by Daniel Gibbs
“Let me worry about that. Your only concern should be hardware.”
“Yes. Ah, the missiles next…”
The key to this phase of the operation. Kiel watched as rack after rack of small missiles was loaded into the bay behind the forward tubes. They were Arrowhead clusters, four warheads integrated into a single missile that could launch from the standard tube but then separate into their self-maneuvering components en route to the target—key for disabling a ship rather than obliterating it in a single volley like the bothersome Starbolts and foul Hunters. Using black-market weapons packages to expand the warhead yield had its advantages too.
“We should have them fully loaded by the end of the day.” Corriveau rocked on his heels, beaming. The man was clearly enjoying his role as proud father. “Once the armor is replaced and the concealed hatches secured, we’ll begin the overpaint. I decided against the additional sensor reflection panels you recommended for fear that even after we take pains to integrate them, too close of an inspection would tip off TCFE to our differences.”
“I’m not concerned with the vessel blending overall. Bulwark-class ships comprise twenty percent of the current flotilla around Aphendrika. They all should have been decommissioned halfway through the war, given their relative obsolescence, and replaced with the newer Pikeman-class. But the politicians representing the refit stations where they were undergoing modern conversions lobbied for an extension that won’t expire until a decade from now.” Kiel shook his head at the mishmashed politics inherent in a so-called “free society.” It led to opportunities like that. “I see your point, however. We can save the sensor reflection panels for our own craft.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Corriveau exhale. His reactions were far more satisfying than Ferenc’s bland indifference.
“Things are proceeding well,” Kiel continued. “I’ll have the rest of the weapons ready for you in a week or so. Much depends upon how quickly I can find smugglers and refill the order.”
“Well, yes, and this will only work if you can anger the Coalition to the point where they’re willing to take rash action,” Corriveau muttered. “The damned capitalist pigs are too busy licking their wounds and bragging about how well they defeated us to care about anything else.”
“You’re wrong there, Corriveau. They care too much—even the elements of their government, which are doing their best to remain aloof and logical throughout this ‘crisis,’ as the news has deemed it.” Kiel smiled thinly. “Images of the people suffering down on Aphendrika play poorly with the public, no matter whether they want the refugees shipped back across the border or scattered among every Coalition world. Your algorithms have made a great deal of difference with our social media campaign.”
Corriveau gave a slight bow. “It’s quite simple. People see faces of individuals. The Terrans are fools for such stories. A mass of people doesn’t move them. They can’t fathom the good of society. Why, if this were the League, we would have made sure everyone had a job and was fed!”
Yes, a grueling job mining ore for rebuilding our decimated fleets and a meal of the most basic rations to ensure they could keep up their strength for digging. Kiel left his commentary in his head. He knew Corriveau came from a long line of commissars, and while he wasn’t in the same career as his forebears, he likely retained connections. Even Kiel wouldn’t want to run afoul of political officers. “Don’t preoccupy yourself with their faults. Leave that to me. I only require your technical expertise.”
“Of course, Vasiliy.” Corriveau gave another little bow. “I only meant the individualism of the Terrans is their weakness. You see it in their politics.”
“Indeed, we do. No matter how much their leaders crow about their newfound unity between factions, our actions will be the wedge that drives them farther apart.” Kiel grasped the railing as he gazed up at the ship. “And this will be the hammer for the wedge.”
10
Kolossi
Aphendrika—Terran Coalition
19 July 2464
Jackson lifted the goggles, wiping grease off his brow before it could drip into his eyes. The dual-seat skimmer with yellow pinstriping had taken him the better part of the day to fix, but he was pleased with how the job had finished. Ripping out a rusting intake and fitting in a new one—especially one cobbled together from spares in the back of the shop—reminded him of working on the family skiff back on the ranch.
Harry would critique the weld but accept the finished work. Jackson shook his head. Even if he thought he could do a better job. He grimaced at the reminder. Those details should stay pushed to the back of his mind. He was Jack Avery, skimmer mechanic, small-time criminal, not Captain Jackson Adams, CDF Intelligence. But he could play both roles with a troubled family background.
