Behind Enemy Lines (Empire of Bones Saga Book 7)

by Terry Mixon

  “I get that,” Carl said. “We still have five days before Talbot finishes removing the prisoners from the Dresden orbital. If you don’t mind, I’ll start using my probes on this side of the multiflip point and see if there’s any overlap in destinations. I honestly don’t expect to find much, but we should look.”

  “That’s a good idea,” she agreed. “I think we can assume the Pandorans won’t see us all the way out here. Let’s poke around the multiflip point and map out the places it leads. It’s conceivable that one of the links will provide us with something useful.”

  She sent him back to his console just as Angela came out of the lift. The tall marine had gone to get sandwiches for the bridge crew. Something they all appreciated.

  Her executive officer handed her a small pile of them. “Here you go.”

  Kelsey accepted the plate gratefully. “Thank God. I’m starving.”

  When she’d taken the edge off her hunger, she focused her attention on Angela. “I’ve decided that we’re going to flip back to the system with the orbital for a bit. I think it’s time to send you to Audacious for the next implant procedure.”

  Her tall friend scowled. “Seriously? We just brought my boyfriend on board, and you’re sending me off?”

  Kelsey laughed. “You’re not going to be getting frisky for a bit. You might pull something important off him.”

  The marine snorted. “Don’t tell him that, or I’ll never get any. Kelsey, we’re in an alien star system hunting for potentially hostile ships. I hardly think this is the time to remove your executive officer from the equation.”

  “I think it’s pretty safe to say that we’re not going to run into anyone in this system. While it does have at least two regular flip points, there’s no sign that the ghosts visit on any regular schedule, and this is obviously not one of their home systems.

  “If you want to become a full-blown Marine Raider, you’ve got to keep going with the procedures. This next one is for your legs. Once Doctor Zoboroski finishes, you can come back. As my executive officer, you can do your job sitting down.”

  That didn’t seem to make the marine any happier. “If I have to move somewhere, I’m going to fall on my face. I saw you after your procedure. It’s going to take me days to figure out how to walk again, isn’t it?”

  “Probably,” Kelsey agreed. “That still doesn’t change anything. It’s not going to be as bad as you think, Angela. I had to recover from everything all at once and had no one to guide me through the process. You do.

  “By the time we’re ready to leave this system, you’ll have recovered to the point where they can do the left half of your torso. You’re almost there. Don’t keep looking for excuses to put it off.”

  Angela scowled. “Yes, ma’am. I don’t have to like it, though.”

  Kelsey smiled a little. “I think you’ll like it just fine once you’re done. Imagine what a badass you’ll be. You’ll be able to tie me into a pretzel when we spar.”

  The marine smiled. “You sure know how to make a girl feel better.”

  Annette edged carefully into orbit around the planet Princess Kelsey had dubbed Pandora. The probes hadn’t discovered any artificial satellites, but she needed to be cautious.

  After half an hour, her fighters had circled the globe several times and determined there was nothing outside the atmosphere. That certainly confirmed the Pandorans were primitive, relatively speaking.

  She passed the information to Persephone. Nobody down below was going to detect the larger ship, so they could come in and get a better idea of what they were dealing with.

  While Annette waited for the ship, she set her people to doing a visual inspection of the planet. She wanted to have a high-resolution map by the time the princess arrived.

  Annette focused her attention on the strangely shaped city she’d observed through the probes. As it was in daylight now, she was able to see what made it look so odd.

  It wasn’t a city at all. It was a debris field.

  The strange layout of the lights she’d seen at night was because they’d set up a number of small encampments around what was obviously the wreckage of a crashed ship.

  A quick check confirmed that it wasn’t broadcasting a distress beacon. It had been there a while and must not have had an operational fusion plant.

  They’d need to send drones into the atmosphere to see just what was happening, but it certainly appeared as though a lot of people were combing through the wreckage, based upon the number of buildings.

  Annette didn’t see any intact sections, so she couldn’t identify the ship’s class. It was obviously a big one. Significantly larger than Persephone, for sure.

  The Marine Raider ship was the only Old Empire ship they’d found that was even capable of landing on a planet. Anything that produced this much debris shouldn’t have been in the atmosphere in the first place.

  She started estimating the amount of wreckage. The ship below was at least a heavy cruiser. Perhaps even a battlecruiser.

  Based on how contained the wreckage was, someone had managed to keep it together most of the way down. Otherwise, the wreckage would be scattered across many square kilometers.

  Annette zoomed the resolution on the probe as far as she could. It felt like she was sitting about ten kilometers up.

  The locals were definitely scavenging. A number of large tents surrounded the wreck, and Annette could see people carrying objects into them. A larger ring of permanent structures surrounded them.

  Since people didn’t build cities in a week, this had been going on for a long time. Years, certainly. Probably decades.

  Annette finally broke off her examination when Persephone pulled into orbit hours later. She signaled the Marine Raider ship, and Princess Kelsey answered.

