by Terry Mixon
“If you talk to the right person, you still might be able to save her. I kind of doubt you’ll be able to, mind, but that’s your business.”
The pirate crossed his arms over his chest. “The people holding her aren’t Cadre, by the way. More of a mutually disliked third party, even if you don’t know them at the moment. I consider myself an excellent judge of character. Trust me when I say that you’ll hate them.
“And with that, our business is concluded. For now. I look forward to crossing blades with you again, Madrid. For the last time.”
The transmission ended and Brad just sat there, clenching his fists. The arrogant bastard. It burned his guts to be beaten so handily.
Well, they always said payback was a bitch. He’d have to make sure that he had all the options covered next time.
Brad’s rage had cooled by the time he was once again back on the mining station. Thankfully, he had a much better handle on it than he’d had in the old days. Otherwise, he’d have been sorely tempted to shoot the station manager.
Murray was strapped to a chair when Saburo escorted Brad in to see him. They’d used binders to secure his arms at his sides and shackle his legs to the bottom of the seat. Then they’d wrapped a belt around him. It seemed they’d wanted to be absolutely certain the man didn’t get any ideas.
Taking a moment to stand over the manager, Brad considered him coldly. “At best, you’re a pirate sympathizer, Mr. Murray. At worst, you work for the Phoenix. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“You’re the pirate,” the man spat. “You seized my station and you’re trying to spin some tale about the Cadre. No one will believe you.”
Brad shook his head. “Sadly, you’re going to need to do better than that. My word is good and yours is for shit. If there are any deals to be had, they’ll go to the first person to tell me what I want to know. Is that going to be you, or should I put you out an airlock for piracy and talk to the next person in line?”
For the first time, the man’s expression wavered a little. “What do you want to know? I’m not confessing to anything.”
“Start with Jack Mader. The Phoenix. What did he tell you about his plans here?”
The large black man licked his lips. “He paid to upgrade the facility to have larger fuel storage. No crime there.”
Brad grabbed a chair, spun it around, and straddled it. “Not a crime, no. Something suspicious, yes. Something you should’ve told the authorities about, yes. Why didn’t you?”
“I said no confessions. Yes, it was unusual, but he offered me a lot of money.”
“You know he’d have killed everyone here when he was done, don’t you? The Cadre doesn’t leave witnesses behind, if they can help it. The only thing that saved you was me showing up out of the blue.
“Mader even threw you under the bus when he called me to gloat after he’d escaped. Said information about one of my friends is down here. Either in a computer or someone’s head. I’m inclined to believe it’s in your head, because Mader is far too competent to leave that kind of thing just laying around.
“But if you’re innocent, now is the time to prove it. Where might he have hidden a computer? If he had one here, you’d know about it. And don’t give me any bull about being clueless. That only carries you so far before I start looking for an airlock.”
The man considered him for a long while without speaking. When he finally spoke, his voice was a little deflated.
“He arrived here on a different shuttle than he took back out. It’s down in one of the personal landing bays. Maybe what you’re looking for is in there.”
Brad considered that and then shook his head. “I’ll look, but I don’t believe he just left something like that lying around. If you want to save your life, now is the time to tell me where they’re keeping Falcone.”
Murray blinked and frowned. “I haven’t heard that name.”
“Saburo,” Brad said as he stood. “Get him up. We’re taking a short walk to the nearest airlock. Who’s the next most senior prisoner?”
“Wait!” Murray said, suddenly looking terrified. “He was talking about a woman that someone had prisoner. Is that her?”
“It might be. Where is she?”
“I don’t know, but I overheard him and his deputy talking about her. Some other people had her and were trying to get information from her back on Earth. Mader laughed and said that was a fool’s errand, that she’d never talk and they might as well just keep her in their secret prison for all the good it would do them.
“The other man didn’t like the sound of that, said he’d rather die than end up in a place like Red Diamond. Called it that by name, like it was a place.”
“And he didn’t care that you overheard him?” Brad asked. “Why would he blab secrets like that in front of you?”
“It wasn’t like it meant anything to me.”
That wouldn’t have stopped Mader from making sure his secrets stayed secret. If he hadn’t dealt with Murray, he’d already planned to slit his throat in the very near future.
He wished it meant something to him. He’d have to go through the Agency database he had to be sure, but he’d never heard the name before. He’d follow up on it as soon as he got a few seconds.
“Secure him somewhere away from the rest of the prisoners,” Brad said. “Then we’ll go find Mader’s shuttle. Maybe something onboard will give us a hint what his plans are.”
It took a few false starts to locate the Cadre shuttle, but they finally managed to discover its hiding place. It wasn’t the same model as the one Mader had stolen, but Brad resolved to take it until he could get his own back.
The Phoenix had locked his up tight, of course. That meant it took Brad calling Mike Randall down from his engine room aboard Oath of Vengeance to bypass the locks, security systems, and probably traps.
The big man took his time and ejected Brad from the bay when he asked how much longer it would take one too many times. That paid off an hour later when the smug engineer sauntered out with a grin.
