by Taylor Smith
Hubert Finnegan, the Reaper’s Engineer practically tackled the two in a wide bear hug. “These jokers didn’t think you could do it. But I knew! Congrats!”
“Thanks Finn,” Cade responded with a nod.
Criss beamed from beside Cade. “I wish you could have seen Cade dressed up like a weird bird with blue hair. You would have cried laughing.”
Cade tugged his black long coat tighter around him, and unconsciously ran his fingers across the red skull and crossed-bones patch on the left side of his chest. He was beyond grateful to be out of that horrible Adaran outfit. “You’re getting your color back, too,” he said as he looked Criss up and down. “Circulation working again?”
She blushed and shot cade a wry smile. “You liked it,” she whispered in a low tone and moved into the crowd.
Cade watched her disappear into the throng of ruffians that made up the Reaper’s crew, and grinned after her. Criss had been born on Clew, just as Cade had. But instead of being pressed into service as an indentured worker, she had studied communications and worked her way up through Station Services until she was finally assigned to the Reaper just before Cade had been rescued by the crew.
Andy laughed and put his arm around Cade’s shoulders. “Come on, Cade. You probably need some rest after all that.”
As they walked through the ship, Cade couldn’t help but sigh with relief at being back. The dark gun-metal feel of the hallways aboard the Reaper made him feel at home. They passed a few dents working to repair a panel close to the forward section of the ship, and they both stood to let them pass. They acknowledged Andy with a muttered “Captain,” but both called Cade by his name, sporting wide respectful smiles.
Cade nodded as they passed. He knew they looked up to him, being the dent who became a rising force. He’d gone from indentured worker to executive officer of a Clew Vessel in a matter of months. That was only because Andy couldn’t trust anyone else aboard the Reaper at that time, but their friendship, and Cade’s position had stuck.
Andy understood as well. They both had their share of popularity after what happened with the Valiant three years ago, and they’d become accustom to being recognized by all. As a result, they’d also found a new love for quiet and privacy.
Andy followed Cade to his quarters and waited at the door as his brother entered.
Cade stopped only a few steps inside when he noticed his table. Seemingly out of place, a bottle and two glasses sat on the small table in the room. “What’s this?”
“It’s been two years, Cade.”
“Already?”
“In two hours, yes,” Andy replied in a low tone. “I can leave, if you want.”
Cade didn’t speak for several heartbeats. He knew the date was coming, but didn’t think of it much during the job at Torj Station. His eyes panned the small cabin that he’d called home for three years. It wasn’t much, no cabin aboard the Reaper was, but it was his. The only adornment was the sword that Captain Kova had given him aboard his first ship, the Grim Shoals. “Naw. It’s ok,” he said, and sat down at the table.
Andy entered, and the door slid closed behind him. He sat opposite of Cade and grabbed the bottle of rum. Sugar cane was hard to come by at Clew, let alone the non-aligned worlds, and when a bottle of old-recipe was made, it was only opened during important occasions.
“So, are you trying to get in front of something here, Andy?” Cade asked with a curious look.
Andy sighed. “Absolutely,” he replied, and then shook his head. “It took months to get you back to normal after you came home, Dorian. And then last year, you were so…” he paused and leaned over the table. “I wanted to kill you myself until we realized it was the anniversary. So yes, this is for me as much as for you.”
Cade nodded in understanding and watched as Andy poured the two glasses. “All right,” he said, and then accepted the one he was offered. He swirled the clear liquid around the glass, and stared at it for a few moments in thought before holding it up in toast. “To Haley Marks,” he said in a whisper, and fought the tightening of his throat.
Andy nodded and lifted his glass solemnly. “To Haley Marks.”
Cade took a sip, and felt the intense burn of the rum slide down his throat. He coughed, and couldn’t help but laugh a little. “That’s horrible.”
Andy’s face was scrunched up. “I think that’s why they save it for special occasions.”
Cade sat the glass back down on the table and leaned back with an exacerbated sigh.
“You did everything you could, Dorian,” Andy said in a soft voice. “It was an impossible task to begin with, but you went anyway.”
“Yeah,” he replied absently, and reached up to feel the back of his head. He ran his fingers across scar that was left after removing his implant. “But I still failed her.”
Three years ago, an old rival called the Deshi, attacked Clew Station. Alliance forces had come to their aid, only to turn their guns toward the pirates of Clew once the Deshi were defeated. Clew’s saving grace was an invasive computer program that Saundi Neese had written during her undercover stint at the Allied Fleet Academy. It had allowed Clew to remotely shut the Alliance warships down, and effectively hold them for ransom to force their withdrawal.
It was a major victory for Clew, but the beginning of Haley Marks’ downfall. Haley had played a big part in defeating the Deshi, and had made a huge impact on Cade. Even though he was fighting his own demons at the time, he had allowed himself to dream of loving her one day.
News travels slow to Clew Station, but when Cade got wind that Haley had been dishonorably discharged from the Allied Fleet, he’d immediately left for Adara. Evidently, word of the most powerful battlegroup in the Allied Fleet being humiliated by a band of lowly scoundrels, had gone public. The outcry was immediate, and Haley was brought forth as the scapegoat. It was her brilliant update to the tactical systems that Saundi attached the malicious code to. But as far as the Alliance knew, Saundi had died in the battle, so it was Haley who had to pay the price.