  Using her implants to communicate made it seem as though she were standing in front of the other woman.

  “What have you got for me?” the princess asked.

  She laid out everything she’d found.

  “That’s a big ship,” Annette said when she was done. “I have difficulty believing they intended to take her down to the surface. Whoever landed her was one hell of a pilot.”

  The noblewoman looked skeptical. “Landing? No one walked away from that.”

  “That’s one of the things you learn as a pilot, Highness. Sometimes you don’t walk away. That doesn’t negate the skill that got them close.

  “The locals seem to be scavenging equipment. Based on the number of buildings and the nature of the wreckage, I suspect it’s been down there for decades.”

  Princess Kelsey looked at the view screen in front of her. “The computer is doing some estimations based on the amount of wreckage. It’s tentatively identifying it as a battlecruiser. I can’t begin to imagine how long it would take a primitive group to strip something that size.

  “They certainly didn’t figure out how to use the communications gear in a decade or two. Not unless somebody survived to show them how it was done.”

  Annette couldn’t imagine anyone had directly survived the crash, but she supposed it was possible. Miracles did occasionally happen.

  “I suspect any survivors abandoned ship via escape pods before the crash,” she said. “That would get a lot of people clear in a hurry. Someone obviously stayed on board that ship right up until the very end, though.”

  The princess nodded. “We’re not picking up any distress beacons, so whatever happened took place a long time ago. The pods aren’t good for more than a few months of power, but the ship would still be transmitting if any of the fusion plants survived.”

  “No chance of that,” Annette said. “They probably killed most of them before they entered the atmosphere. A crash like this would’ve blown them for sure.”

  “Head back home,” the princess ordered. “It’s going to take a while for the probes to give us a more comprehensive picture. You might as well be comfortable while they do it.”

  “Aye, ma’am. We’re on our way
.”

  Annette sent a signal to her people, and they all turned toward Persephone. It would be good to get out of the cockpit, take a hot shower, and get something to eat. By the time she felt human again, they’d have a better idea of what kind of situation they were dealing with.

  24

  Veronica was just finishing her unappetizing ration bar when Graham rapped his knuckle on the open hatch to her new quarters. She held up a finger while she finished chewing the last bit and swallowed it. She followed that up with a long drink of cold, fresh water.

  “What have you got for me, Graham? If it’s better food, you have my complete attention.”

  The young engineering officer laughed. “If only we were so lucky. No, I’m afraid we’re stuck with these nasty ration bars for the time being. You have to wonder, why can’t anyone make survival rations that actually taste good?”

  “It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe,” she allowed. “I take it you have something interesting for me.”

  “You could say that. I’ve gotten into their main computer.”

  She straightened. “Are you serious? That’s great!”

  “I won’t bore you with all the technical details, but suffice it to say, someone wasn’t as conscientious as they should’ve been with password security. Once I gained access, I managed to compromise the system administrator’s login. Sloppy. They should be ashamed.”

  Veronica laughed. “I’m not going to complain about someone else’s failure when it suits our needs. Have you found anything interesting?”

  He shook his head. “I literally just finished cracking the system administrator’s account. I figured you’d want to know right away.”

  She stood. “You’re damned right. Let’s go see if we can find something interesting.”

  They’d been in the abandoned facility for five days now. She’d stayed on the cutter the first night. That convinced her to clean up some of the abandoned quarters. She still wasn’t satisfied with the level of cleanliness.

  Still, it could’ve been worse. Candace Wells—her helm officer—was splitting her time between her quarters and Justine Bandar’s. The haughty woman was running her ragged, and Veronica knew the quiet officer was ready to strangle the harpy.

  Graham led her deeper into the base. They’d restored one of the lifts to service. It beat using the stairs.

  The computer center was at the lowest level. Whoever had built the base had decided it was best to put it right next to the fusion plant. Probably so they’d be certain of destroying it, if they decided the facility had to go.

  It turned out her young engineering officer had done a much better job of cleaning out his workspace than she had her quarters. The room was spotless.

  She looked around in amazement. “How the hell did you find enough time to clean this place and break into the computer?”

  He frowned at her. “I used the cleaning bots.”

  Veronica put her hands on her hips and gave him a flat stare. “You have the cleaning bots working, and you didn’t tell me? I’ve been busting my ass to get my room in half-decent shape.”

  “I thought I’d told Commander Fuller. Maybe I only dreamed I did. You should probably take some of them back to your room.”

  “Graham, you’re exasperating. Get your head out of the computer innards and think of other people.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. I’ll try to do better.”

  He gestured toward the computer console. “I’ve taken the liberty of adding all of us to the system. You have complete access to everything. The only thing that I’ve restricted is the computer security protocols. For safety sake, I decided to disable them. We wouldn’t want to wipe the system by accident.”

  She sat at the console. “No, we wouldn’t.”

  Veronica used her implants to access the computer. It readily opened for examination. She initiated a search for classified files.

