Whispers of Earth: Pirates of Clew Book Two (The Pirates of Clew 2)

by Taylor Smith

  “I don’t trust you,” Cade replied as he read the acknowledgements of readiness received across the secondary channel. He typed: ‘Ten seconds,’ and got a firm nod from Terry Beck at the helm.

  “I have Saundi,” Jonas replied, virtually laying his ace card on the table for Cade to see.

  Cade typed ‘Hold,’ and leaned back in dread. He couldn’t trust a word from the man that had declared himself the destructor of Clew Station. He’d promised the entire Alliance that he would take the pirates down, and nearly succeeded three years ago, just to be stopped by a clever virus of Saundi’s design. But if he truly had Saundi aboard…

  Cade leaned forward and said, “Prove it,” just as Andy entered the bridge and sat down with a questioning look. Cade held his hand up and nodded to the small comms screen at his station.

  “Hello, Brother,” Saundi said over the subverted channel.

  “Saundi,” Cade said with relief.

  “Are you all right?” Andy asked suddenly.

  “Great,” came Saundi’s sarcasm. “Now get me the hell out of here.”

  “All ships, stand down,” Cade ordered before saying, “Jonas. Link up with the starboard docking collar. Twitch wrong, and I’ll light you up.”

  Cade heard the acknowledgement, but was already out of his chair alongside Andy, headed toward the back of the bridge. “Have Finn meet us at the starboard lock with some guns, Wards. You have the bridge.”

  They didn’t have to wait long for a dozen crewmen, led by Hubert Finnegan, to surround the airlock hatch. Each nodded to Cade and Andy as they approached before readying their weapons.

  Several metallic clanks echoed from the airlock as they waited, until finally the outer airlock opened to produce a relieved Saundi flanked by a tall man in his late fifties.

  Andy nodded to Finn, who opened the inner door before swinging his own rifle toward the hatch.

  The gathered crew instantly lowered their weapons as Saundi hurried passed and flung her arms around Andy, just to raise them again when Harold Jonas came into view.

  “I surrender,” Jonas said with a grin, raising his empty palms as he took a confident step forward.

  Cade drew his Voger R2 and aimed it at the man’s head. “Saundi?” he asked.

  “He’s telling the truth, as far as I can tell,” Saundi replied. “But I don’t trust him.”

  Cade nodded. “Let’s space him, then.”

  Jonas’ smile faltered. “You can’t do that,” he whispered quickly with the first sign of uneasiness.

  Cade couldn’t help but enjoy the man’s discomfort. For the first time in his life, he was staring at the man responsible for many of Clew’s adversities over the years, and he felt a sudden inkling of triumph while he waited for him to continue.

  When Jonas remained silent, Cade shrugged, his sidearm arcing slightly upward, then returning to its original target. “This is where you tell us why,” he said in a low tone.

  Jonas straightened his posture and dropped his hands to his sides. His chin rose slightly as he said, “You need me. There’s a war about to start, if I’m not mistaken. You need the information I can provide: Allied Fleet strengths, weaknesses, technology…” he looked from crewman to crewman as he spoke, and his voice betrayed a shadow of desperation after each word. “I have subspace communication frequencies, protocols and…” he pointed behind him. “And I have that ship. The most advanced surveillance and counter-intelligence equipment the Alliance has, is installed on board. Without me, it’s useless.”

  Cade glanced to Andy, who didn’t seem impressed, but the fact that he knew about the war about to be brought upon the Alliance puzzled him. “You vowed the destruction of Clew,” he said, jamming his gun toward the ex-admiral. “Why would you defect to your sworn enemy?”

  Jonas laughed at that. “I’m not defecting to Clew, Mr. Cade. I’m defecting to Sol Fleet.”

  At once, Cade knew they’d missed the recon ship by hours, and he silently cursed their luck. “I still say we space him.”

  “We can’t,” Saundi interrupted. “We have to use him to get into the station near the primary. It’s more secure than I’d ever seen, and dug into an asteroid. I don’t know how to get back there.”