“Got it. I bypassed the security lockout, found and removed the explosive charge that would’ve blown the shuttle up, and removed the shunt that would’ve fried the electronics. I even found the jammer and shut it down. Can’t wait to see what makes it tick.”
“You found all that security?” Brad asked. “On a shuttle?”
The engineer shrugged. “Paranoid is as paranoid does. You can go inside now, but don’t touch anything without me looking at it first.”
Brad motioned for Saburo to join him, and the three men went inside the pirate shuttle. It was outfitted significantly more expensively than Brad’s had been. It looked like a rich man’s plaything, except for the weapons. Those were all business.
It wouldn’t hold as many people as one of the Vikings’ more utilitarian models, but it would do so in sublime comfort. The wood trim and gold plating probably cost more than everything in Brad’s cabin rolled together.
The first thing that caught Brad’s eye was the computer in the luxurious passenger compartment, but someone had taken the time to fry it. A quick check from the engineer confirmed it was unrecoverable. Pity, but not wholly unexpected.
Saburo and Brad went through the shuttle with a fine-toothed comb but found no incriminating devices they could break into. It was looking as if the shuttle was a bust.
He walked into the pilot’s compartment and stared at the controls for a moment. “What about these, Mike?”
The engineer stuck his head in. “I already found the booby trap built into it and unlocked the console so that I could check the rest of the systems. It’s clean now.”
“Check the engines with your Mark One eyeballs. It wouldn’t shock me if there was something back there that’s set to go boom.”
“Will do.”
Brad sat at the controls and brought them to life. He then started with the piloting controls. Sadly, it only had records from once it left whatever vessel had transported it, probably th
e frigate they’d killed. No help there.
Next was the communications systems. It had also been wiped. For being in a hurry, someone had been thorough. Even having six destroyers unexpectedly show up hadn’t stopped them from cleaning their tracks.
Damnit. They’d thought of everything.
Or had they? Yes, they’d wiped the com system drives, but it was possible they’d missed something in the buffer. He’d need to physically access that and hope that they hadn’t thought to reboot the system completely.
It was a matter of only a few minutes to borrow the required tools from Mike and open the communications system up. Once the engineer confirmed there were no physical boobytraps, Brad connected his wrist-comp to the com system buffer and checked it.
There were two messages still in the buffer. He very carefully copied them off to segregated memory in his unit before any unlucky quirks of fate purged them from the temporary storage.
Only then did he try to bring them up on the shuttle’s com. They had been encrypted, but someone—probably Mader—had unscrambled them when he’d viewed them. That left them wide open in the buffer.
The first one was the exchange between the shuttle and Murray welcoming the pirate lord to the station and directing him to the landing bay. That wasn’t going to help the station manager when it came time for Commodore Fields to decide how guilty of collaboration he was.
The second was from Mader’s ship, warning him of the Brad’s arrival. The pirate’s response was a curse.
“Keep this transmission on tightbeam,” the pirate said in response to the unwelcome news. “It looks as if Fleet might have gotten wind of us after all. This station is no longer safe and I’m going to use my shuttle’s jammer to keep them from communicating once they land. With any luck at all, I can steal one of their shuttles and get to you. Be ready to run when I do.
“Also, send orders back to the strike force that we’re not going to be able to refuel after all. Have them move to the secondary location and await my arrival. We’ll move on Ceres when I get there. Have them ready to move in fifteen hours.
“With half the Fleet strength out of position, we can execute Blue Lagoon in spite of the ships they still have there. We won’t need to wait for any of them to leave on patrol, after all. Have our friend’s ships transfer some of their fuel to us, since they didn’t come as far.
“Take as much as you can get them to release and spread it around our ships. I want to have more maneuvering capability than our ‘comrades’ do when the time comes. Now, make it happen while I see about getting away from this rock. We’ll come back later and blow it up to be sure no one knows we were ever here.”
The transmission terminated and that was it.
Brad didn’t understand why the pirate would want any of his ships to have less maneuvering capability, though. Especially when they had to fight Fleet to get to Ceres.
He’d really hoped the lack of fuel would deter the Cadre, but he should’ve known better. At least he had an idea of their strength. Enough to take a cruiser and six destroyers in face-to-face combat, but not enough to take down twice that number of destroyers without risk.
He needed to get this information back to Fields. Based on the timestamp of the last call, he wasn’t sure he could make it back to Ceres before the Cadre forces made their move. He had no idea how long it would take them to get from their secondary kickoff point to Ceres, but he had to bet he’d arrive too late to make a difference and plan accordingly.
Saburo had arrived while he was watching the transmission. “It sounds like we need to get moving, but I found something you’ll want to see first.”
The Colonel led Brad down into the bowels of the station, where it looked as if there was some kind of massive machine shop. One suited for forming and milling heavy metals.
He walked over to one of the work benches, picked up a glob of metal, and handed it to Brad.
“What is this?” Brad asked.
“Tungsten,” Saburo said. “That made me have one of them show me the plans. Look here.”
