The Fifth Column Boxed Set

by J. N. Chaney

  “Yes, provided they haven’t anticipated such a move on our part,” the AI answered.

  And that was covert operations in a nutshell. Each side trying to outwit the other by misdirection, stealth, and sometimes a big steaming helping of guesswork and luck. If it hadn’t been for the fact that Navari’s data cache had already been there before everything went to shit, I wouldn’t have trusted it.

  Even the encryption didn’t factor. If I wanted fake intelligence to look like real intelligence, the first thing I’d do would be to encrypt it. No one would ever leave hi-level data—or low level for that matter—unprotected.

  Hell, everyone I knew passcoded their personal pads as if the Union might send a whole squadron to get at their music choices. Point was, unencrypted data would have been a huge red flag.

  There was a slight chance that the Empire knew of my plans to leave and could have set up the operation on Sobek as a trap, but I doubted it. For one, I’d killed Navari, no doubt about it. Second, Dolph would have been waiting for me to make a move before we got away.

  No, whatever the Void operative had been there to do, he’d accomplished. My gut said that all the misgivings I felt had to do with Kaska. He had an agenda, I just didn’t know what it was. I hoped it would become clearer as we upset his plans.

  In the end we decided the best course of action was for Vega to take on the role of observer rather than trying to usurp control of the station. That way the computer could keep an eye out for us and hopefully avoid detection.

  We arrived at the Anquila Belt within a few standard hours and immediately noticed the increased Sarkonian military presence. From there, the Chaundra Station was only a quick jaunt, but when we arrived it was still daytime.

  As much as both of us wanted to get to the surface and relieve the Sarkonians of a weapon of mass destruction, it made tactical sense to wait. Plus, I hadn’t slept since before we’d stopped to refuel on Leah.

  Yeah, landing now and attempting an attack wouldn’t just be stupid. It would be suicide. I had no problem dying for a cause or even just a damn good reason, but being stupid wasn’t either of those.

  “Vega, how we looking?” I asked through a yawn so big it threatened to split my face in half.

  Farah, Vega, and I had planned as much as we could with the information we had on hand. Now it was time to recharge, at least for a little while.

  “Excellent, Captain. I have detected no changes in any of the station’s patterns. I do not believe we have been discovered.”

  “Solid,” I commented, crawling into bed without bothering to strip first. I’d neglected to take the sleep meds Farah had left with me as I was already struggling to stay awake.

  “Indeed, Captain. I shall wake you an hour prior to dusk or if our circumstances change.”

  “Sounds good,” I mumbled, already dropping out. Then a thought occurred to me. “Vega, can you calculate our odds for success on this one?”

  “Certainly. After analyzing all available data, I estimate a 74.3% chance of success,” the computer responded.

  A little lower than I would have liked, but still on the high side. So long as things went smoothly, we had a decent chance.

  “Would you like to hear potential points of failure?” the AI inquired.

  “Gods, no V,” I said. “What are you trying to do, give me nightmares?”

  “I would never, Captain Cortez.” Vega somehow managed to sound slightly miffed.

  “Glad to hear it,” I mumbled. “Wake me when it’s time.”

  I let the exhaustion take me then and carry me into a deep sleep.

  Four hours later Vega was easing the Second Genesis through the dusty planet’s lower orbit and setting us down a few kilometers from Chaundra.

  “Status report,” I ordered after unclipping my harness.

  “Nothing in my scans indicates our arrival was detected,” Vega confirmed. “I am prepared to access security feeds on your command, Captain.”

  “Do it,” I said.

  “Acknowledged. Please standby.”

  The computer went silent long enough that I started to get nervous. As I was about to break my silence, she answered. “Apologies for the delay. I did encounter some interference.”

  That was not the news I wanted to hear right now. “What kind of interference?” I growled.

  “There appeared to be another… entity attempting to access the feeds,” said the AI, hesitating. “From the code signature, I was able to identify it as Union.”

  Shit, I thought, groaning inwardly.

  “This just went from bad to worse,” Farah murmured.

  “Shall we abort?” asked Vega.

  “No.” I shook my head. “We can’t risk them figuring out how to make the tech work. I’m not letting it stay in their hands either. Let’s stick to the plan. V, did they notice you in there?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Good. Let me know if anything changes. Also, see if you can get a visual on our Union pals,” I added.

  “Of course, Captain.”

  “You good?” I asked Farah.

  She smirked. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  The lights in the cargo bay blinked off, shrouding the space in darkness, then the ramp began to lower. I didn’t want to be given away by a giant beam of light appearing out of thin air, should anyone be watching.

  The two of us moved like shadows, just as we had been trained. I smirked behind my face glass at the thought of using their own training to screw them over.

  It didn’t take long for us to make it to the door and we didn’t encounter anyone, which put me on edge. At one point, a pair of soldiers had been patrolling their route, but they were too far to be of any concern.

  “It’s quiet,” Farah said into her helmet’s comms. “Too quiet.”

  I agreed.

  “Vega, run another scan. Something is off here, and I don’t care to be ambushed again.”

