Silent Order: Iron Hand

by Jonathan Moeller

  “It is possible Lord Thomas’s captors lied to Lady Roanna,” said Bishop.

  “It is,” said March. It was also possible that Thomas had wished to go over to the Machinists entirely, and concocted a ruse with a ransom as a way to disappear. It was also possible that Thomas had tried to escape and gotten killed and dumped into space somewhere. If that was the case, they would never learn what had happened to Thomas, and this entire thing had been a waste of time. The systems explored by the starfaring nations were vast, but they were only a tiny percentage of the galaxy’s hundred billion stars, and it was very easy for one man to disappear.

  On the other hand, it was also possible that the ship carrying Thomas Vindex had not filed a flight plan. March hadn’t, and there was no reason Thomas’s captors could not do the same.

  “There is something else,” said Roanna. “Four days before Captain March arrived, a bulk freighter docked and departed again the same day after unloading its equipment.”

  “What was it carrying?” said March.

  “Machine tools,” said Roanna.

  “That’s not uncommon,” said Bishop. “There is some manufacturing here.”

  “The specific kind of machine tools,” said Roanna, “were plasma drills, disintegrators rated for rocks, heavy-duty carts, and magnetic resonance detectors.”

  “Mining equipment,” said March.

  “Except there has been no mining on this asteroid in decades,” said Bishop. “Given all the illicit activity here, the one activity that has not been pursued illegally is mining. The station seismographs still work, and Ronstadt Corporation and Heitz would chase off any illegal miners. It would be too easy to rip the asteroid apart.”

  “Then the manifest was falsified,” said March.

  “It’s entirely possible,” said Bishop. “Not that hard to do, either.”

  “Then you think Thomas might have been smuggled onto the station already?” said March, impressed. He hadn’t expected anything useful from Roanna. Still, she was an intelligent young woman, and perhaps he shouldn’t have been surprised.

  “It might be,” said Bishop. “That’s how I would do it. If they’ve been here for five days already, they’ve had lots of time to set up. Plenty of time to plan nasty surprises, too.”

  “Hell,” said March. Heath gave him a startled glance, and then returned his attention to the corridor. “Which means we could be walking into the Machinists’ hired muscle.”

  “Maybe,” said Bishop. “Be careful.”

  “I’m always careful.”

  “An Operative ought to be a better liar,” said Bishop. “I’ll let you know if we find anything useful.”

  He ended the call.

  “Bad news?” said Heath, still watching the corridor.

  “Probably,” said March. “Your girlfriend went through the shipping records. Five days ago, a ship loaded with mining equipment arrived.”

  “Except there hasn’t been mining here for years,” said Heath. “You think the Machinists might have smuggled Lord Thomas onto the station already?”

  “It’s possible,” said March.

  “Then we’re walking into a trap?” said Heath.

  “Maybe,” said March, stepping to the door. “On the other hand, they might have Thomas here already. If we move fast, we might have a chance of snatching him away from his captors and getting the hell out of here before they react.”

  Heath frowned. “Is that even feasible?”

  March shrugged. “We won’t know until we try, will we?” He glanced at his phone, refreshing his memory of the map of Ore Complex 5. “Follow me.”

  Heath nodded and fell in behind March. Together they walked down the corridor and turned a corner. Twenty meters away loomed a massive set of double doors, the dull metal gleaming in the sputtering lights. March saw his own distorted reflection in the metal, twisted and monstrous.

  “Behind those doors is the main smelting chamber for Ore Complex 5,” said March. “When they dug the ore out of the asteroid, they smelted it right there and dumped the slag into space on a vector that would take it away from the station.”

  “Is it pressurized?” said Heath.

  “Probably,” said March. “Unless there’s a leak.” He looked around at the walls, noting the position of the power conduits. “You’ve got those night vision goggles I gave you before we left the Tiger?” Heath nodded. “Get ready to put them on.”

  March walked to the wall, followed the line of the power conduits, and pried open a metal junction box. Inside were a row of circuit breakers, and he flipped them all at once.

  The corridor plunged into darkness as the lights went off.

  “Ah,” said Heath. “You didn’t want any light going through the door when you opened it.”

  “Right,” said March, reaching into his pocket and pulling his own night-vision goggles over his eyes, the strap digging into the back of his head. The ghostly green image of the corridor appeared before his eyes. He saw Heath don his own goggles, the eyepieces glinting with ghostly green light.

  “How are you going to get the door open without power?” said Heath.

  March pulled the glove off his left hand. “Cover me.”

  “I see,” said Heath. He stepped back, his pistol trained in the direction of the doors, and March stepped forward.