She was publicly humiliated, stripped of her rank and privileges, and cast out of the fleet she so dearly loved.
Cranial implants were outlawed by the Alliance centuries ago, and everywhere you go in their space, they have detection systems on the hunt for them. Ignoring the doctors and their wailing warnings, Cade had them remove his implant. He began his journey into Allied space with migraines so terrible he couldn’t see at times. Other times, he lay in bed for hours, willing himself to push through the agony. When he wasn’t incapacitated, he was hunting for Haley under the guise of a reporter from the aligned world of Gardissia. Looking for his first big story about the dishonored Haley Marks, he asked questions of her whereabouts openly as he searched.
It was exactly two years ago, when the Adaran news headlines held aloft the name he’d spent four months searching for. Haley had been living on the streets of Adara, in a part of the city he’d recently searched, too. Her body was found behind the restaurant from which she jumped. Devastated is too joyful a term to describe Cade’s reaction.
“I was so close,” he muttered more to himself, than to Andy.
Andy rose his glass once more and said, “May she rest in peace.”
Chapter 2
Haley Marks narrowed her eyes as she studied the data that flitted across the screen. Her single-person, Strix-Class stealth reconnaissance ship was designed specifically for this task: tracking and surveillance. She’d landed the craft six kilometers from a small, back-country colony on the dusty surface of Yanna Two. Even with her intense training and all her ship’s advanced systems, it still took far too long to locate her objective.
It had taken her two months to track down a specific person; a high-level affiliate of the Clew Pirates known only as Jerry. She’d met Jerry three years ago aboard a space station named Stormcall. Jerry was a brash and outspoken woman, outwardly advertising more guts than intelligence. The more she studied the woman, however, the more she was positiv
e that there was much more to Jerry than anyone thought.
She’d found her target, who now goes by the name Tara, on the second planet of the Yanna System. She no longer owns a bar as a front for the Clew pirates, but a star-drive parts store on the planet’s dry and unforgiving surface. Haley found it ironic, for the shop to be in business in such a rinky-dink colony in the middle of nowhere. To her surprise, however, several legitimate customers had visited the store in the short time she’d been watching the woman.
Yanna was a back-water, non-aligned system that saw very little traffic. The one colony on the second planet was small, but boasted a minor spaceport and subspace transmitter. The colony’s mining operations were its bread and butter and the only source of sustainability. Still, there wasn’t a lot of trading going on here, so Haley was certain that this was an information hub for Clew, instead of a place to offload stolen goods like Stormcall had been.
For the past month she’d used every system aboard her ship to its fullest, and was surprised at the woman’s resilience. Using the most advanced observation tech known to the Alliance, she knew that any other person or organization would be helpless to her whims, but not Jerry. Haley’s audio and video surveillance devices dropped like flies.
Her data-taps, at first, were either eliminated quickly, or all-together useless. She’d finally been able to make some taps stick, but they were only tied to the less-secure systems such as the spaceport mainframe and colony infrastructure communications. She could monitor law enforcement and public services such as medical and fire, and also run low-level mainframe queries without too much difficulty.
Unfortunately, a week into Haley’s investigation, the woman went into what seemed like a state of high-alert. Her communications dropped dramatically, and she even shut her shop down for two days. Haley decided to back off and let her calm down. Jerry was obviously getting spooked, and she needed to adopt a new tactic.
“Where are you?” She whispered quietly to herself as she checked her video pickups again. The shop called ‘Tara’s Treasures’ was her target. The outside windows of the shop were dark at this hour, the doors locked. She flipped through several feeds and found the only video pickup that gave a glimpse into the inside of the shop. It was set on a nearby building and focused through a small portion of a window to view the inside of ‘Tara’s Treasures’. She squinted at the image. It was mostly dark with the faint outline of light shining from behind a closed door. It was the same every night.
The small craft rocked gently at the night wind outside. She checked the time, found it was nearing midnight, and said, “Activate field equipment control.” A new holoscreen flickered to life before her. She entered a sequence and found that her three remaining electronic noise generators were still signaling their ready-state. She selected all three and set the timer for an hour, and then dismissed the screen with a swipe of her hand.
For the past two weeks, just past midnight, she’d set crude, disruptive signals off in the middle of the small town. The people were frantic about it all, which she’d found amusing. When they’d caught one of its less civil residents with all the tools and parts to make the devices, they’d locked him up. Haley had planted the equipment, of course, but she needed the town, and Jerry, to be used to the disruption before she made her move.
After several days, they’d finally let the innocent man loose, and that was her cue. When the rudimentary gear activated tonight, the town would be looking at the previous troublemaker. They were simple, but effective devices that bombarded the town with every wireless frequency known to man, and even a weak electromagnetic pulse. It wreaked havoc on the primitive infrastructure here. Her hope was that when the power grid, communications, and town monitoring equipment went down tonight, there would be no panic. There would be no sudden raise of the alarm. There would only be hands on hips and annoyed shakes of heads, as the law calmly collected the repeat offender.
