"Yes, sir?"
"Tell Chief Willis that I want Elton Hollick's cell under guard at all times. They're not to just use the automated monitoring system."
"Yes, sir. What about the Marines in that other cell?"
"They're fine," Edgars said. "Just have them remotely monitored, but don't waste the manpower on having someone babysit them."
"I'll handle it, Captain."
Edgars sat back, eyeing the bottle on the sideboard for a long moment before caving and pouring another generous drink. It really was good stuff. He made a note to ask the man who brought it to him if he could get in on the ground floor of his little operation. If they all survived this rebellion, he stood to become a very wealthy man once the whiskey went on sale throughout the quadrant.
20
"We just dropped out of slip-space again," Sully said.
"That's what, the third time?" Murph asked.
"Yeah. They must be trying to lose a tail, or Captain Edgars is just incredibly paranoid. So, you met him…what do you think of him?"
"Me?" Jacob asked.
"Yes, you. Did anybody else go up and have drinks with him?" Sully rolled his eyes.
"He's a believer," Jacob said. "He knows that what he's doing poses a threat to Earth, but he genuinely thinks it's a secondary concern when compared to letting the ConFed remain in power in the quadrant."
"What was on that data core we were carrying?" Mettler asked.
"I guess some sort of strategic intel about ConFed vulnerabilities that this outfit can use." Jacob shrugged. "He wasn't about to outline his entire evil plan for me just because I asked."
They all fell silent, waiting for when Sully told them the ship had meshed-out again. The pilot seemed to have a preternatural sense about what ships were doing just by the vibrations through the deck. They were so focused on trying to detect the same thing that when the overhead speaker hissed and popped, they all jumped.
"Lieutenant Brown, are you and your men well?"
"About damn time," Jacob grumbled. "Where have you been?"
"It took us some time to exit the ship without being spotted," 707 said. "784 has created a secure channel to your detention cell. We will monitor it at all times, so if you need to speak to us, just speak aloud. He has also disabled active monitoring that would alert the bridge that something was amiss."
"Outstanding. So…what's your plan?"
"There are various options available to us," 707 said evasively. "Can I assume you would rather the crew of this ship was not harmed or killed?"
"Yeah, let's go ahead and assume that." Jacob rolled his eyes.
"Then we will need some more time to prepare."
"Do that and get back to me," Jacob said. "Try not to get caught."
"There are not very many crewmembers aboard. Accessing the required systems will not be difficult."
"I was wondering when they were going to pop back up," MG said. "It was driving me nuts not being able to talk since they were probably listening."
"We just jumped back into slip-space," Sully yawned.
Elton Hollick paced his cell like a caged animal. Edgars' words had dug into his brain like a worm, driving him into a manic state only made worse by being confined. The idea that the Ark might be something permanently out of their reach was an idea he just couldn't accept. Without it, One World simply had no chance of overpowering Earth's new military. In a frighteningly short time, humanity had fielded a navy that far surpassed the Ull's in terms of sophistication and raw firepower. It also didn't help Jansen only had the help of a small fraction of the Ull fleet while the entirety of the United Earth Navy stood against them.
The Ark would have allowed them to fit advanced systems onto their existing ships and use the technology as a bartering tool to bring other allies into the fold. Without it, they might not even be able to keep the Ull involved. Their alien benefactors grew impatient with Jansen's delays and empty promises. In fact, the relationship had soured to the point that Hollick was cultivating his own back-channel deals with them that would allow him to assume power of One World if the time came that it was necessary to depose Jansen.
He had no particular desire to be a leader. What he wanted was to be the power behind the throne, so to speak. To be the irreplaceable, anonymous, unspeakably wealthy, and powerful voice that advised the leader who was both the figurehead and target of the new regime. He'd studied all of history's powerful second in commands and knew what mistakes not to make, and putting himself at the head of One World before Earth was fully subdued would be a drastic mistake. But all he could do was to try and make sure Jansen held onto power long enough to execute her plan…a plan that required the Ark from Earth.
"What do you want?" one of the guards sitting in the antechamber asked. Hollick stopped pacing and perked his ears up.
"I was sent down to question the prisoner," another voice said.
"Why would they send you of all people to— Ungh!"
"We don't have much time," the newcomer said, walking up and using the Marine's security keycard to open the cell. "I knocked him out, but he'll be back up in ten minutes or so."
"You're one of our sleepers?" Hollick asked.
"Obviously," the woman said. "I can get you off this ship, but after that, you're on your own. There's a secondary hangar deck down below—"
"Below magazine one, just aft of the forward batteries," Hollick finished. "I'm familiar with this class of ship. The captain's launch is in that hangar. I assume it's prepped for flight?"
"Always is. Fully fueled and provisioned. We'll be dropping back out of slip-space soon. When we do, someone on the bridge is going to open the hangar doors and disable the departure alert."
"What about him." Hollick gestured to the Marine.
"He'll wake up and not remember the last few hours of his life," she said, showing him the device in her hand. It looked like a variant of something NIS used to knock people out so they'd wake up and not remember how it happened.
"Your bridge compatriot?"
