were in for a rough ride; like shooting the rapids without a boat. And the chances of making it out alive were… well, “not great” was putting it lightly.
Taking a deep breath, Eli tapped a button on the suit’s sleeve and the smart fabric constricted to fit his body as though it had been custom made for him. But he couldn’t stop his eyes from flicking repeatedly back to the heads-up display status, double- and triple-checking the indicators for the suit seals. No matter how many times he looked, they remained green. Easy, Brody. The seals are fine.
“You’re good to go, kid,” said the sergeant, his voice muffled through Eli’s helmet. “Locked up tighter than an Illyrican prison.”
“That’s not the most reassuring metaphor you could have picked.”
Tapper chuckled. “Relax. I got your back.”
Eli nodded inside the suit, his forehead bumping against the plexisteel of the faceplate. Cramped as a prison cell, too.
Kovalic came up behind the sergeant, looking over Eli’s suit, his eyes taking in all the details and making sure Tapper had checked all the boxes. This feels weirdly funereal.
“The commander’s setting up to get access to the ship’s systems,” said Kovalic. “It’s going to be OK, lieutenant. Just remember your training.”