“Jack!” Salvatore hollered from the front of the store. “C’mon up here!”
Jackson shut off his torch and threaded his way past the other workstations. Mechanics had skimmers in various states of dismantlement and reassembly. He noted two of the seven were gone out on undesignated errands for Salvatore—“Parts,” Salvatore had said when he’d asked. But the bags they’d brought back the other day were far too big for the parts Jackson knew were needed.
Warm afternoon sun beat down from a cloudless sky. Salvatore grinned like he’d won the lottery. “Hey. That ride you fiddled with when you first got here? Just sold it. Even got ten percent more than I thought I would. So here’s your cut.”
“Thanks.” Jackson shook hands with Salvatore, allowing the latter to palm him a credit chit. When they parted their grip, Jackson spotted “200” in pale blue numbers on the chit. The image faded as the chit cooled from his hand’s brief contact. “Nice to finally work for a man who treats his people right.”
“I’d treat ’em better if they were more competent. Maybe you can give ’em some tips, and we’d be able to move more merchandise.”
“Look, it’s none of my business, but…” Jackson jerked a thumb back toward the garage. “Why keep the dead weight around? Seems like, with all the activity in Kolossi and in orbit, you’d have no trouble hiring replacements.”
“Too much headache. Besides, these guys are quicker on the skimmers than they are good at repairing them.” Salvatore chuckled. “Which I guess should be incentive for them to get the bare minimum work done so they don’t crash and burn themselves, right?”
“Right. Speaking of, I’m pretty good behind the controls. If you get a sick guy or need backup on your courier jobs—”
“Nope. Sorry. You’re too new. I won’t sign off on it.”
“C’mon, Salvatore.” Jackson grinned. “You’re afraid I can outride these spent thrusters you call mechanics even better than I can outfix them?”
Salvatore snorted. “You got a lotta nerve, Jack. Which I bet is why your record’s as long as a Kolossi city block.”
“What can I say? I jump at opportunities. I don’t always land. But sometimes I do, and it’s worth the risk.”
“Hmph.” Salvatore stroked his mustache. “Lemme think about it. Can’t hurt to have a backup rider, I’ll admit, but there’s people I gotta check with, you see? Meantime, you keep our skimmers selling, and there’ll be more of those bonuses comin’ your way.”
Jackson kept up his grin and slapped Salvatore on the shoulder, earning him a shake of the head but also a deep chuckle. He headed back to his workbench, nestling under the blue glare of a caged light. Two hundred would supplement his operations budget nicely—and knowing how Salvatore operated, he needn’t worry about the payment being traced. It was right off the top, skirting taxation.
“Better not spend it all in one place, Echo One.” Brant’s voice filtered through Jackson’s implant. “I’ve got Salvatore’s comms cracked. Let’s leave out the sordid details of his network chats with ladies of ill repute. It was easy enough to link him on local social media and start sharing personality quizzes. Brain-dead goon dropped enough private data he might as well have unlocked
the back door himself.”
Jackson shook his head as he took up the torch again. He lowered his goggles, and the torch flared to life, sparks spraying as he started a second weld. He couldn’t talk back to Brant, not there, but he needed the intel all the same, so he hummed a few bars of an old folk song his grandmother had taught him. She would have used the fiddle, but—
“Most of what I’ve dug up is junk. Old friends who owe him money or vice versa. Couple kids checking in on his health. No mention of a spouse. Records show he was never married. He’s got a lot of income streams for a guy who’s run a skimmer repair shop forever. I haven’t sorted them all out—still working on it. Let’s say they’re less than legal, and leave it at that.”
Given the bonus, Jackson wasn’t surprised. He switched off the torch. The weld looked good.
“The more interesting part is his outgoing messages. Lots of them are to the mechanics—not a surprise there. But these are all coordinates, addresses, dates and times. He references ‘parcel’ here and there. I’ll triangulate the whole mess and see what we can figure out, but you need to check on Euke Till—tall, rangy, balding guy, lots of tattoos.”
