Red glanced over his shoulder at her and gave her one of those wonderful smiles of his. “In position and I have ship-to-ship communication set up. No one outside the small area of this fleet will pick this up and I have it directed at the nebula with a directional focus so that the nebula kills anything that might carry.”
“Good,” she said and took a deep breath. “Here I go.”
He tapped his board and then nodded to her that the channel was open.
“Attention crew members of the ships heading in the direction of the Bodie Station. This is a representative of The Sector Force and Innocence Incorporated. We understand you are being forced into this action by General Jarvis. We understand your families are being held hostage to guarantee you carry out this suicide mission. We can rescue you and your families and get you into safe new lives.”
She paused and Red nodded and gave her a thumbs up.
“We can help you and save you and your families’ lives, but first we need each crew member’s name and home planet and any other information you feel we need to rescue your loved ones. We will have them in safekeeping before any of your ships reach the awaiting fleet on the other side of the nebula curtain.”
Again she paused to take a deep breath.
“And we need the location of General Jarvis so that we may stop him as well before he hurts or kills or threatens anyone else. We are on the half-dozen cloaked warships that crippled your liner and your other warships to let you know we were here. We will continue to cripple more ships until none of you can fight and the general will kill your loved ones because you failed. Please help us help you.”
Red indicated he had cut the transmission.
She leaned back and took a deep breath. She would have rather fought two trained killers in hand-to-hand combat to the death than do that again. She was sweating, her stomach was twisted into a knot, and her palms were damp.
“Copy,” a single male voice came back, very weak and clearly on only ship-to-ship.
“This might work,” Red said, a touch of excitement in his voice.
“Are they scanning for us now?”
Red glanced over his instruments, then shook his head. “Clearly they are in no mood for a fight with cloaked ships.”
“That bodes well,” Mattie said. “They also don’t want to let the General know we might be out here. No telling what he would do if he thought that.”
Red looked a little pale at that and went back to monitoring his board.
They sat and waited, keeping close and paced with the ship they had communicated with.
The other communication between the ships continued as normal, including communication between the three different groups of ships. Although Mattie had to admit, the twenty people left on the few ships on the abandoned space station said the least.
And all the crippled ships were blamed on engine failure and they should be back up and running shortly. Mattie knew that would never be the case, but better to let the General think repairs were possible.
Finally there was a crackle on the ship-to-ship communications channel
Red quickly turned and keyed back in the same crackle to let them know he was still here.
In a moment there was more noise, what sounded like a high whine, then it was gone.
Red laughed and quickly loaded up the sound, then his fingers flew over his board and after a moment the names and home planets of all three hundred and seven humans on this side of the nebula in General Jarvis’s fleet appeared on the screen.
Mattie was glad she didn’t have to give that speech to the other two groups of ships. They got all the names on all the ships right here.
“The bastard,” Red said after another moment as Mattie scanned the names on the screen.
“What?” Mattie asked.
“He’s got bombs on all the ships set to explode in exactly three days. He can trigger them early if the fleets stop.”
Mattie nodded. “Which is why they couldn’t stop and pick up the crew from the stranded ships.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“So did they say where Jarvis was?” she asked.
“They did,” Red said. “He’s crossing The Emptiness in a small passenger liner.”
Mattie glanced up at the screen full of names. “How long ago did he leave?”
“One week ago,” Red said.
“Can we catch him?” Mattie asked, worried about what Red would say.
“We can, given time,” Red said. “And we have the time. But first we have to save all these people and their families.”
She sat back in the chair and stared at the list of names on the screen. Her desire to kill General Javis, to do her job, was extreme. But Red was right. First save the people Jarvis threatened.
Then kill the monster.
Red keyed in a little static, then said, “Copy. Received.”
He looked at her and shrugged.
It was all he could say.
All he dared say.
At least they had given them a little hope of survival, if not for them, for their families.
A moment later, as Mattie watched, Red had the ship moved away from the fleet and headed at top speed for the hole in the nebula curtain. The first of the two fleets would clear the sides of the nebula in less than two days. There wasn’t a lot of time to rescue a lot of families on a lot of different planets.
And it would take them seven hours to get to the hole and through to the other side, which cut the time down even more.
Mattie knew that, but she had no doubt that with the combined forces of the Sector Force and Red’s people, they could get it done.
And then it would be her turn to do her job and make sure a monster didn’t threaten another person.
Ever.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
RED GOT MATTIE to the galley and made them both cups of tea and a snack so they could sit and talk. He was happy she liked the same tea he did, and even got out of her focus on General Jarvis to stop and mention the flavor. It had a faint rich smell of tea, yet had a sweet taste of light honey mixed in.