"My partner." She waved him out of the cell and dragged the Marine in, closing the door. Hollick relieved him of his sidearm as he went by. "He's handling everything at the command level. We were both recruited at the academy by a One World operative."
"Let's go," Hollick said. He looked down the corridor before running to the lifts that would take him to the lower decks. He was leaving empty handed, but he was leaving to fight another day.
"Will you need anything from your ship?" she asked.
"No," he said. "I keep it sanitized. Anything important is hidden and encrypted to the point that, by the time someone could crack it, the data would be obsolete."
"Good," she said. "Better to not risk the main hangar deck."
As he moved quickly through the ship, he thought about making a detour to kill Jacob Brown but decided he couldn't risk it. The Scout Fleet team was also probably under guard, and it'd be too much noise while he was still so far away from the lower hangar. If Brown made his way back to the fleet, he had no doubt he'd get another chance to take the little shit out.
21
"Mesh-in complete, coordinates verified."
"Good, good," Edgars said absently. "Configure the Talon for normal operations. Begin sweeping the region with active sensors. I want to know what—"
"Sir! We have an unauthorized launch!"
Edgars leapt from his seat, rushing to the station that handled shipboard security, fully expecting to see that Brown's team had escaped and were flying their ship out. What he saw instead was his own captain's launch smoothly pulling out of the Talon's forward hangar and racing away.
"Why didn't the alarm sound?! Fire on that ship!" he barked.
"Targeting system is…resetting, sir," his tactical officer said. "I don't understand what's going on."
"You don't?" Edgars snarled. "We have a traitor in our midst! Find out who—"
"It was him!" a com operator shouted, pointing at a startled ensign mann
ing the auxiliary systems station. It was the station that controlled things like hatch alarms. "I just saw that he was into the exo-hatch panel!"
The two Marines standing sentry on the bridge didn't hesitate. They rushed the ensign as he frantically punched in commands at his station, tackling him to the ground and restraining him. Edgars walked over and looked at the terminal while the Marines searched the young officer, finding an illegal sidearm and what looked like an improvised explosive. The terminal screen showed he'd been into systems he had no need to access to perform his job.
Edgars backtracked the commands and saw the ensign had, indeed, been into the exo-hatch panel, as well as the internal security surveillance system panel. He'd managed to disable all of the automated monitoring of the brig, decks ten through twelve, and the forward hangar. The operating system aboard the Victory-class ships allowed for most of the terminals to be reconfigured per task by allowing the operator to load different panels, but each had to be opened by someone cleared to use it.
"How did you get into these," Edgars asked the ensign, who just glared back at him. "Who gave you the clearance codes to bypass the security lockouts?"
"I'm not telling you shit!" the ensign spat. The scrawny kid said it with enough venom and force that even the Marines holding him were startled. Edgars recognized what he was seeing: a zealot.
"One World trash," Edgars grunted. "How do these assholes keep recruiting people?"
"Sir?"
"Just chain him and gag him over there," Edgars pointed to a spot on the deck near the hatch. "And lock the ship down. Security Protocol Alpha-One. Find out who stole my launch!"
"Sir, you'd better take a look at this." Edgars walked over to check the screen on another terminal. It was one of his holding cells, but instead of a prisoner, it held one of his own Marines. The man was definitely alive and screaming at the top of his lungs.
"Which cell is this? Is it the one with the Scout Fleet team in it?"
"No, sir. They're still in their cell. This is the other guy who arrived before them."
"Send someone down to get the Marine out of the cell and find out what happened to him. Assume he's also a part of it, so make sure you disarm him," Edgars said. "Ship Ops!"
"Yes, sir?"
"Get the Sergeant at Arms up here, as well as Major Hernandez. I'm going to need her entire team on alert."
"Aye, sir."
Captain Edgars trudged back to his seat and sat down with a grunt. Damn. This had all gone to shit spectacularly fast. Maybe Lieutenant Brown had been right and One World represented much more of a threat than he'd given them credit for. They'd been able to breed a level of fanaticism into their recruits that was alarming. If that ensign had managed to set off his IED, he'd have killed many and likely disabled the ship to the point the rest wouldn't be much better off.
As he looked around his bridge, he wondered how many others on his trusted crew were traitors. He admittedly saw that as a bit of a hypocritical observation given that, technically, they were all traitors in the eyes of Earth's government right now. He knew he had to at least have two moles, operating in tandem, to have been able to spring Hollick and hamstring the Talon just long enough to let him escape. He would need to have his security team go through all the internal camera footage on that deck and find out who had gone down to the brig and overpowered one of his Marines.
"Have we recovered from his little sabotage effort?" he asked.
"Yes, sir. He had put multiple systems into a maintenance test cycle to keep us from firing on the ship, but we're back up and running," his ship ops officer reported. "We're performing a full debug sweep now to make sure he didn't manage to install any malicious software while he was at it."
"Good thinking. Keep me advised," Edgars said. "I'm going to go down and speak with our other unwelcome guests."
"Damnit!"