Jackson bent over the skimmer, putting on a show of checking the vent clearances, so he could glance toward the very back of the workshop. Euke Till was the one grumbling over an upside-down skimmer, his mixed Asian and Indian features creased with frustration. Having only been there two days, Jackson didn’t know much about him except that he was one of the guys running courier jobs on the side.
“He’s got two ex-wives. Cracking into his finances—hmm. Lots of famine, not much feast. Alimony is bad for this guy. Good news for you is he’s in one of his famine periods. There’s your in.”
Jackson triggered the contact in the beltline of his trousers, sending enough of a ping back to Brant to signify confirmation. Then he ran the skimmer through a basic startup, making sure the vents stayed clear and the hover nodule took enough power. After a few minutes, he shut it down and let out a big breath.
Euke looked up from his work. Jackson nodded and smiled. He patted the skimmer’s seat. “Gotta love when you finish one up, right?”
“Sure.” Euke went back to his work.
Jackson ambled over to the upside-down skimmer. “Flarehawk Ninety? They’re discontinued, right?”
“Yes. Not everyone wants the newest, flashiest.” Euke bent back a panel so he could reach wiring. “We have a couple of people who bring in vintage models.”
“My dad knew a guy who liked to ride one of these back on the ranch. You could really open up the throttle over the savannahs.” Jackson shook his hand. “He wasn’t much for letting me ride.”
“Echo One, Echo Home. Keep on that. He had legal troubles with his father before his passing. Courts are still finagling. It’s costing him more money—and judging by his social media, he’s fired up about it. He’s linked to Salvatore’s.”
“Your father wouldn’t want you to get hurt,” Euke said. “It’s common refrain.”
“More like excuses. He drove me nuts. Last I saw him, we were in a shouting match.”
Euke frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
So was I. Jackson stomped right over the feelings the memory brought up. He was playing a role, drawing on personal material. “Not a big deal. But whenever I get to thinking about it, I get the urge to take one of these babies out and really see how they can race, which is why I’ve been pushing Salvatore for a chance at what you’ve been doing.”
“Doing… what?”
“You know…” Jackson gestured to the bag stuffed deep in the dark corner of Euke’s workspace. “Taking a scenic ride.”
Euke’s gaze shifted there then back to the wiring. “Work is work.”
“Yeah, and some work is more fun. Some work gets you extra money.” Jackson slid the credit chip onto the skimmer’s exposed vent cowling. “Look, Salvatore won’t let me go out on one of those… scenic rides. He’s got to vet me. But he trusts me enough to double-check your work.”
“I’ve noticed.” Euke’s tone was sharper. “Everybody’s noticed. It happens sometimes with the new talent. Then they figure out Salvatore even gets tired of his favorites.”
“No worries. I’m not under any illusions anybody here’s got to be my pal. You’ve gotta ask yourself, though, if Salvatore’s wrong. I mean, your work doesn’t need my checking. I’ve seen you—good hands, good eyes. So, if he’s made a mistake about me checking you, he might have made a mistake about me not being ready to courier.”
Euke looked up again, but that time, it was toward the front of the shop, where Salvatore gesticulated as he worked on an older couple eyeballing a red-and-black two-seat skimmer.
“Let me go with you next time—as your backup. Come on, we can tell Salvatore it was our plan to give me a test run, with me to watch out for trouble.” Jackson tapped the chit again. “Take one fifty. My investment.”
His fingertips pressed on the chit until the “200” glowed.
Euke closed the panel. He wiped his hands on a rag with precision Jackson had seen of doctors or knitters, people with such skill at a craft that they never thought about it on a daily basis. They just worked their miracles. But right then, Jackson was more interested in what was going on in Euke’s brain. He would have given anything to hear Brant’s play-by-play, except reading Euke’s thoughts.
“I think… I have to consider it.” But he produced a small, battered tablet from his pocket. He hesitated with the device over the chit.
The tiny pulse of a questing signal lit up the chit.