He gestured to a 3-D drawing on a nearby screen. It looked like a long, thin needle. Based on the scale at the bottom of the display, it was half the size of a shuttle.
“It’s a weapon,” Brad guessed.
His friend nodded. “One made to carry a nuke, based on the size and shape of the payload area. It’s got some serious drives in the back, too.”
That was definitely not good news. Brad considered the size and shape of the weapon. It wouldn’t fit into a standard—or even oversized—torpedo tube. It would have to be ejected from the ship carrying it before the drives lit off.
Then what? The long, savagely pointed tip gave him no direct clues. And why put a nuke inside something as expensive as tungsten? It was going to blow up anyway, right?
So, that meant the metal served a purpose before detonation. It didn’t make the weapon faster, so it must make a difference when the thing hit the target.
That jarred a memory loose about some other weapon he’d read about that used tungsten. He tried to remember what it was, but nothing came.
Brad called Oath and Xan answered.
“I need a search of the databases,” he said. “I’m remembering some kind of weapon that used tungsten. A large projectile, I think.”
“Hold one,” the communications officer said. “Got it. A hypothetical weapon proposed for use in orbital bombardment back on Earth. They called them Rods from God. They designed them to have the power of a nuke without a payload, using kinetic energy, and be able to penetrate the atmosphere all the way to the surface.”
Brad blinked. How was that useful on Ceres? All they had to do was drop the nukes down on the dwarf planet. It didn’t have an atmosphere at all.
Then it hit him. The metal in the projectile would keep the nuke intact while it penetrated deep into the crust and ice. Then the nuke would be much, much more devastating. With enough of them, the Cadre might be able to poison the drinking water for most of the Inner System.
Faced with that threat, finding Kate was going to have to wait.
“We’re moving out,” Brad told Xan. “We need to be back to Ceres as fast as Michelle can get us there.”
He killed the connection and turned to Saburo. “I’m leaving you here with most of the troopers. Horatio will be your cover. Tear this place apart and hold everyone for Fleet. They just became willing partners in a terrorist incident in the making.”
A terrorist incident he dearly hoped he arrived in time to stop.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Once his ships were under way, Brad sat in his office and wrestled with how to warn Fields about what was coming without tipping his hand. With the risk to Ceres, he’d send an alert in the clear, if he had to, but that would certainly prompt the Cadre to attack even sooner.
Mader had been leery of attacking the full Fleet strength at Ceres before he’d realized the Vikings were the ships at Kobayashi Station. If he knew Brad was coming and Fleet was on guard, he’d fade away and strike when the odds were more in his favor.
The best outcome would be for Brad to discreetly warn Fields and then to place his destroyers where they could intervene at a critical juncture in the fighting. After all, they needed to stop the nuclear penetrators, too.
Based on the plans and manufacturing records they’d found, Mike Randall estimated the Cadre had a dozen penetrators to hurl at Ceres. Odds were exceptionally high that they’d target places like Ceres City and Piazzi. They’d likely also hit other places where significant human habitation was present.
It would take a long while to build water-harvesting facilities elsewhere on Ceres, because there was no infrastructure away from the established cities. That would be devastating to every off-Earth habitation in the Inner System, which was obviously the Cadre’s intent.
That brought Brad back to the problem at hand. Mader could have access to Fleet codes. They weren’t all that secure when one considered that someone w
as giving the Cadre Fleet-designed warships. They conceivably had access to even the most recent cyphers.
Then he smiled. He had access to a much more restricted group of people, and one of them was onboard Freedom: Agent Watson. She had the current Agency codes. Even if someone in the Agency had betrayed her, it was far less likely that Mader had Agency codes.
Based on the timeframe Mader had given his ships to be at their secondary gathering point, Brad could get back to Ceres about the time they started their move. The key would be getting there without being observed, and that meant coming in under stealth.
He opened a channel to his communications officer. “Xan, can we send a message to Freedom using a Fleet code while at the same time burying a separate message inside it for Agent Watson using an Agency code?”
“Making it completely hidden? No. Hiding it in plain sight, that we can do.”
Brad frowned. “How does that work?”
“We send whatever you want in under the Fleet code and then insert a data packet containing whatever you want, using the Agency codes. Tell them you’re attaching some of the recordings of the station we captured under a fictitious encryption code like ‘Watson’ or something leading them to ask her about it.
“Anyone that isn’t in the know will spend a lot of fruitless time trying various Fleet codes on it without any luck, but Commodore Fields will understand.”
Brad grinned. “That’s brilliant. We can even give the Cadre misleading information about what we’re going to do out here, and they’ll think we’re nowhere near them.”
“Remember that when the raises happen.”
With a laugh, Brad disconnected. He needed to record two messages and send them, one buried inside the other. First, the public message.
He activated the recorder and looked into the video pickup. “Commodore Fields, we’ve run into something worse than we expected on the inspection tour you sent us on. It looks like Kobayashi Station was involved with the Cadre in some way, and I ran into the Phoenix. We managed to blow up one of his ships, but he got away.
