by Mel Odom
The fact that Qiao had successfully managed her operation under Sage’s nose bothered him. Still, he’d known there were various illegal endeavors that had continued inside the sprawl and deep in the jungle. Some of them he’d allowed to remain in play because the intel coming through them had been valuable.
He couldn’t say for certain that he wouldn’t have left the caravan traffic in play if he’d discovered it after he’d found out about the Phrenorian secret base. He would probably have let it operate so he could use it as bait just as he was planning to use it this morning.
The caravan workers had hunkered down to await the morning. Cargo was strapped to flatbed anti-grav mules, carts pulled by dafeerorgs, and battered crawlers that had been outfitted for the harsh terrain. All of the transport equipment was hard-used and had debris in the wheels from the trek through the jungle.
Once Qiao was back among her people, they got up and looked sharp. They cleaned their vehicles, cared for their animals, and checked over the cargo without being told.
Charlie Company stayed out of the caravan guards’ sightline and hung back. A hundred meters away, Pingasa released three micro-drones into the air and they fluttered away on rapidly spinning wings. One of the drones went upstream, another went downstream, and the third hovered in a hiding spot on the other side of the river.
Sage was only able to track them because he was keyed into the command architecture for their programming. Their matte green coloring rendered them invisible against the foliage and the river.
The Phrenorian vessels were supposed to come from the stronghold downstream. They would be submerged and be unseen until they surfaced. Pingasa hoped to pinpoint the submersibles before they arrived.
Sage checked the time and saw that it was 0501 hours. According to the intel he had, the pickups had been no later than 0515. Sunrise was supposed to happen at 0538. The cargo exchange was scheduled to be finished by then and the submersibles once more beneath the river’s surface on their return leg.
He wanted that twenty-three minutes of full dark before the sky brightened.
“Master Sergeant,” Pingasa called over the comm. He headed up the three-person cyber-attack team. The fourth soldier in the squad was providing protection for them.
“What have you got, Pingasa?” Sage asked.
“The two vessels. Putting them up on your screen and the lieutenant’s now.”
An instant later, a transparent view of the river overlaid Sage’s HUD. The water was rendered in green and turned a deeper green according to depth. The smaller submersible led the way and the larger cargo vessel trailed by a hundred meters. Both were submerged to a depth of 50.3 meters.
The first vessel was 34.6 meters long and the smaller one measured only 21.8 meters. The larger submersible was the cargo transport while the second was the more heavily armed escort.
“Lieutenant,” Sage said, “do you copy?”
“Roger that.” Murad sounded tense but ready.
“This is going to go fast, sir. We’ve got to get the situation in hand quickly.”
“I understand. We’ve got this, Master Sergeant.”
“Yes sir.” Sage waved his two squads forward and they crept through the jungle, careful to stay out of sight of the caravan handlers as well as the Phrenorians.
Jahup brought his fireteam down parallel to Sage and fifty meters out. That way if one or both was spotted, they couldn’t be taken out in one burst of fire.
Both submersibles slowed as they came even with the caravan. Small red squares floated free of the vessels and broke the river surface. Switching back to nightvision, Sage spotted four drones shooting up into the air.
“Pingasa?” Sage paused. “What are we looking at?”
“Those drones have vid and aud capabilities,” Pingasa said. “No comm interceptors. They won’t be able to hear our encrypted comms, but they may register the transmissions. They can’t immediately identify us, but they may be suspicious.”
“We’ll have to hope they’re more interested in acquiring their cargo. How well can they see?”
“Like hawks. And they’ve got a full suite of motion-detecting software.”
“Can you do anything about that?” Sage held his position.
“I’m hacking into their systems now. Luckily those things aren’t true spy drones. Their firewalls would be more sophisticated. Not to say that they aren’t. But I’m good at what I do.”
“Roger that, Corporal.”
Sage watched two minutes tick by. The Phrenorians weren’t in any hurry to surface. He didn’t know if the boat captains were being extracautious because of yesterday’s attack or if they normally took time to come up. Qiao might have known, and Sage was frustrated because he hadn’t thought to ask.
