"I'm sure I'll see you out there."
"In that boneshaker you're flying? You'll either get there much later than I will or, more likely, not at all."
"Boneshaker?" Mettler laughed. "My great-grandfather used to say that."
"That's probably because your great-grandpappy and I are probably about the same age," Whitney said. "While he was fighting in the Second World War, I was busy being abducted by aliens and sold in a slave market."
"Sounds like a hell of a story," Mettler said.
"Not really. That's pretty much it," Whitney said.
"What's it mean?" Jacob asked.
"It's what they used to call junk cars that were beaten up and likely to leave you broken and bloody on the side of the road," Whitney said. "Seems to describe your ship."
"It describes this whole damn mission so far," Jacob grumbled.
"We good, Lieutenant?" Whitney asked, seeming anxious to be on her way.
"We're good. Safe travels."
"You too." She eyed the shuttle up and down one more time. "You'll need it."
"I feel like we'll be seeing her again," Murph said after she left.
"Oh yeah," Jacob agreed. "Probably sooner than later. Come on…let's get this job done and get out of here."
"We expected you sooner, but it's not as if we had a set appointment. This way."
"I thought it would be best to get our ship in order before coming down here and talking to you about work," Jacob said, trailing behind the same guild master who had interceded on their behalf with the Taukkir.
"Sensible," the alien said, sounding bored.
Jacob had come down with Murph and MG again, wanting to show confidence by not increasing his detail size while still allowing Taylor and Mettler to position themselves close by in case things turned to shit…again. They were led back down through the maze of corridors, past ear-splittingly loud engineering sections, through what appeared to be an illegal squatters’ development in what used to be a service bay before reaching a well-guarded entrance.
The three were patted down, relieved of their weapons and com units, and told they'd get them back on the way out. Jacob just nodded and triggered one last burst transmission from his own com unit before handing it to the sentry. It would hit the local Nexus and let the other two know the last area they'd been. Given the level of security the guild masters had in place around their lair on Pinnacle, it would be more likely Mettler and Taylor would just be calling into NAVSOC to let them know where the others had disappeared to if they didn't come back in the allotted time.
"Nice hideout," Murph remarked.
"Pinnacle Security knows exactly where we're at, of course," their guide said. "This is all just added security against the locals and any rivals who arrive and feel like setting up shop. Speaking of which, what is it you think we can do for you?"
"Just looking for a paying load," Jacob said. "We're heading out towards Colton Hub to escape some unpleasantness in the Concordian Cluster and thought it'd be nicer to be paid to fly there instead of dead-heading all the way out."
"I had thought you were going into Saabror territory? This certainly changes what I might have available," the alien said. "What sort of cargo are you willing to carry?"
"We'll be passing through the heart of ConFed territory in an Eshquarian ship," Jacob said. "Even as old as she is, there's still a better than normal chance we get stopped and boarded when we hit a provisioning waypoint. Ideally, we'd be carrying something easily hidden in the smuggler's pods and not something we have to strap to the deck in the hold."
"That certainly limits your usefulness. Most of what we transfer through here is quite large, more fit for an actual cargo ship and not your small shuttle."
"So, there's nothing available?" Jacob asked. He could tell by the alien's extended explanation he was being set up for something.
"I didn't say that, I'm just trying to determine your comfort level," the alien said. "Your marker status helps us bypass lengthy security checks, of course. Normally, Pinnacle Security won't bother trying to run a sting down here, but ConFed Intelligence and Eshquarian Import Control have both run operations trying to clear us out of here. As you can see…we've outlasted one of them already."
Definitely being set up for something.
"And I'm sure you're well aware, my marker will give me safe passage through any Blazing Sun-held territory, right?" Jacob asked.
"It certainly helps," the alien admitted. "Nobody would dare mess with the load on one of Mok's ships except a brazen few."
"Let's speed this up. You obviously have something in mind. Just tell me what it is, and I'll let you know if I feel like taking the risk."
