Aeolus Investigations Set 2: Too Cool To Lose: The Continuing Evolution of Lexi Stevens

by Robert E Colfax

  That was interesting. Did he misspeak? “Excuse me, Fleet Admiral, you said pirate ‘world?’”

  “Yes, I said ‘world.’ Actually, worlds. I should probably have said the pirate empire. All of that information was included in the message drone.” He paused. “Oh, and Admiral, be forewarned. If you’re not already aware, the pirate ships have cloaking shields. If there are any in the system you won’t be able to see them.”

  “We’re aware of the existence of that technology. Battleships are tough beasts, Admiral, once they start shooting at us, we’ll know where they are.”

  “True. Now, why do I have a junior Ackalonian fleet orbiting my planet?”

  De Borkin frowned. “Honestly, sir, at this point, I’m not sure. I suspect most of my orders are now irrelevant. We need to talk.”

  “I agree. I’ll come to you.” He paused. “Give me an hour. There are a few people I want to gather to bring up with me. We’ll be coming up on one of the pirate-designed Raiders. I’d really appreciate it if you don’t blast us before we get there.”

  Chapter 31

  Council Matters

  Three weeks after the arrival of the Ackalonian fleet, Orgiazz was smiling as he headed for the daily emergency session of the One World Council. He sat quietly in the back of the limo with one of his top analysts, a middle-aged woman named Beva. They rode for the fifteen minutes mostly in silence, each reviewing reports on their secure pads. As they walked from the car, parked in a secure, underground garage, to the council chamber, Orgiazz said, “You’ll be speaking first today, Beva.”

  “Yes, sir. Should I start with the good news first, sir?”

  “May as well,” the admiral conceded. “We don’t really understand much of anything else. Please keep remarks concerning the Ackalonian fleet to a minimum. They know all they need to know at this time.”

  “Yes, sir.” Beva had never briefed the council before but wasn’t concerned. She had learned many years earlier that when she was the subject-matter expert, it was hard to fluster her. How different could it be from addressing the brass at headquarters? “Don’t we work for the council, sir?”

  Orgiazz laughed. “Not exactly. As far as I can tell, at the moment at least, practically everyone on the Council is following the instructions of Lexi Stevens. As am I. It’s not so bad. She’s a very determined woman. Her decisions seem reasoned and sound. Besides, everyone is a little bit frightened by her. She wants to save us not only from the pirates but also from ourselves. We’re working for her Beva.”

  In the chamber, once she got the nod from Orgiazz, Beva stood and began speaking in a level, authoritative voice. “The good news first, citizens. We visited the pirates’ base in two of the captured Raiders along with two of the transports carrying four companies of our marines. The base’s point defense tried to bring us down but those ships are both amazingly tough and hard to hit. Whatever the Accord team is charging for leasing them to us is going to be worth it. We wound up dropping below the defenses’ horizon, actually into the pit that used to be the Rathca’s flight deck. From there the marines went in to neutralize the defenses. All of the hostile fire was automated. It appears Admiral the First, Edgra Ruma is honoring her surrender.”

  “We took credit for the Aeolus operation stopping their Special Order Two from being executed. While not totally honest, it earned us a lot of goodwill. The claim isn’t totally dishonest either. We did hire Aeolus.” Someone made a damn good decision there. Must have been Kalia.

  Beva glanced at her pad. She knew unbroken monologues caused the audiences’ attention to drift. She had quite a bit more to say. “As the Accord team suggested, they don’t all seem to be bad people. We came across one family sheltering some of our own children. We left the marines watching things, collected our children and the family they were with, left the transports behind and under guard and headed back. It will take six trips using all four transports to retrieve everybody, but once that is done there is no reason we can’t take over the base for our own use.”

  She paused. “If we don’t execute them, they may volunteer to go back to the base and help us out there. The so-called pirates have nowhere to go. The base is currently quite stark. With a small investment on our part, it can be made more attractive for a civilian population. Perhaps the best news is the ore that world is composed of is one of the major components in hull-metal. The pirates had a small-scale mining operation going on as a sideline. If we can set up our own mines there, we will finally have something valuable enough to trade with the other Accord worlds.”

  As she paused, watching the faces of those she was speaking to, Fleet Admiral Orgiazz spoke. “As Beva said, that is the good news. The rest of it is either much, much better or much, much worse. We’re still running models of the various permutations and their implications.” He nodded towards Beva.

  “I’ve spent a lot of time going over this with Kalia, sir, and I think she should present the information.”

  Kalia stood. “I’m not going to rehash the purpose of my mission to Ackalon. It does appear that for the first time in our history, we have an ally in the Accord. I wish I could take credit for that. In her speech at her coronation, Ackalon’s new Plicora warned us the Accord as we know it is undergoing change. She is changing it.”

  She waited a moment, letting them all think about that. “As you all know, we have six Ackalonian battleships accompanied by three Borgolian ships in orbit. They’re up there for our defense while we come up to speed on the new hardware. That many ships make a significant dent in Ackalon’s own defenses. I can state with high confidence that Jis Boc Seckan, the new Plicora of Ackalon, is friendly toward us.”