“Strong stuff,” Red said, holding up his cup.
She took another sip. “Doesn’t taste strong.”
“Kind of like you,” he said, smiling at her. “Tastes wonderful but can beat the heck out of you if you’re not careful.”
She actually laughed. “Now I like it even more.”
For the next two hours they sat snacking on some soft bread and cut meat and drinking tea while talking about how they were going to approach the situation on the other side of the nebula.
She just wanted to go through, stay cloaked, tell both Red’s people and the Sector Force what the situation was, give them the name, and get them working on it. Then head out into The Emptiness to catch General Jarvis.
But he didn’t want to do it that way and he had no doubt it was going to take some convincing for her to come over to his side.
“You know,” she said after he told her that they needed to stay for the two days and help in the rescue of those people off those ships before they blew up, “our people and Chief Lovell can handle all that.”
“I agree,” he said. “On that side of the nebula. But they can’t handle the ships and the people we stranded back on the other side of the nebula,” he said.
“Damn it,” she said.
He pushed on. “Those and the ships docked at the abandoned space station are going to explode at the same time as the others and kill everyone. We need to get those people off those ships as well and we have the only ship in the area fast enough and shielded enough to get back to them in time.”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it,” she said, pushing her empty cup aside in disgust. “We’re going to let that monster get away, aren’t we?”
“Not a chance,” Red said, smiling at her. “If he’s out in The Emptiness, we’ll track him down. He can’t outrun us.”
“If we stay for the days this is going to take, he’s going to hav
e a huge start.”
“Unless he’s got a ship almost as fast as this one,” Red said, “it will take him close to a year to cross The Emptiness. It might take us some time as well, but we can catch him.”
She shook her head, but he could tell she knew he was right.
“Unless, of course, you don’t want to spend that much time with me.”
She laughed, stood and went around the table and kissed him squarely on the mouth. “I’d love to spend that much time with you,” she said. “But on one condition.”
“What’s that?” he asked, wondering just what kind of condition she might put on him.
“You teach me how to cook.”
“Now that’s a deal,” he said, kissing her back.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
THE MOMENT THEY EMERGED from the hole in the nebula, Mattie contacted the Sector Force. Red got them stopped a decent distance from the nebula and kept up their cloak. Then he contacted his people using a secure communication channel as well. They both sent all the information and their plan on how to save the families.
Then, as Mattie was finished working with her contact at the Sector Force, Scipio came on.
“I understand from what you just sent that the General is headed across The Emptiness in a medium-sized passenger liner.”
“Yes,” Mattie said. “I’m having the purchase of the liner researched, what kind it is, and the layout.”
“Will you be able to catch his ship?”
Mattie nodded. “Easily, from what Red assures me. But it will take some time.”
The head of the Sector Force nodded, then smiled lightly. “The side-effect of all this is that the Sector Force and Innocence Inc. are working even closer than ever.”
“I hope that continues,” Mattie said.
“As do I,” Scipio said. “We will do our best to save the families and relocate them as we did the others. Report when the target is terminated. It will be a relief when all this is finished.”
Then the screen went blank before Mattie could agree.
When Red was finished with briefing his team and personally contacting the head of the Three-Planets Alliance to ask for his help, Mattie said, “What next?”
“We brief Chief Lovell, then head back to see who we can rescue on the other side of the nebula.”
She nodded and glanced at the time. “They had less than twenty-six hours until those first ships cleared the edge of the nebula and started toward the Bodie Station. And nineteen hours later the second group of ships would clear the other edge of the nebula and break into Three Planets Alliance territory.
Not much time at all, especially with bombs ticking on every ship.
It took them only thirty minutes to brief Chief Lovell. Then another hour to get all the plans for the liner General Jarvis had purchased two years before through a series of odd channels. The liner had undergone a year of renovations in the First Sector to turn it into a private space yacht with room for a crew of one hundred. Normally the ship could have carried upwards of a thousand passengers and four hundred crew.
They were sent the new plans and all Red could do was whistle softly. Not only was it a floating palace, it was heavily armed and from the looks of it, not only was there a crew of fifty, but the ship had a military presence of another fifty soldiers on board. Plus a number of short-range secondary ships with a lot of fire-power as well.
Mattie studied the plans for a moment and decided there would be more than enough time while trying to catch that liner to study them.
Both she and Red made sure those were the most current plans. More could have been added on at the abandoned space station, but Mattie doubted it.
“What’s the speed of that thing?” Mattie asked.
Red checked, then double-checked with a couple of his people before answering her question.