"It's a data core," the alien said after a long, uncomfortable moment. "As it turns out, it needs to go to Colton Hub, and you just happen to be going that way."
"What's the size? Is it packed in a way it can be stored outside the pressurized zones?" Jacob asked, businesslike. He knew a real smuggler wouldn't ask, or even want to know, whose data core it was or what was on it. Asking questions like that was a surefire way to peg him as something other than what he claimed.
"The hardened case it's in is about this big—" the alien used his hands to mime a box about forty centimeters across, "but it can't be stored on the outer hull, if that's what you have in mind. The case is passive…no internal heat source, but it is impervious to radiation and can't be detected by normal scans."
"That works just as well," Jacob said. "What's this job pay?"
"Sixty thousand credits. Half now, half on completion."
"Sixty thousand credits for a courier run?" Jacob could hardly believe it. "This makes me think this item has people pursuing it who might want to take it from me."
"This is a take it or leave it deal," the alien said. "A runner with a marker coming here looking for work is unbelievably convenient but hardly critical. I can find half a dozen other crews who would kill for the chance to earn that kind of money for a delivery run."
"Calm down, we'll take the job," Jacob said. "We're going to be leaving shortly. Can you have it to the hangar soon?"
"I'll be giving it to you now. Be aware that once you touch this case, you are entering into a binding agreement that you will do everything in your power to deliver it to the agreed upon point. Your lives mean nothing to the people moving this. If some of you must die to protect the case, that's what you will do."
"Binding agreement with whom?" Jacob asked. "I'm already under agreement with Blazing Sun…I thought this was their cargo."
"It's going to them, but it's not from them. It's also not important you know who it's from other than the fact they have the means and the will to hunt you down and destroy you should you try anything foolish," the alien said.
"Fair enough," Jacob said. "Let's get this show on the road." The alien cocked its head at that for a moment before turning and waving to one of the guards to bring the case forward.
"Indeed," the alien said, pulling out a slim device and handing it to Jacob. "This is the information that will get you to your contact on Colton Hub. It is inaccessible until it detects it's within the Hub itself, then it will provide you the information you need. Any attempt to tamper with it or cheat the security measures and we'll know."
Without another word, he turned and walked off as the case-bearer came up to them. The whole meeting had been bizarre. They hadn't been given any names from the people they'd met within the guild on Pinnacle, told instead it was better if they couldn't remember who they'd spoken to. Then, the guild's secret bunker in the bowels of Pinnacle had been oddly empty with only the people who absolutely had to be there to give Jacob the case being in the room.
"Brown, you there?" Sully's voice came in over Jacob's earpiece once he reclaimed his com unit from the door sentry.
"I got you, Sully," Jacob said, waiting as his team finished collecting their weapons. "What's going on?"
"You might want to get back here on the double," the pilot sa
id. "A ConFed task force just arrived and are heading right for Pinnacle. They're broadcasting their intent to board and search any ships of interest. The rats are currently fleeing, and unless we want to get caught up in a blockade, we need to get going."
"On our way!" Jacob said, breaking into a run. "All units, scram, scram, scram! Back to the ship as fast as you can run."
"What's happening?" Murph shouted.
"No idea, but I have a feeling it might have to do with this." Jacob waved the hard case he'd been given as he ran.
12
"Any change?"
"No, sir."
Lieutenant Commander Morse paced the small bridge of the Zephyr. Morse was the commanding officer of Scout Team Diamond, and for the last six months, his crew had been yanked from one side of the quadrant to the other by 3rd Scout Corps. The scuttlebutt from Taurus Station was that Diamond was getting jerked around because Obsidian kept shitting the bed. The other team's CO, Commander Mosler, had been one of the best in Scout Fleet…but he'd been killed in action, and now Obsidian was being led by some rookie jarhead lieutenant. Morse didn't pretend to understand the inner workings at HQ, but he couldn't understand why Commander Toma didn't just recall Obsidian and stand them down. They seemed to be doing more harm than good right now, if the rumors were to be believed. Of course, it might have something to do with NAVSOC's big boss, Webb, seeming to take such a special interest in Obsidian. Commander Toma probably figured it was a battle not worth fighting and let his boss meddle as he saw fit.