  She paused, purred, and added, “Which brings us to Lexi Stevens, the leader of the Accord team which, to be blunt, saved our backsides from being subjugated by the Unity empire.”

  Kalia looked down the table at Beva. “While I’m not sure of what the relationship between Lexi Stevens and Plicora Jis Boc Seckan is, we should keep in mind that Ackalon’s Plicora seems to be extremely respectful of the opinion of Lexi Stevens. Although she refused to send any of her fleet home with me, for reasons I now understand and concur with, she did offer the services of three of her friends who together form a team of insurance investigators known as Aeolus Investigations.”

  She took a sip of water before continuing. “I know I’m recapping with some of this. Denem and I picked up the little that is known about them and publicly available before we left Ackalon. Believe me, they are far more than merely insurance investigators although it is also clear that is what they started out as. Exactly what they are now is anybody’s guess. We also instructed our intelligence service to keep digging. The recommendation the Plicora gave them was, well, almost unbelievable. Take my word for it, gentle beings, what they did for us is equally unbelievable. I saw the results at the Unity base.”

  She looked around the table, nodding. She had everybody's attention. “As most of you already know, a pirate Raider intercepted and largely destroyed poor Flagon, the yacht returning us from Ackalon. Aeolus disabled the weapons on the vessel that attacked us, firing through the pirate’s shields. After rescuing the survivors on Flagon, and we did lose one of our pilots, they proceeded to track the pirate back to its base.”

  She paused, noting various nods around the conference table. “I assume that by now you are all aware that the Unity possesses cloaking technology that hides their ships not only from our sensors but also from the more advanced ones used by the rest of the Accord. Aeolus’s ship, Urania, possesses a more advanced version of this same tech, captured from the pirates some months back. Those shields are amazing. I was on their ship while it shrugged off a continuous primary beam barrage from five Raiders. Lexi Stevens upgraded the shields further while we were inside Rathca.”

  At that point, Admiral Orgiazz cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Kalia. For those of you non-military people, one of our ships would have been vaporized more or less instantly if hit by that
much firepower. We believe standard Accord shields would have collapsed in short order facing that degree of punishment also. Admiral De Borkin of the Ackalon fleet verified that while one of her battleships could survive the onslaught for a while, anything smaller would be history.”

  “Thank you for the clarification, sir,” Kalia said. “While their defenses were holding, they apparently couldn’t initiate a counterattack. They activated the n-space drive and hit the surface of the Unity planet at full thrust, carving a tunnel ahead of them with their primaries, sealing it behind them by detonating a warhead. To the pirate vessels watching, it would have looked like the ship exploded when it impacted the surface.”

  One of the ministers objected, “You must be mistaken. I know enough about military technology, it’s a hobby of mine, to know that even Accord-tech primaries aren’t capable of doing what you’re claiming. And didn’t someone already say the planet’s surface was largely hull-metal?”

  As Kalia started to respond, Beva said, “I visited the chamber under the flight deck, Minister. I observed the tunnel they cut. The walls are so smooth they’re practically polished. There is no debris of any kind. We took a few of the Borgolian engineers with us. They were stupefied by what they saw. Let’s not forget that these are the same people who dropped one-hundred-thousand tons of pirate base out of hyperspace into our ocean.”

  She focused her gaze on the minister who claimed to know about military technology. “I don’t know how or where they acquired it, but whatever technology they have on their ship is significantly more advanced than anything the Accord possesses. You’re right, though, Minister. Based on what we know of the capabilities of Accord vessels, they do not have primary beams that could have bored that tunnel at all, certainly not quickly enough to save themselves.”

  Kalia resumed. “I believe these three people have somehow moved far beyond Accord-level technology. They don’t flaunt it, but their leader, Lexi Stevens, seems to be some kind of super-genius. I know for a fact that she redesigned the hyper-generator while I was on board to enable it to carry part of a planet through hyperspace. Hyper-drive technology in the Accord hasn’t changed significantly in thousands of years. Not because there wasn’t anyone who wanted to improve it, but because there was no one able to improve it. Until now! I watched her do it. We were under Rathca base for four weeks. Both of those technical upgrades, along with some upgrades to the ship’s dampeners, were conceived and implemented by her in that short period of time.”

  Her expression turned feral. “These people are able to use artificial gravity in small sections of their ship while in hyper and we all know that’s not even supposed to be possible. They’re also the only ones I have ever heard of who have hand-held energy weapons. My observations all lead me to the conclusion that these three people possess significantly more advanced technology than is available anywhere else. I don’t think they found it. I am relatively certain that Lexi Stevens developed it herself. Although they are extremely friendly with the Plicora of Ackalon, they are not affiliated with any single world. They operate independently, taking the jobs that interest them. Jobs that no one else can do. And they’re willing to be our friends.”

  The Chief Minister looked around the chamber. “Anything else Kalia? Beva? Fleet Admiral?”

  Admiral Orgiazz stood. “Yes. Whatever we decide going forward, we want to keep these people as friends. I don’t know how to do that. They’re not about wealth. Selling their technology would give them that. They’re not about power. I’ll tell you frankly, based on what I’ve seen, their one so-called scout ship is capable of annihilating our entire fleet. If Stevens follows through on her threat to knock us back to Level-Two, I don’t think she’ll need Ackalon’s support to do it.”