“It’s fast,” he said. “Faster than any liner I have ever seen.”
“Can we catch it?” she asked.
“We can catch it,” he said. “You’re just going to be a better cook is all by the time we do.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
AFTER SEEING THE PASSENGER LINER plans and calculating the time it was going to take for them to catch it, Red started making lists of the provisions they were going to need. He sent the list to Chief Lovell to have them stocked and ready to be picked up at Bodie Station when they brought in the survivors from the other side of the nebula curtain.
Then he turned to Mattie, who was working over the last of the communication with the Sector Force.
“You ready to go rescue some people?”
“Let’s go try at least,” she said.
He nodded and set them back toward the hole in the nebula curtain. They had figured there were less than thirty people at the station, another forty total on ships they had left drifting. It would be crowded, but they could handle that many here on the ship for a short time.
But they were going to keep them under lockdown, since there was no telling if any of them were actually loyal to the General and were willing to die for him.
Around the area of the second sector, raids were going in dozens of places, saving entire families. It was a lot of people to save, but the General had paid a lot of low-life enforcers on different planets to hold the hostages. And money talked, but not more than the guns of local police and Innocence Inc. and Sector Force agents.
Red just hoped it all went well.
It took them a silent forty minutes to get to the nebula curtain hole and back through it. Both of them kept working at their boards, going over anything that might happen and looking for anything safer they could try.
He liked the fact that the two of them could work and not feel the need to talk. It was as if he was alone, yet wasn’t. A nice feeling.
The entire time all Red came up with was that their initial plan was as good as they were going to get.
On the other side of the nebula curtain, the scene was as they had left it, except that both small fleets were closer to the edges of the nebula curtain.
Red set a course of full speed directly at the abandoned station. They had decided they would get the people there off first, since they would have the best chance of staying hidden in that area.
On the flight to the station, Mattie worked over the containment area and all the scanning equipment they were going to need to make sure no one brought a weapon or a bomb on board.
Red had little doubt that if anyone tried, Mattie would just kill them without a second thought.
And honestly, so would he.
If someone didn’t want to be rescued from certain death, that wasn’t his problem.
She finished inspecting the storeroom areas that they had emptied to put in the ones they hoped to rescue, and the four extra bedrooms and came back into the control room.
“They won’t be comfortable,” she said, dropping into her chair. “But it won’t be for long.”
“Locked in and under watch is all we care about,” Red said.
Her fingers flew over her board, bringing up one empty room after another.
“All set.”
He nodded. “So we’re going to assume that the General has cameras watching everything and his finger on the explosives trigger.”
“I would bet on it,” Mattie said.
Red had no doubt that they might be killed in this rescue attempt. But it was worth it to try to save so many.
“We put up a natural static to block all communications out of the station, drop our cloak, dock, and get everyone on board. Cloak again and drop the static.”
She shook her head. “We have to be away within two minutes or the static would be suspicious.”
Red looked at the worried look on her face. “I think we’re pushing it at two minutes.”
“So they had better be ready or we leave them.”
“Exactly,” Red said.
Twenty minutes later he eased the cloaked ship up near the largest of the ships still docked. And he
hit it with an intercom level message.
It was similar to the one Mattie had read earlier.
Basically the message said that they were part of a cloaked fleet working on saving them. That they had each soldier’s name and were working on saving all the families. He told them that the General planned on blowing up the station and all the ships in less than twelve hours, and if they wanted to get off the ships and the old abandoned space station safely, they needed to be within thirty seconds of a certain airlock in ten minutes without arising suspicion. Do not bring guns or weapons of any type.
A moment later a simple bit of static came back and Red nodded.
“They heard us.”
Mattie sat bolt upright, her fingers scanning everything she could as he took the ship in within just a few feet of the airlock they were going to dock at.
It was an airlock that everyone on the station and on the grouped ships could get to within five minutes.
After eight minutes she turned to him. “No explosives that I can see, and everyone seems to be headed this direction slowly, as if they didn’t care. I’m headed down to greet our guests.”
“Good luck,” he said. “I’ll hit our static cover in two minutes and drop the cloak and dock.”
He could see the determination in her eyes as she turned and headed at a medium pace down the hallway.
For an enforcer, she was pretty damned good at this saving people business. Clearly Sector Force agents had gotten a bad rap over the years.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
MATTIE STOOD AT THE AIRLOCK waiting for the signal from Red. She wasn’t sure of all this, but it was the right thing to do. She just hoped that doing this would mean that General Jarvis wouldn’t get away from her again.
Smith's Monthly #5 Page 23