Haley stood from her command chair and stretched, then moved to the aft section of the ship. The Strix-Class recon ship only had five rooms: the bridge, her living area, a cell, the equipment room, and engineering. All were tiny but adequate. Strix-9 wasn’t much larger than a shuttle, but it didn’t need to be. Its power came from being unseen. She entered the equipment room and began donning a set of combat armor.
Her mission parameters were simple. Carrying out those orders weren’t as easy as she thought they would be several months ago. Her ultimate goal: obtain the location of Clew. At first that meant finding and spying on the one person she knew held the information she wanted. She found all too quickly that simply watching and waiting wasn’t going to work. She had to physically tap Jerry’s communications equipment.
Haley closed her visor and stretched again, trying to find any kinks in her suit. She needed it to fit like her own skin so she could move quickly if needed. She then double checked her equipment to ensure she had everything she required for the night. Satisfied, she exited her ship and stepped onto the sandy terrain of Yanna Two.
The sun had set several hours ago and for another week the planet would be without a bright moon. She scanned the area slowly. The HUD in her suit began displaying its readouts, reporting nothing out of the ordinary. It reported nothing at all. The desert was a wasteland. Her ship was the only anomaly for as far as the eye could see, and it self-camouflaged itself well.
Haley secured her ship, and took off at a brisk jog toward the colony. She had a six kilometer run ahead of her. Not too far, but she wanted to conserve energy for what may or may not be one hell of a fight. Remembering Jerry, and how she fought on Stormcall, she couldn’t help but remember Cade.
At first her emotions turned to sadness, but they launched quickly into rage. She stamped her thoughts down as she was trained, and focused on the run, and the mission at hand.
During her half-way point breather, Haley sat against a boulder, cold from the desert night. She checked her time, found it had been five minutes, and rose to continue her trip toward the town. She froze as her instincts screamed that she was being watched. She crouched slowly and forced her breathing to a shallower pace so she could listen. Only empty desert lay before her, and empty desert behind. Nothing.
After several minutes of intense caution, she rose again. But before she could take her first step, she looked up to come face to face with another Strix Agent, perched upon the boulder she’d rested against. He was dressed in the same dark combat suit as her, his face hidden behind his helmet. Haley mentally prepared herself for a fight, slowly bringing her right hand toward her sidearm.
After only a few moments, the man slowly raised his hand and pressed a finger against his left wrist.
Haley watched cautiously as she was given the signal: a faint, pinpoint of light danced in and out on top of the man’s gloved hand, fading out and softly brightening in a specific order. Haley nodded. The silent code was understood, and she reached into her pocket to retrieve a small black data chip.
The man accepted it and was gone at a brisk pace into the desert and away from town.
She released a breath that she wasn’t aware she was holding, and continued toward the colony. Someday, she’d find out who he, or they, were by name and ask them how they snuck around so well. Even with her training, which was extraordinary, she couldn’t match these guys at stealth.
The additional data drop-offs were part of her secondary mission, and happened at irregular intervals. She had almost killed the first agent out of spite for sneaking up on her. They never came near her ship, and she’d never seen them in town, so she knew there must be another Strix lying about somewhere.
As she neared the outskirts of the colony, she slowed her pace and payed more attention to her surroundings. There were usually watchers out, but there were massive gaps in the town perimeter that she could sneak though. The town was alone out here, in the desert, and had nothing significant of value that raiders would want unless they were desperate.
Haley stayed in the shadows
and made her way between the metal buildings, placing small, discreet cameras as she went. She stayed closer to the shops and garages, as they were less likely to be populated at this hour. Jerry, or Tara, was one of the few that actually lived in their shop. From her observations, she knew there was a small apartment above Tara’s Treasures that Jerry used as her home. If her plan played out as expected, the commotion would bring Jerry outside to the street with the rest of the town residents just as it had in the past. Haley would have around sixty seconds to enter the side door and access Jerry’s equipment. She knew it was a long-shot, though, and an encounter with the woman was likely.
Finally, she arrived across the street from her destination and stopped in the shadow of a two story office building.
For several moments she simply watched with enhanced vision from her visor, and listened through the amplified pickups on her helmet. The town was dead quiet. She glanced down to the timer in the lower left corner of her HUD and found it had less than two minutes. With a few quick movements of her cheek, she activated a small screen that held the feed of her last camera with a view inside the shop.
A message read: “Signal lost.” Her nerves fluttered briefly. Either the signal from the camera was poor, or Jerry had found the device within the past few minutes.
She ran through the cameras she still had in operation and found them all blank, even the ones she had just set behind her. Dread crept down her spine.
A warning flashed in her visor and she found the ten second countdown for her charges had begun. She accessed her HUD and selected the option to disable the timers, deciding to abort her mission.
The message in her HUD read: “Error: No signal.” She froze.
Something heavy crashed into the side of her head, sending her to the ground. She rolled, quickly regained her footing and drew her sidearm. The shadowed figure now standing before her moved in close and quick. It was too quick for Haley, still recovering from the blow to the head to react. A rock-hard fist slammed into the back of her weapon hand.