Jackson nodded. He pressed down with his thumb and forefinger to begin the transfer then dialed down by increments to one hundred fifty. A second, long press confirmed it. “I’ll trust you with it. Let me know. I’ll send you a comm code.”
Euke resumed his rewiring without another word.
Jackson went back to his station, fingers mentally crossed, until Brant contacted him about thirty seconds later. “Echo One, he got a message from Salvatore this morning. I’m running the coordinates. It looks like a privately owned landing field with a reputation for smugglers. They bounce between fields, I should say—this one and five others. I can get a couple of drones up, and we can post Deadeye too.”
Jackson sent back a double tap—confirmed.
“Roger, Echo One. Let’s set up in person so I can update your wrist unit module. Did you pick up anything you can send me?”
He triggered a data dump from his wrist comm. It sent all the information the tiny sensor had scanned in the vicinity of Euke’s corner—including the bag. It couldn’t go into great detail, but it had enough smarts to paint with a broad brush.
“Nice work. Got spectral analysis—all kinds of boring stuff, but I think you’re going to be most happy with the traces of Orbita. Not much. I doubt he’s using. But even at the molecular level, you see some spread from carrying.”
That didn’t surprise Jackson. RUMIT had already pegged Kolossi as a major hub for Orbita traffic and usage, as evidenced by the unsettled refugee camp. That was why they’d pegged Salvatore’s business for their infiltration. He was one of several businesses CBI had on their watchlist.
“Coordinates coming back to you for the rendezvous. I’m on standby for when we do that hardware swap. Good luck. Echo Home out.”
The shop’s noise level rose as more of the mechanics took in new repair orders. Salvatore was still out front, shaking hands with the customers. Business was brisk. Jackson took out a rag and began wiping down the hotrod skimmer, buffing out any smears.
It was up to Euke whether or not Jackson would get to join the ride. He could always try convincing Salvatore again. But cognizant of the trio of packets tucked into the lining of his vest, Jackson knew he had other options.
Brant rubbed his eyes. He’d packed saline solution in one of his many pouches, but he would be darned if he could find it. Endless hours of staring at data readouts had turned the surface of his corneas into
sandpaper—or at least, something feeling like it.
Sev sat in a corner, watching a video on his tablet. Brant couldn’t make out what was said—his Russian was rusty—but it appeared to be a documentary on the trafficking scourge along the Coalition-League border. Sev seemed focused on it, his face twisted in a permanent scowl, as he dismantled and cleaned his smaller automatic pistol.
A notification lit up the corner of Brant’s largest screen. “Oh, joy,” he murmured. “Transmission number eight hundred forty-four, here we come. If I have to examine and dismiss one more delivery-drone encoded transmission…” He lost the rest of his sentence. No, he shouldn’t have any of those. His filters had already weeded out standard comms and other signal traffic within the first few hours in Kolossi. This, though—the algorithm had tagged it as suspicious because of the sheer power behind the transmission, as in enough brawn to make it from ground up beyond orbit and vice versa.
Even better, the algorithm had compared the transmission with Brant’s extensive databases and found a match.
“Looks like we got our first bit of luck, thank the Lord,” Brant said.
Sev peered over his shoulder, a blond eyebrow raised in question. “Good?”
“Yes. Good.”
Sev grunted, nodded, and went back to cleaning his weapon as the documentary droned on.
Brant shook his head and spun up a link to Oxford via a secure tight-beam transmission. “Base One, Echo Home, over.”
“Echo Home, Base One. Transmission secure. Eldred here.”
“Warrant, can you pull up those files from TFC 7791, the ship that intercepted the smuggler a couple days ago, the one that blew its reactor.”
“Roger, Echo Home. One moment… I have it.”
“They sent us their intercepts of the signals the smuggler sent out before their reactor accident?”
Eldred’s snort carried softly across the millions of kilometers as clear as if she were in the next room. “Accident, right. Vessel goes from running smoothly to blowing its stack in a matter of minutes. Border is suspicious, but those encoded signals are all the evidence they have beyond the space dust left behind after the explosion. You should already have it in the last packet I beamed.”