Elton Hollick had raged about the cabin of the small ship for the better part of two hours, and he was no closer to calming down now than when he started. The op was completely blown, and he knew it. There was simply no way he was going to be able to get the information they needed from Edgars now. He'd punched in the address he needed into the slip-com node terminal that was on the bridge, but he hadn't initiated a channel request yet. He was too spun up to think clearly, and he'd need his wits about him for what was to come.
How had this happened?
A couple years ago he'd been a double agent, cool, calm, and collected as he played both sides of the conflict. Even after having to fake his death so the NIS wouldn't do something rash like try to send a rescue for him, he'd managed to carve out an impressive niche for himself within Margaret Jansen's One World faction. He even managed to skim off an impressive amount of funds and had developed connections in the quadrant he'd intended to use as his exit plan in case Jansen's plans fell apart.
Then, on a fairly routine operation, the whole thing went to shit. Some dumbass engineer they'd recruited had panicked and killed Ezra Mosler, the commander of Scout Team Obsidian. Mosler was a respected, legendary figure within the intelligence community, so Hollick had known there would be some blowback from the ill-advised action. What he hadn't counted on was some nobody second lieutenant tracking him across the damn galaxy like a bloodhound. Jacob Brown was like a lit stick of dynamite, and that dynamite was being carried around by a very drunk monkey. You watched the whole thing with a certain fascinated horror, forgetting the dynamite was lit until it went off and screwed everything up.
Since Brown had wrecked his plans to obtain the Zadra Intel Network, instead, securing it for Earth, it seemed like nothing had gone right for Hollick. From fighting with substandard prosthetics to having simple drops go bad, nothing was going to plan. It was inconceivable that one kid could be that consistently lucky. He'd even managed to somehow stumble onto the data core the rebel fleet was having smuggled out of Saabror space, swooping in and snatching it away from him and using it to execute a similar plan to Hollick's own. After losing the data core at Pinnacle, Hollick had been forced to pursue the Scout Fleet team halfway across the quadrant and adjust his plans on the fly. Since he'd sent his personal tac team back to their base, he'd had to get creative, including trying to double-cross a ConFed Intelligence agent who was playing the same game he was. That had backfired spectacularly, and he'd been forced to deal with the over-confident agent in a fairly gruesome way.
"I guess this isn't going to get any more pleasant the longer I wait." He sat in the seat and composed himself before hitting the flashing green icon. The channel request was accepted almost immediately.
"Where the hell have you been?" Jansen's voice crackled through the speakers.
"I've been a guest aboard the Eagle's Talon," he said. "This was a bust. Edgars claims there's no practical way to get the thing we're after."
"And you just took him at face value?"
"Of course not, but I do think he was being honest as far as what he said. The Ark may still be sitting somewhere on Earth, but they've told him that it is no longer a portable item."
"Where are you now?" Jansen asked.
"I stole a ship from the Talon and escaped," Hollick said. "Two of our deep-cover sleepers were able to break me out of confinement and put me on it. I believe Edgars intended to hand me over to the Scout Fleet team so I could be transferred back to Terranovus."
"So…you lost the data core, didn't convince Edgars to give us what we needed, and managed to expose two of our moles. This has been a very costly mission with nothing to show for it, Elton." Jansen's voice was calm, and her face showed no strain or tension, but Hollick knew it was an illusion. If she'd been on the bridge with him that moment, he had no doubt she'd have killed him.
"These are the things that happen in the espionage game, Margaret," Hollick said, rolling his eyes. "I know you used to be little more than a project manager, so let me explain it to you. Not all ops are concluded successfully. In fact, if you can win half the time, you're doing pretty damn good."
>
"And since losing Weef Zadra, you haven't even won half your battles, Elton," she said. "I assume you have a plan to turn your fortunes around?"
"Of course," Hollick lied. He actually had no idea how he was going to rectify all the trouble that had befallen him of late. "But first, I need to ditch this ship. It's almost certainly got a tracker I won't be able to find or shut off."
"Just pick a spot, and I'll send someone to retrieve you."
"No thanks. I'll not just be sitting around waiting for one of your kill teams to fly out and pop me."
"You are the most paranoid person I've ever met," Jansen chided him.
"Which is why I'm alive," Hollick said. "Don't worry. I'll be in touch once I have my situation straightened out."
"Just a quick question before you go, dear. If you're in that ship, can I assume you just left your own ship on the Talon?"
"It's sanitized," Hollick said. "Nothing is stored on the local cores, and I don't keep physical copies of anything. About all they'll find is my dirty laundry."
"Very well," Jansen said. "Get yourself put together, and then get back here ASAP. We have a lot of work to do, and I don't have time for you to hide out in the woods because you think I'm going to do something to you."
After Jansen terminated the channel, Hollick just stared off into space. He didn't trust her to not send someone after him no matter what she said about there being work to do. It was simply in her nature to eliminate problems decisively and, he had to admit, his failures had become a problem. Now that Edgars knew what he was after, he might warn Earth. If the United Earth Council knew what One World was pursuing the thing that was allowing them to field such powerful starships in a shockingly short amount of time, they would clamp a lid on it so tight it would be all but unobtainable. The whole idea had been to gain access to it through subterfuge since main force was out of the question.
Boneshaker Page 17