"I've never been put into a holding pattern after being given clearance to de-orbit," Morse griped. "What the hell is going on?"
"Port Control still isn't giving me a clear answer on when we'll be able to land, sir," the pilot said. "You want me to ask for an orbital insertion vector and take us back up?"
"No, no." Morse waved him off. "We're already down here, let's just wait to see what happens."
The Zephyr banked gently into another turn that would take them back away from the starport they were trying to land at. They'd been stuck in a holding pattern for the better part of three hours, something Morse had never seen happen, especially on such a third-rate world. What made it all the more intolerable was that they were coming in as the cleanup crew, talking to secondary contacts within the Concordian Cluster after he'd already heard from a friend that NAVSOC knew the rogue fleet wasn't in the area.
Morse sat back in his seat, forcing himself to stop fidgeting and making his pilot and Marine captain nervous. Something felt off, but he couldn't put his finger on it. On the situation display, he could see that there were only two other ships in the holding pattern and that some vessels coming down from orbit were being given direct landing vectors. The government of Madir-3 wasn't wholly corrupt like a lot of other vassal worlds, but they were just willing enough to take bribes that Morse was starting to think about cracking into his expense account.
"Sir, the two other ships are climbing up and away from the pattern," the pilot said, frowning. "Climbing away hard."
"Did they get tired of—" a brilliant flash outside lit up the bridge, and a deafening thunderclap shook Morse off his feet.
"Incoming fire!" the pilot shouted, slamming the throttles against the stops and pitching the ship hard to port.
"From where?!" Morse said, forcing his brain back into gear.
"Those shots came from orbit!" Captain Delco said from his station. "Three shots!"
"At us?! Delco, call this in and—"
"Sir, we potentially have an issue," Lieutenant Bennet whispered to Webb. Things on the Kentucky were relatively quiet, and the NAVSOC chief had volunteered to take a bridge watch while the ship loitered in orbit over Terranovus.
"Yes?"
"We've had some incoming reports of various Scout Fleet ships and units coming under fire…not all of them have checked back in," Bennet said.
"How many attacks?"
"Four, sir. Two in the Concordian Cluster, one on a 2nd Scout Corps trawler near the Saabror border, and the Northstar." Bennet looked around the quiet bridge, seemingly not comfortable talking about it in the open.
"The two in the Cluster…Diamond?"
"Their distress call was cut short, and now they're not responding, sir."
"Fuck," Webb hissed. "The Northstar?"
"Damaged, but Captain Saraceno managed to fight back and win. He said he's collecting the wreckage for analysis."
The Northstar was 2nd Scout Corps' premier ship, a purpose-built machine that looked like a battered old bulk freighter but could punch back like a newer destroyer. Her CO, Captain John Saraceno, had racked up an impressive list of successful missions and had become one of Webb's go-to tools for anything from discreet observations to direct action interdictions.
"Tell Captain Saraceno to get his ship back to port," Webb said, rubbing his head. "Get our NIS liaison up here. We'll need their help to see who survived and who did this. Send a message to Obsidian, warning them that it looks like someone is targeting deployed NAVSOC units."
"Sir?"
"It isn't obvious to you? Catch up, man. Someone has leaked operational data to our enemies, and they're using it to poke out our eyes. Without Scout Fleet out there, we have no direct intel. Get to work."
"Aye, sir."
Once his aide was gone, Webb reached over to the touch-panel on his right and called up the Kentucky's CO, Commander Duncan.
"Sir?"
"Send someone up to relieve me, Duncan," Webb said. "We've had something big come up. Better prep her for departure, too. I want to be able to break orbit at a moment's notice."