Slowly, the Phrenorian vessels blew their ballast tanks and floated up. Their depth numbers smoothly counted down as they reached the surface.
“Okay!” Pingasa called out. “I’ve got the drones temporarily blinded by looping their programming, but it’s not going to last long. When they breach, I’ve got to shut down the onboard comms or they can warn the stronghold.”
“Get it done,” Sage said.
“I’ve got this.”
“Let’s go.” Sage rose up to a half-crouch and sped down the incline. The soldiers in his fireteam followed immediately.
Sage slid around trees, trying not to disturb the brush and draw attention to his position, but the ground was soft and tore away beneath his boots in places. Seconds later, he was in the water and, within two steps, he was submerged because the drop-off was steep. The AKTIVsuit’s diving bladders filled with water and kept him on the river bottom.
The subs were still nine meters below the river’s surface.
Sage stayed on the bottom and didn’t give in to the momentary panic of the river closing in over him. For an instant, he flashed back to his near-drowning in the well and made himself take a deep breath to relax. He had oxygen. He could breathe.
He trudged forward. Even though he was prepared for the steep drop-off of the river bottom, he was still surprised at how quickly the ground fell away. Over the centuries of its existence, the current had eroded a deep channel.
Even though he couldn’t see the members of his team, the HUD clocked them as they followed him. He also wasn’t able to see the Phrenorian sub, but the suit’s near-AI told him it was there.
Six meters out from the smaller vessel, Sage blew out the suit’s bladders in a gentle rush and floated up slowly. “Pingasa, we’re about to make contact. Are the subs going to register physical touch?”
“Negative,” Pingasa said. “I’m in their computers now, but the auto-sweepers are checking the software. I won’t be able to stay concealed inside their systems for long.”
“Roger that.” Sage checked the HUD and shifted to Jahup’s feeds. Jahup and his team were also closing on their objective. “Remember that we need these vessels mostly operational if we’re going to make this work.”
His armored fingertips grazed the sub’s skin. He expected to feel a buzz of contact, something, but the vessel remained huge and unaware that he was there.
Continuing his ascent, Sage followed the sub’s curvature and the blueprint revealed on his HUD. He kicked his feet and stroked with his arms to maintain the contact while he swam up. As the submersible breached, he heaved himself on top of it and trusted that it wouldn’t register the weight displacement he caused due to the vessel’s sheer tonnage.
Kneeling, Sage pulled his Roley into his arms.
Corrigan, a slim soldier on his team, slid the equipment backpack from her shoulders and opened it. She removed a heavy-duty Kimer industrial-strength laser from the bag and powered it up as she pulled it onto her shoulder.
The other soldiers took up positions in a half-circle across the submersible. The second squad duplicated the entry attempt at the front of the vessel.
Corrigan leaned into the task. The laser bit into the vessel’s composite hide an
d chewed through the centimeters-thick hull. Deep-sea boats had two hulls, an outer and an inner, to provide a more stable environment for crews. As the submersible went down and the pressure increased, the outer hull compressed slightly, but the inner hull remained unmoved.
Sparks and flecks of burning metal and carbonite material flew from the white laser beam as it sliced through the outer hull. The composite hull turned cherry-red and smoked from the heat. As the river current swept over the area, the water hissed and burned off in thin clouds of steam.
Forty meters away, Jahup and his team worked on the cargo vessel at both ends. The lasers there burned fiercely.
Sage’s stomach knotted as he grew grimly aware of the passage of time. All it would take was a glance around by a Phrenorian sailor, a momentary lapse of the computer hack, and the operation would be blown.
Zhoh would button down there and protect the stronghold.
“It’s okay,” Pingasa stated calmly. “I got this. The only thing we have to worry about is the first Sting-Tail who sticks his head out of the boat. Once that happens, the cat’s out of the bag.”