  That brought back a lot of hits. The computer was packed with classified information, at least as far as the people who’d built it were concerned.

  The first thing she did was to search for a listing of ships associated with the task force. She found it in the logs created by a Commodore Sanjay. A side query indicated that she was the commanding officer of the task force that had escaped and built this base.

  It seems that she’d escaped the revolution with quite a few ships. Three battlecruisers, six heavy cruisers, nine light cruisers, and fourteen destroyers. Quite a strike force.

  They’d been escorting a motley mix of civilian vessels packed with refugees. There was a long listing of the ships, but there was no rhyme or reason to them. They’d probably grabbed every bit of shipping that could hold people when they ran. All told, they’d shepherded almost a hundred civilian vessels.

  None of which they’d left in this system. Except for an old cruise liner that they’d been doing some type of experimentation with.

  She frowned. It took her several minutes to locate the file with information about the modifications done to the cruise liner. It proved unexpectedly enlightening.

  Sanjay’s task force and the civilians under her protection had escaped the Empire through an unknown kind of flip point. One that turned out to be very difficult to detect.

  One of the scanner officers had found the anomaly in the system nearest Dresden. They’d risked sending a probe through and found this system. The one containing the planet she was standing on.

  They’d named it Icebox. Apparently, they’d arrived in deep winter.

  She’d have to figure out what they’d done here at a later point. Right now, she was just concerned with why they’d modified the cruise liner.

  The answer made her laugh. It turned out the anomaly was a one-way ticket. Once they’d arrived, they’d been unable to leave. The system hadn’t contained any regular flip points, either.

  After quite a bit of research, they’d modified the flip drive on the cruise liner to attempt a transit back to the system they’d fled. It had failed to transit and burned out the flip drive.

  Well, that explained why they’d left the ship in orbit. Where had they gone? Had they finally figured out how to use the anomaly? Had they built this place only to return home and die in some unknown battle?

  She spooled to the end of Commodore Sanjay’s log. That entry was more than two decades after they’d arrived at Icebox. It followed the previous entry by six years.

  The commodore had left a brief note that she was leaving a repository of classified files on the computer at this base—which they’d apparently abandoned at some point—and was putting it into hibernation before they left the system.

  Veronica searched the commodore’s files and found the most recent dispatches. She’d expected to find that they’d perfected a device to modify their flip drives. What she found was far more unexpected.

  Apparently, they’d never managed to go back through the anomaly. Instead, they’d settled this planet and built a city down on the coast below the volcano. Shortly before Commodore Sanjay made her final entry, they’d discovered a flip point in this system. One in a location they hadn’t expected.

  She blinked and stared at Graham. “I think I found us a way out.”

  “Seriously?” he asked. “That’s great.”

  Veronica smiled wryly. “We’ll see. It turns out there’s another flip point in this system. One our captors probably don’t know about.”

  He scratched his head and gave her a quizzical look. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s not positioned where they’d expect to find it. That gives us an opportunity.”

  Raul was washing his face when Veronica caught up with him. She started to say something but stopped and took a closer look at his face.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  He smiled ruefully. “Believe it or not, I was attacked by one of the prisoners.”

  She swore. “I knew this was going to happen. It was one of the marines, wasn’t it?”

  “J
ustine Bandar. It turns out she’s not pleased with the quarters we’ve provided for her.”

  Veronica blinked. “Seriously? She hauled off and popped you?”

  “Thankfully for my ego, no. However, she has a stellar throwing arm.”

  To his chagrin, Veronica started laughing. He didn’t blame her. It was ludicrous.

  Once she’d laughed herself out, he drew himself up with all the dignity he could muster. “If we’re finished—and by we, I mean you—what brings you by?”

  She smoothed her expression, but he could still see the humor dancing in her eyes. “I just wanted to let you know that Graham managed to access the base computer. Obviously, we’re going to have a lot to go over, but I found something I think you need to know about.”

  He stiffened, his bruised face forgotten. “You have my full attention.”

  “I found the log belonging to the task force commander who built this base. A Commodore Sanjay. It turns out she and her ships were here for several decades before they left again. That’s because they couldn’t go back through the anomaly that led them here, and there were no other flip points in this system.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “So, her people figured out how to go back through the anomaly? Why did it take so long?”

  “They never figured out how to go back through the anomaly,” Veronica said. “It proved to be a one-way trip. They did, however, discover a flip point that they’d missed in their initial examination of the system.”

  “Another anomaly? What do we know about them?”

  “A regular flip point, actually. They missed it because it’s positioned far beyond the orbit of the outermost planet.”

  He digested that information for a moment. He didn’t serve as a ship’s officer, so he wasn’t familiar with the normal layout of flip points. “And that’s unusual?”

  “Unheard of. Regular flip points sit between the habitable zone and about the middle of the outer system. The one we’re talking about here is significantly farther out. Even a ship going out to the outermost planet—for which there is no conceivable reason—wouldn’t have detected it.”