"Aye, sir, I'm on it. I'm sending Lieutenant Commander Teague to relieve you now."
Now that he had nothing to do but wait for relief and for Bennet to get the NIS agent out of the rack, the icy hand of true fear wrapped its fingers around Webb’s heart. The units that had been attacked represented nearly a quarter of deployed Scout Fleet units, but they hadn't been assigned to the same mission. This meant these were either random attacks against astronomical probability, or an enemy had access to real-time intel on his deployed units and had chosen now to act. The near-simultaneous nature of the attack told him the smart money was on the latter, but he needed to keep an open mind and let the evidence dictate his response.
"Damnit!" He snarled, smashing a fist into the armrest of his seat, making most of the bridge crew jump. This couldn't have come at a worse time—something that further bolstered his theory these were not random attacks—and he had no choice but to leave his remaining units on-mission. If they didn't kick up the location of the Eagle's Talon soon, he'd be answering some very uncomfortable questions from the politicians back on Earth. The regular fleet was also getting impatient and wanted to do things their way, flooding regions with ships in a grid search that Webb knew would be the absolute worst thing they could do in this situation. He needed to deliver results, and soon.
When a bleary-eyed Commander Teague came onto the bridge, Webb gave him a brief turnover, and then stormed off towards the office reserved for his use. By the time he'd closed the hatch and logged into the terminal on the desk, he had three waiting messages from the NIS liaison aboard the Kentucky, stating she'd be up to his office ASAP. He thought about breaking protocol and reaching out to Director Welford himself, but decided against it. All the normal chains of communication were suspect at this point, but the head of NAVSOC having secretive, off-the-record conversations with the NIS Director tended to make the wrong people perk up and take notice of what he was doing.
He quickly pulled up all of Scout Fleet's current mission files and reviewed them, making notes as he waited for the NIS agent and his aide to get to the office. Before getting too deep into the details, however, he took the time to send a coded message to Obsidian's new slip-com node, letting Brown know he might be targeted. Even though he had told Bennet to do that very same thing, he still felt compelled to reach out to the team to offer encouragement and guidance. He ordered them to stay
sharp but press on. After tapping the stylus against his lips for a moment, a tic he'd developed while thinking, he pulled out his com unit and hit the first name on the screen.
"I'm on my way back up now, sir," Bennet said.
"Go down to the cargo hold and ask 707 to come up, as well," Webb said. "Make sure you word it as a polite request and not a demand or an order."
"You want one of the battlesynths up near the bridge? In your office?"
"Did I stutter?" Webb snapped.
"Aye, sir…retrieving one battlesynth," Bennet said and killed the channel.
Lot 700, a group of battlesynth political refugees living on Terranovus, was an enigma. They lived quietly in their compound far out in the desert, nearly a thousand miles east of Taurus Station, completely isolated and self-sufficient. The battlesynths seemed content to just be left to their own devices but, every once in a while, they'd send an emissary out to talk to Webb, and they always seemed to have access to information they shouldn't. Webb and the late Ezra Mosler had tried to pry a little around the edges and see where they were getting all the good intel from, but 707 had clamped a lid down on it and asked them politely to stay out of his affairs.
Half the people in the UEN, who knew what a battlesynth actually was, were terrified anytime one of them came stomping onto a Terran ship. He knew Commander Duncan wasn't thrilled about having three of them sitting in his cargo hold, but he didn't put up too much of a fight over it. He'd agreed to bring them along because 707 had asked him for a favor, but now he thought he saw a way to try and pry that lid up again and take a peek at Lot 700's intel source.
It was all about having the right kind of leverage.
"Reactor is at full power. Engines are lagging a bit, but we're okay."
"Looks like the ConFed fleet isn't bothering to pursue everybody fleeing the lower hangars," Jacob said, rotating the holographic tactical display so he could see where the group was deploying. "They're moving to make sure the bigger ships in the docking complex can't get clear and escape."
Boneshaker Page 10