An oval section of the outer hull dropped into the sub and Corrigan followed it. The laser fired up again immediately.
Toward the forward end of the submersible, a conning tower telescoped up from the vessel. Gleaming composite stood tall against the slow rush of the river.
Sage made himself remain silent even though he wanted to ask Corrigan how the entry was coming. He watched the conning tower. It had more vid slits. Not all of those were linked to the boat’s computer systems.
“Clear!” Corrigan called up.
Stepping over, Sage peered down into the hole.
Corrigan sat hunkered down in the small space between hulls. She pushed the laser aside and pressed a palm against the second composite oval she’d cut from the vessel. The material contained enough metal to allow her glove’s magnetic field to hold it. She added her other hand, powered up the magnetic field to adhere to the oval, and shifted the section to the side.
Sage dropped through both openings and into the compartment below. Darkness filled the compartment and his infrared vision clicked on as he pulled the Roley against his shoulder.
THIRTY-FIVE
Cargo Ship Iggulden
Makaum Space
0508 Hours Zulu Time
“How are you holding up?” Kiwanuka asked Noojin.
“I’m good,” Noojin answered.
The young woman’s reply sounded brittle, though, and Kiwanuka knew the rapid trip up from the planet aboard a cargo ship wasn’t agreeing with her. Especially after they’d broken free of Makaum’s gravity well. Like Kiwanuka, Noojin stood in the ship’s hold and held onto the wide nylon straps used to secure materials during shipping.
The ship wasn’t so much launched from the planet’s surface as it was fired. Cargo vessels only had amenities in the pilot’s and navigator’s section. They were bare-bones projectiles designed only to deliver materials, not passengers. The holds didn’t have oxygen or gravity field emulators.
Almost weightless in the microgravity after the pilot broke free of the gravity well and cut the main engines, Kiwanuka bumped gently against the composite wall where she was held in place by cargo straps as the pilot made small course corrections with thrusters to bring her into the correct approach apogee. She looked over the rest of her team and scanned their biometrics.
Everyone but Noojin was more or less calm and relaxed. The girl’s heart rate and respiration were elevated, but that could have been caused as much by her concern over Jahup as her present situation. Kiwanuka was worried about Sage as well, and her own vitals were slightly up from norm. Thankfully, no one else could see them.
For a moment, Kiwanuka thought maybe she should have left the young woman behind. Then she reconsidered that. After everything Noojin had been through in the last two days, not to mention the stress of figuring out where she stood in the whole shifting political paradigm of Makaum, she needed to be part of a team. More than that, she needed to be part of this team.
And there was the fact that Noojin was better trained for close-in fighting than most of the other soldiers. The experience she had in the jungle would translate, more or less, into the close quarters of a spaceship. Most of the men and women from Fort York were trained, but not blooded. Living on Makaum and hunting in its jungles, Noojin had been fighting practically since the day she’d been born. No matter the mess that was going on inside her head, she would be clear about survival.
Her decision to kill to save Jahup the previous morning was proof of that. Noojin hadn’t hesitated before acting.
When they closed on Kequaem’s Needle and confronted Sytver Morlortai and his crew, Kiwanuka needed people who didn’t flinch or overthink, people who would just get the job done.
“Staff Sergeant.” The pilot’s voice carried clearly through the ship’s comm. She was calm and collected, not sounding like she was even aware of the fact the ship she piloted now wasn’t hardened against ship-to-ship lasers or low-yield nuclear torpedoes.
“Yes, Captain,” Kiwanuka replied.
“Five minutes, thirteen seconds out from your target on my mark . . . now.”
Kiwanuka set a timer on her HUD and passed it along to her troops. “Roger that.”
Automatically, she counted them again, noting all sixteen members of the four fireteams by sight instead of just accepting the HUD’s report. She tried not to acknowledge that some of the soldiers with her might not return to the fort. Morlortai and his crew had a reputation for violence and resisting arrest.