  Everyone turned at once to Saundi in surprise, including Jonas.

  “We can’t go back there,” Jonas said.

  “What?” Cade and Andy asked at the same time, both with incredulous stares.

  Saundi found Cade’s eyes and said, “We have to rescue Haley.”

  Every nerve ending in Cade’s body exploded with an overwhelming blow of shock. He abandoned his position and grabbed Saundi by the shoulders. “Haley? She’s alive?”

  Saundi, taken aback at Cade’s sudden rush at her, nodded back. “Believe me. I was as surprised as you are. But she’s alive. He,” she said as she jerked her head toward Jonas, “locked her up before he dragged me onto that ship and brought me here. I’ll bet he’s the only one that can get us close to that place, let alone aboard it.”

  Cade looked back to Jonas, wide-eyed for confirmation.

  Jonas looked between them before nodding shakily. “Yes. Yes, I can help you get her, but you have to take me with you… alive.”

  “Cade,” Saundi said a bit softer than before. “We should probably talk before –“.

  “Deal,” Cade said to Jonas without another word from anyone. He stalked passed Saundi without a look, grabbed Jonas by the arm and dragged him through the throng of open-mouthed crewmen toward the bridge.

  Chapter 18

  Haley lay curled up in her cell. She turned the small black data chip to the side and back, allowing the light to glare off its shined edges. Her confusion was complete now, and at no point could she console herself that she’d done the right thing.

  Betrayed by her best friend, left to die by her people, betrayed by her beloved Alliance, and now she wallowed in the notion that everything she’d done for the past three years had been nothing but a backstabbing ploy to garner Harold Jonas a second chance at power. It was a cosmic joke.

  But Clew had not abandoned her as she had thought. Cade had come for her. He’d come too late, yes, but he had come in search. That alone merited something, and she knew the removal of an implant was a dangerous gamble. Saundi had told her that he’d suffered for it.

  Jonas had all but admitted that he’d kept Cade from finding her. She tried desperately to hate him but her strength of will faltered. She was tired of being angry, tired of blaming everyone else for her misfortunes, even if they’d played a large part in them. Perhaps it was her current situation that rewarded her with the ability to dismiss everything and simply not care.

  Soon, she guessed, a guard would lead her from a cell and to a kill room, where she would be swiftly executed and forgotten. There was no mistaking her fate. When dealing with an agency that doesn’t officially exist, there is no return to civilization where loose tongues could wag.

  Her one and only hope, the command override, supposedly buried deep into the base’s computer, had failed for one reason or another. Her secondary mission was a failure.

  A tear crept down her cheek as she lay, still gazing at the chip that held the only hope for the Alliance. Why she still felt responsible for the Alliance’s safety after it had rejected her, she didn’t know. Perhaps simply because it was still the only home she truly knew.

  A triad of quick, alarming chirps lifted her from her misery. A pause, and then the alert repeated itself once more. She listened and heard the sound of boots slapping against the polished floors of the base, but they were far from her cell and headed in the opposite direction as they faded away. The alert was a black-out signal, one of many alerts she’d been trained to identify while on-base.

  The black-out was a non-combat alert, and fairly simple; if you hear it, get somewhere with a door as fast as possible, lock yourself in, and stay there until the all-clear is sounded. The alert was to ensure guests, usually extremely high officials, didn’t see fa
ces they weren’t supposed to, or some maintenance team had come to work on an extremely sensitive piece of equipment. They’d see the halls and the equipment they were supposed to see, but nothing else, and they usually had no idea where they were. At least that was the story told during her training.

  She looked at the open-barred cell, shrugged, and then laid back on the bunk with the knowledge that she couldn’t do anything about the alarm or its procedures. She slipped the data chip into the inner lining of her boot and resolved to rest.

  Several minutes later, just on the edge of sleep, the sharp crack of her cell door unlocking drove her alertness back to full. She pushed hard against the wall and rolled off her bunk, brought her feet beneath her and landed on the floor in a crouch in readiness to fight the guards all the way to her execution.