  “I cannot scan inside the building without alerting them to my presence,” she said. “However, the area around your position is clear.”

  Farah turned to me, but I couldn’t see her face through the darkened shield of her helmet. I assumed she was waiting to see if we would keep going, so I nodded.

  She moved forward, ready to disarm the door locks, when a sliver of light caught my eye. I grabbed her arm and pointed at where it was just visible, then pulled the door open cautiously. As I’d suspected, the door was already compromised.

  “Stay sharp,” I said. “They’re already inside.”

  Almost as soon as we crossed the threshold a loud hum sounded. The lights went out, plunging us into darkness. Our helmets adjusted immediately and entered night vision mode.

  “Status?” I asked the computer through my comm.

  “I’ve lost all feeds,” Vega announced. “Power has been shut down.”

  Great, just what we needed.

  “Any idea who did it, Union or Empire?” I asked.

  “My apologies, Captain. I cannot be sure at this time.”

  “This keeps getting better and better,” I complained. “Alright, let’s keep moving and hope they didn’t send a full unit to this location already.”

  Even without Vega to be our eyes, it was fairly simple to navigate the familiar building.

  “Over here,” Farah said, calling me over to a room she’d just cleared.

  There was a dead Imperial soldier crumpled on the floor, blood pooling out from his body. I looked away, feeling an odd mixture of emotions. On one hand, he was a soldier of the Empire. On the other hand, he was only carrying out his orders.

  Just like you used to, a little voice reminded me.

  “At least we know we’re on the right path,” Farah remarked, clearly not wrestling with the same feelings I was. The damage done to her family must have really jaded her, not that I could blame her.

  We kept moving and found more bodies along the way. Some had been hidden in rooms like the first, but as we drew closer to the testing
lab we sought, they were left in plain sight.

  The Union team must have felt more at ease with the power off. The whole operation was making me edgy, but we didn’t turn back.

  “This is weird,” Farah said after checking another body. She hesitated. “I noticed a few bodies back. They’ve all been killed the same way.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Remember how I knew Navari made the kills back on Sobek?”

  I nodded.

  “It’s like that. Almost like a signature.” Her voice sounded unsure.

  “One person did all of this?” I asked incredulously.

  “I think so. And that’s not all. I recognize—”

  Just then a loud boom sounded from down the hall.

  “We’re not far behind them, move!” I hissed, then took off in a sprint down the corridor.

  The hall ended a hundred meters later, splitting into a T. A trail of Sarkonian bodies littered the way to the left and light spilled out into the darkened hallway. We were close.

  We approached slowly to the sounds of grunts and blows landing, then silence.

  “Ready?” I whispered over the helmet comm.

  “Affirmative,” Farah answered.

  I swung into the room, rifle slotted against my shoulder and tracking until I saw the figure clad in black standing in the middle of the room. They were holding a metal tube I could only assume to be the microbots.

  18

  “Put it down, slowly. You try anything and you’ll be joining your friends on the floor,” I said calmly after switching to external comms.

  From their height and build, the person looked male, but I’d been fooled before. Still, my gut said it was a him. He wore an exosuit like ours but marked unmistakably with a Union emblem. The soldier didn’t make a move for a weapon but neither did he comply with my order.

  I edged further into the room to let Farah stand next to me. I noticed she’d opted for her new bow, the blue markings glowing brilliantly in the darkened room.

  The man tensed at Farah’s appearance, or maybe the foreign weapon she was holding. He straightened then and a faint buzz sounded from his exosuit. There was something in the way he stood, an over confident swagger. In our line of work that wasn’t usually an exaggeration and I made sure to be wary.

  “Systems are coming back online within the facility,” warned Vega. “I estimate you have less than five minutes before reinforcements start to arrive.”

  “Give him a warning,” I said to my partner.

  “Gladly,” she said, taking a step forward.

  She loosed one of her new arrows in his direction, but the man didn’t flinch, not even when it struck the body closest to him. The charged projectile detonated on impact and showered the immediate vicinity with bits of dead Sarkonian.

  “Oops, a little too much power there,” she said apologetically over the helmet comms.

  If the situation hadn’t been so tense, it might have been funny.

  “The next one will be aimed at you,” I warned him. “Put it down and move to the far wall. I won’t ask again.”

  “You’re either very stupid or suicidal,” he said, breaking his silence for the first time.

  The voice that came out of his external suit comm was distorted with a computerized lilt. Probably courtesy of a voice changer in his speaker output.

  “If you hit this container, we’re all dust, sweetheart.”

  I bristled at the casual use of the endearment but kept my cool.

  “I know,” I said agreeably. “Better that than the Union or the Empire having it.” I cocked my head at him when he didn’t respond. “I’m ready to die for my mission, Uni. The question is, are you?”

  He seemed to consider that for a moment, though I couldn’t see his expression, then set the device gingerly on the ground. Raising his hands to indicate he meant no threat, the man backed away until he was touching the far wall.

  “If he moves, light him up,” I instructed Farah so that he could hear.

  A case lay open on one of the lab tables where the soldier had been standing, presumably about to load the weapon when we’d interrupted him. I put it on the floor and gently transferred the tube inside and secured it. It was more than a little terrifying that such a small item could destroy an entire planet.