She took a deep breath and let it out, allowing the suit’s carbon dioxide scrubbers to clear the air. She opened a closed comm to Noojin. “Are you ready for this?”
“Yes.” Her response was strained and her voice was on the verge of breaking.
“Those people on that ship won’t hesitate about shooting.”
Noojin returned Kiwanuka’s gaze. “Neither will I. I’m not going to die up here. I’m going back home.”
Kiwanuka nodded. “You and I will follow close behind Goldberg.”
Goldberg was the point of Kiwanuka’s team. She’d seen action on two different worlds against the Phrenorian Empire and was currently on Makaum cycling through a rehab sequence that had finished eleven days ago. She had been just awaiting orders to report back to her unit.
Kiwanuka went back to the team comm. “Corporal Goldberg.”
The woman was average-sized and relaxed. “Yes, Staff Sergeant.”
“That’ll be me on your six, soldier.”
“Looking forward to it, Staff Sergeant. I won’t worry so much about what’s behind me.” Her humor echoed in her words.
In spite of the situation, Kiwanuka grinned. Regardless of the danger, or maybe because of it, she was more excited than afraid. Fear was in there, but it was a low and steady burn, and she was going to use it as fuel to stay alive.
“Target is in sight,” the captain said.
“Copy that, sir.” Kiwanuka pulled the ship’s vid imaging up on her HUD and spotted Kequaem’s Needle ahead and to the side of them.
The ship was long and slender, resembling its name, and studded with detachable cargo containers that could easily be shifted to cargo ships. A few of the dozen docking rings telescoped around the vessel held cargo ships like the Charlie Company squad currently occupied as well as rectangular cargo storage units. In space, shape and weight didn’t matter. There was no air resistance and no gravity to affect them. In fact, most of the containers were sheathed in solar panels that were connected to the ship and helped power the onboard electronics.
The ship’s operational quarters were divided into two areas, fore and aft. Crew quarters were housed in the stern along with a medical bay and fabrication shop. The bridge towered thirty meters above the flat “deck” formed by the bilateral cargo containers running the length of the ship’s spine.
Kiwanuka had looked over the ship’s manifests
. Kequaem’s Needle’s cover story was heavily backgrounded and ran deep. If Kiwanuka and her team hadn’t identified Darrantia, Kiwanuka wouldn’t have been able to trace Morlortai’s ship. As a cargo trader, Kequaem’s Needle stayed just enough in the black to appear legit as a struggling merchant. Not an overly profitable enterprise, but enough to justify her presence in Makaum’s orbit.
As a hauler, she had contracts with DawnStar and some of the other smaller corps that had set up shop in orbit around Makaum. Those contracts came with a history that would now work against her when she was exposed.
Kiwanuka was betting Morlortai and his people would ditch the ship’s history and bang down a new one once they cleared the system. In fact, they probably already had one in the pipeline. More than likely, they would have a few. By the time they transited through the Gate, they’d be another crew on another ship.
Kequaem’s Needle’s profile and that of the cargo ships swapping out goods revolved on a gentle access and blocked out stars as they rotated.
“Decelerating,” the cargo ship pilot warned. “Standby.”
Kiwanuka gripped the cargo straps. “Copy that. Count us down.”
“Three,” the cargo pilot said, “two, one . . . thrusters coming online.”
The cargo ship jerked as the reverse thrust slowed its approach toward its target. Like Kequaem’s Needle, the cargo ship’s manifests were in order too. She was listed as carrying frozen produce from Makaum to trade out for farm tools and seed stock.
Even though she’d braced herself as well as she could, Kiwanuka thudded against the cargo hull a handful of times before she was able to lock down.
“Docking,” the ship captain said.
Linked to the ship’s vid system through her HUD, Kiwanuka watched the cargo ship nudge gently into the Kequaem’s Needle’s forward port dock. She passed the information on to her troops.
“Everybody copy the twenty?” Kiwanuka asked.
“Roger that,” Goldberg answered, and her assent was quickly followed by the other troops.