  Her darkened, combat-ready boldness crumbled at the sight of the man standing before her. His eyes were haunted as he stared down at her, and she could tell his breathing was labored as if he’d been running. She wasn’t sure what to do as he stood motionless before her, only a meter way.

  “Cade?” she whispered. There was no hiding now. No mask or combat armor to disguise the truth. He saw her. She wasn’t sure which was worse: being executed by moderately-trained, mindless guards or by Cade. Everything she’d done to him and Clew would be paid for right now.

  They stared at each other in shock before Cade closed the distance and brought her into a soul-crushing embrace.

  She wasn’t sure what to do at first, her hands at her sides and her eyes wide and searching; until she finally realized that he wasn’t here to kill her. Cade didn’t know what she’d done.

  Behind Cade, Andy and Saundi came into view, and her confusion grew even more. And then she saw him, Jonas, inch his way from behind Saundi with an anxious smile.

  But Cade still held her tightly. Haley allowed herself this small miracle, and quickly wrapped her arms around him. She closed her eyes, buried her face in the crook of his neck and wept. Her chest heaved erratic breaths and tears flowed more freely than they ever had before. She reveled in the pleasure of dropping every emotional wall she’d built over the past three years and continued to weep. She wept for what she’d done to Cade. She wept for what she was about to do.

  “We have to get out of here,” Saundi said from behind them. “Like, now.”

  Haley lifted her wet face to Cade’s to find him smiling at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  His smile dropped slightly, and confusion crept across his face. “I thought you were dead.”

  She took a tentative step back from him, her heart screaming at her brain to stop.

  The confusion and worry on Cade’s face vanished abruptly as his eyes dropped to her right hand, which now held his sidearm. His hand flew to the empty holster at his belt.

  “I’m sorry,” she repeated in a whisper, turned to her right and shot Jonas in the head.

  The images of a shocked Saundi and Andy, both specked with crimson, pervaded her thoughts as she rushed head-long down the empty corridor. She’d purposefully not looked at Cade as she’d launched from the cell and built as much speed as she could to put distance between her and the stunned pirates.

  Claxons and red strobes burst to life the moment she’d pulled the trigger. The entire station would know that a non-registered weapon had been discharged in the holding cell area. No matter her need to gain space between herself and Cade, she had to make as much progress toward the Strix bay as possible before guards began rushing to investigate.

  Before she rounded the corner, and before the pirates could come to their senses and give chase, she slammed her palm against a door panel as she flew past. The door closed behind her and locked. It wasn’t an overly secure entry, but every door that could close in Strix Base required valid access to open again. They’d be forced to go back the way they came, which was probably a shuttle from the Reaper, or Jonas’ personal ship that sat in the main docking bay.

  She rounded another corner and slammed into the opposite wall, failing to slow sufficiently in her haste. She shook it off and kept running until the forms of two guards emerged from a side-corridor directly in her path.

  Haley used her speed and jumped, slamming home a kick to the nearest man’s face. The force spun him backwards as he fell to the floor, oblivious to the universe. The other, a younger woman, drew on her and fired.

  She was quick, but Haley was already moving inside the guard’s aim, and the shot went wide, ricocheting off the metal wall behind her with a deafening tone. Haley landed a soft punch to the guard’s face, just enough to deny a riposte for the time it took to twist the guard’s free arm behind her back and push her head-first into the opposing wall. The unmistakable sound of a cracking neck told her that perhaps she was a little worked up, and used too much force. It may not matter much, but if she wanted them dead she would have simply shot them with Cade’s gun. That would, of course, dial the base’s sensors in on her position though, and send a torrent of guards her way instead of to the cellblock.

  As the second guard dropped in a heap, Haley crouched and froze in place. She listened for a few seconds, realizing more guards were on the way and turned back to the two unconscious automatons lying before her. The woman didn’t carry a pack, but the man did, just above his left hip.

  She quickly tore into the container and found the set of grenades she knew would be part of the kit. She palmed the blue one. The activation to detonate on motion was a quick flip of a small slider switch, and she rolled it lightly toward the sound of the oncoming guards before tearing away again at a full sprint.