  I stood then and backed out the way we’d come in. When Farah was beside me again, I set the case down and bent to put a proximity charge on the floor.

  “It has a five-minute timer,” I told the soldier. “You leave this room before that little light goes green and… well, you know.”

  “Captain, I’ve regained access to the feeds,” Vega chimed in as we left.

  No sooner had she spoken than the blare of sirens sounded and echoed through the building.

  “Hostiles are headed your way,” she continued. “I can take control of the cams if you wish.”

  “Not yet,” I grunted. “Can you lead us out?”

  “Certainly.”

  Vega took us out of the facility, narrowly avoiding almost all of the Imperial soldiers that were now swarming it. I didn’t feel the least bit guilty for leaving the Union soldier to be found this time. He’d made his choices and killed a good number of men and women trying to serve their government. Or had been forced to. Either way, they weren’t hurting anyone else.

  Around the corner from our position, two grunts decked out in combat gear stood between us and the outside.

  I passed the case to Farah and leveled my new rifle. As soon as I came into view one of them noticed me and started shouting, then raised her own weapon.

  It only took a split second to line up my target and squeeze the trigger once, then twice. Each shot found its mark, one after the other, and slammed into the soldiers’ helmets.

  The high-pitched whine of feedback sounded as the comms and helmet feeds were scrambled by the specialized ammunition. Both of the guards panicked, dropped their weapons, and beat on their respectively glitching face shields.

  Farah moved forward, auto collapsing the glowing bow until it was just a grip again, then stripped the pair of their weapons. Neither of them put up a fight while they tried to manually break the seals on their suits and pry the screeching headgear off.

  We were out the door before they succeeded. Farah checked one of the rifles before tossing the other into a nearby bush and moved in the direction of the Second Genesis.

  “They still haven’t gotten around to biolocking their weapons,” she said, disapproval thick in her voice.

  I shrugged. “What do you expect? The government’s cheap,” I replied. “We only had them because of our status and track record.”

  “I guess,” she said, panting slightly. “But attacks like this might be prevented if they invested in better gear.”

  “Better for us they didn’t,” I pointed out.

  We were silent the rest of the way back and luckily didn’t run into any more issues.

  “V, gimme a status report,” I said once we were on the bridge again.

  “I have detected major breaks in the station’s security patterns,” the AI responded stoically. “However, nothing that would suggest they know our location.”

  The understatement of her first words made me laugh.

  Farah looked at me, then the command center. “Vega, did you just make a joke?” she asked incredulously.

  “Indeed. I have been studying human interaction in order to better understand and serve you both. I learned that the Captain responds well to something called sarcasm.”

  “Hilarious, as always, V,” I broke in from the captain's chair. “Now if you don’t mind, can we get out of here before the Imperials do discover us and blow us into tiny bits? Take us back to Neblinar. We’ve got enough juice to make it there without stopping, right?”

  “Yes, Captain Cortez. Setting a course now,” replied the AI in a more sober tone this time.

  Farah and I stood in the cargo bay once we were safely inside a slip tunnel. I
’d ordered Vega to do a scan on the newly acquired weapon to make sure it wasn’t going to open from a malfunction and destroy the ship or us along with it.

  “The device does not appear to be activated,” Vega said after the analysis was complete.

  “For a computer you don’t sound very sure,” Farah commented.

  “Gotta agree, V. Your words do not inspire confidence. What do you mean the device does not appear to be activated?” I asked suspiciously.

  “My apologies, Captain.” The AI sounded almost sheepish now. “If you’ll recall Navari’s encrypted notes, the origin of this technology was unknown.”

  I rolled my hand, saying that I did remember.

  “They were not wrong. It pains me to say that I am unable to ascertain the exact nature of the technology,” Vega said.

  “So, you’re telling me you don’t have a clue if it’s about kill us all,” I said, more a statement than question. “You included, by the way. If the ship goes bye bye, so do you,” I reminded her.

  “Not at the present moment,” she admitted. Somewhat testily, too. “I assure you, Captain, I have no intention of allowing such a thing to happen.”

  I scrubbed at my face in frustration.

  Farah looked at the container with a pensive expression.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Hmm? Oh, I was just trying to figure out what we’re supposed to do with it. We’ve already determined it’s far too dangerous to fall into the wrong hands. But I don’t think we’re necessarily the right ones. And I’m not entirely comfortable with it being on the ship. Seems a bit dangerous.”

  I thought about that for a long moment. Farah had a point. We couldn’t just jet around in open space hauling something that could destroy entire worlds.

  “Right,” I said, nodding. “Can you imagine if pirates or some asshole Renegade got their grubby mitts on this? I mean, I’m pretty confident in our little team, but I’m not about to bet the whole of the universe on it.”

  “Exactly,” Farah replied. She swept a hand over the small tube then gestured at the rest of the cargo bay.

  I followed her gaze, my eyes scanning over the specialized cargo lockers. They were designed to hold a variety of substances and could withstand small blasts if needed. We had quite a few, but they weren’t limitless.