  He shrugged. “After spending a good deal of time with her while she was here, I do not believe we’re in danger from either her or the Ackalonians. What I do believe is that she was making a point. It is time that we rise to the original purpose of this council. It is time we become one unified world. With control of the Unity fleet, the Council now has the power to do make that a truth rather than a convenient fiction. I also believe if we misuse that power, Stevens will come back and make good on her threat.”

  “Aside from that,” Beva said, “the pirates will be back, either to retake or to destroy the captured base. Maybe to destroy us. If we are able to train crews for all of the captured ships in time, we can probably survive. But not if we’re still squabbling among ourselves. We need to find a way to unify Ostrieachia.” She had held that opinion for a decade. This was the first occasion she felt others might be forced not only to agree with her but to actively work toward doing so.

  Kalia smiled, showing her fangs. “I have an idea. Jis Boc Seckan made an extremely interesting comment when she met with Denem and me. It seemed random when she said it, but, gentle beings, I don’t think it was random at all. Yes, I have an idea.”

  Chapter 32

  The Chase

  While pursuing the Unity courier, they easily fell back into their usual travel mode, working out in the gym, cooking elaborate meals now that they had gravity, practicing martial arts, and, of course, watching movies. They celebrated Lexi’s twenty-sixth birthday a few days out from Ostrieachia. The party was much more subdued than last year’s, celebrated in the palace at Borgol with every child in the palace attending. This time, Ron baked her a cake. It was chocolate, of course. Urania sang. She had a remarkably good singing voice. They dispensed with candles and presents but Geena did pull out party hats for Ron and her. Lexi was handed a plastic tiara that said, ‘Birthday Girl’ across the front. The whole birthday thing was an Earth custom. Birthdays weren’t celebrated on Cardin’s Paradise.

  This trip they also spent many hours going through and discussing the intelligence Urania garnered from the multitude of Ostrieachian datanets. The personal logs Kalia and company recorded while they were on board equally impressive. Even Denem’s and Agart’s ramblings held some interest. Urania performed voice analysis on all of the spoken material, regardless of its source, to separate probable truths from probable lies. She chuckled to herself. She wasn’t sure scientific voice analysis was as accurate as the metaphysical abilities of Lexi and Ackalonians.

  With the recent improvements to the hyper-drive, the generator, and the dampeners, Urania was now significantly faster than a message drone. Losing her hundred-thousand-ton hat helped with that. The courier led them further and further from Ostrieachia making multiple course changes as it went. Ostrieachia was located on the fringes of Accord space. As far as they knew, the Accord had never explored this far in this direction.

  The evening of their twelfth day in pursuit, they were sitting in the common area after dinner, sipping vodka martinis. Not exactly, of course. Ron found a clear Ostrieachian liquor that was almost like vodka and an aromatic, fortified Ostrieachian wine that could have been mistaken for vermouth, especially as none of them had ever sampled straight Earth vermouth. Geena set hers down after her first, cautious sip, saying, “This is vile.”

  “I’m sure it’s just an acquired taste, Mom,” Ron said, looking unsure himself. “Maybe it’s just these aren’t traditional martini glasses.”

  Geena still had a disgusted expression on her face. “I’m switching to that wine we picked up. Anyone else? Or do you want to continue working on your acquisition?”

  Ron laughed. “I had one on Earth. I admit these aren’t the same. I’ll switch to wine, too. Lexi?”

  Lexi stood, took his glass from him, picked up Geena’s and headed to the kitchenette to dispose of all three drinks. Ron said, “Make that three, Mom.”

  Once she and Lexi had taken their seats again, Geena said, “I’ve been hesitating about bringing this up, but decided today that I should. We have what may be a developing problem. No, let me rephrase that. Not really a problem, but it’s still something I feel we should discuss. At least something we should all be aware of.”

  She hesitated a
s the other two turned to look at her inquisitively. “I don’t think Ron would ever see it on his own, and frankly, I doubt Urania would either. We’ve been a team now for the last twenty months or so. Before then, Urania was basically still a century-old Vankovian scout. I’m referring to our ship, of course, not our friend. She’s now not only the most comfortable ship in space,” she said, pointedly setting her crystal wine glass on the surface of a nearby console thanks to the artificial gravity they could now use even with the hyper-drive active.

  She picked her glass back up and took a sip. “This isn’t bad. Urania’s also the fastest and the most deadly. Out of curiosity, I did some calculations this afternoon. One on one, the four of us could take out that Vankovian dreadnought they’re so proud of. It’s supposed to be the most powerful ship in Accord space. It isn’t. Not any more. Although I suppose it still holds the record for being the largest.”

  She paused again, and Lexi asked, “What’s the problem, love? We’ve done well. Financially, we’ve done very well. The Ostrieachian deal alone is going to give us an income stream that is unbelievable. And we’re not even asking for close to what they could afford or what those ships are worth. We’ve saved a lot of lives over the course of our last three assignments. Is this about becoming secret agents?”