  Chapter 19

  It was all Cade could do: stare at the body of Harold Jonas as his friends shouted and alarms blared around him. Haley was alive. He’d finally, after three years, found her alive. Memories of Adara City and the failed search for her flashed over and over in his mind, and the realization that every conclusion he’d drawn since, every painful fact about Haley had been fabricated by… by what?

  He blinked away the dryness when he noticed Andy and Saundi shouting at him over the claxons, but he couldn’t bring himself to care what they were saying. They’d rushed off after Haley and left him standing stupefied in the cell where he’d held her. Now they were back, clawing at Jonas’ body like a pack of hungry animals looking for the slightest morsel of nourishment.

  As if he’d been living under a rock for three years, his brain finally reoriented itself. When Saundi had announced Haley’s existence, and her imprisonment, Cade had immediately assumed that she’d been a prisoner for three years. Her death was a lie to steal her away from him. It never occurred to him that Haley herself was part of creating the lies, until now.

  A smile, nothing much more than a twitch of his mouth, began to form. “I’m an idiot,” he said to no one particular.

  “What?” Andy said as he halted his search of Jonas’ pockets.

  “I’m an idiot,” Cade repeated. It all came to him at once. She never wanted to be found. He’d been killing himself for years because he had failed her. And he hadn’t.

  “An idiot,” Andy muttered and shook his head. “That’s not news, Cade. Now help us look for some sort of passkey or something to unlock that door!”

  “His wrist,” Cade replied as if from a dream.

  “What?” Andy said, as he and his sister both stopped what they were doing to look up at him.

  Cade fought to focus, crouched beside Jonas and lifted his left wrist. A small black dot could be seen just below the skin. “When we were making our way here, I noticed that the door panels were turning green before they opened. What auto-open cares about red or green? So I started watching him and he lifted his wrist just a bit when we got to another door.” Cade shrugged. “It was probably unconscious, but made sense that he had something to unlock them.”

  Andy stared at Cade for a moment before shaking his head again and producing a knife from his belt. Saundi turned away, and Andy grimaced as h
e made a small incision and retrieved a blood-caked device, about a quarter size of a grape. “Cade, you’re brilliant when you’re not senseless.”

  Cade shrugged. “It’s the brilliant part that you’re jealous of.”

  Andy shook his head and ran toward the locked door.

  Cade let a quick laugh escape his teeth and frowned at the dead man. “All this way and you get killed by someone who served under you,” he muttered.

  “Cade! Let’s Go!” Andy shouted from down the hall.

  He lifted his head once again and heard the sound of a door opening. He took a deep breath and stepped over the corpse.

  Cade raced to catch up with Andy and Saundi. If Haley wasn’t with them, she was still working for the Alliance. That meant that she knew where Clew Station was, that Sol Fleet still existed, and would probably report just that. Whatever happened at this place, it was between Jonas and her, and Jonas, for whatever he was worth, wanted to side with Sol Fleet. Haley was now an enemy, and they had to stop her.

  As he passed through the now-open hatchway, he could faintly hear footsteps behind him. Guards rushing to the alarms, no doubt, so he picked up his pace.

  Just before he rounded the next corner, a bright light made him pause just before a deafening sound from ahead drove him to his knees. His ears felt like they’d been punched, and he scanned the corridor through rapidly-blinking eyes for what could have caused it.

  He backed up against the wall, still rubbing his ears as he reached for his Voger R2 and cursed at the empty holster. Unarmed, with guards doubtless coming his way, he shouted, “Andy! Saundi? What the hell was that?”

  Weapons fire from around the same corner drew his attention, even though it sounded muffled from the ringing in his ears. He edged around the corner and found Saundi lying motionless only inches in front of him, and Andy several meters down the hall; he too was either dead or unconscious. Two uniformed guards lay further down the hall. From the flash and the noise, plus the lack of damage to the corridor, he decided they were more than likely unconscious from a flashbang of sorts.