  The fingers of his metal hand plunged into the gap between the doors, and March adjusted his position, set his footing, and strained with all his strength. A shiver went through his metal arm as it brought its full power to bear upon the doors, and March braced his muscles. If he wasn’t careful, the metal arm could tear itself free from his flesh, breaking half the bones in his chest and leaving him to bleed to death in short order.

  But he knew his limitations. The right door slid open a few feet with a faint rasp, and dim light spilled into the corridor from the vast chamber beyond. March reached up and flipped his goggles onto his forehead, blinking as his eyes adjusted. Through the half-opened door, he saw a vast chamber carved into the heart of the asteroid, easily large enough to hold the Fisher or a ship of similar size. Eight massive cylindrical machines stood against the walls, and March recognized them as the smelting furnaces used to extract the metal from the ore. Metal tracks had been installed on the floor, and here and there empty carts stood abandoned. The air was cold and smelled stale, and yet March smelled something else on the breeze.

  He thought it was a vacuum-sealed meal getting reheated.

  March raised his hand, and Heath nodded, settling into a guard position. In the distance, March saw a flicker of electric light in the gloom between two of the blast furnaces. He reached into his coat, drew out a pair of electronic binoculars, and snapped them open. As he did, he hit the record button on top of the binoculars. The device would send a video recording to his phone, which would, in turn, send it to Vigil.

  He focused the binoculars on the space between the two blast furnaces, zooming to a higher magnification level. An impromptu camp had been set up between the cold furnaces, complete with a small prefabricated building and a pair of cylindrical security drones that rolled back and forth on heavy treads. March spotted six men standing outside the prefab building, some of them talking to each other, others standing guard with assault rifles in hand. The men wore tactical vests over gray jumpsuits, and on the right shoulder of the jumpsuits, March saw a patch that showed a gray wolf’s head.

  It was identical to the symbol on the ship that had attacked him.

  It seemed the Graywolves mercenary gang had arrived on the station along with Roanna’s faked machine tools.

  March tapped a control on the binoculars, activating the device’s infrared sensors. He focused on the squat rectangular prefab building. His binoculars detected a half-dozen people within the building, though it could not give any details about them. More Graywolves, most likely.

  Was Thomas Vindex a prisoner in that building?

  March didn’t know. But it was possible.

  H
e moved the binoculars slowly and systematically over the entire cavern, trying to look at every corner of the chamber. As far as he could tell, save for the prefab building and the Graywolves, there was no one else in the cavern. March would have liked to move closer and look around, but that seemed risky. The guards were watching the cavern, and the security drones would never waver in their vigilance. If Thomas was in the prefab building, March might be able to snatch him away right now.

  He might also get himself killed.

  Once he was satisfied, he closed the binoculars, slipped them back into his pocket, and gestured to Heath. The younger man nodded, and together they moved back into the corridor.

  “What did you find?” said Heath once they were far enough away not to be overheard.

  “Graywolves,” said March. “You know them?”

  “One of the Machinists’ pet mercenary gangs, aren’t they?” said Heath. “We saw some of their ships near Tamlin’s World.”

  “They are,” said March. “One of their ships attacked me on the way here. There are a dozen Graywolves in the smelting cavern, and they’ve got a little prefab barracks between two of the furnaces.”

  “The perfect place to hold a prisoner,” said Heath.

  “My thoughts exactly,” said March. “Let’s have a talk with Bishop and see if we can hire some reinforcements.”

  ###

  “You know,” said Bishop as they stepped into Bay 93, “I thought your ship was a piece of junk, but now that I see it up close again, I see that my memory was generous.”

  “The Tiger is fast and well-armed,” said March, unlocking the cargo airlock. Though he had to admit that some of the armor plating could be replaced. “Aesthetic concerns are of no importance.”

  “And that is why you don’t have a woman in your life,” said Bishop. Heath gave them both a look halfway between surprise and embarrassment.

  March suppressed a sigh. “You have a one-track mind, Constantine.”

  “I have a healthy mind with an appropriate appreciation for the opposite sex,” said Bishop.

  “And you don’t even run a brothel,” said March, waiting as the airlock cycled open.

  “I’m far too classy of a businessman for that.”

  March tapped his earpiece. “Vigil. Status?”

  “I have detected no unusual activity since your departure, Captain March,” came the cool voice. “No one has approached the ship, and there have been no incoming transmissions.”

  “Thank you,” said March. They entered the cargo bay, climbed the ladder to the dorsal corridor, and went to the galley. Lady Roanna awaited them there, seated at the table with a laptop computer in front of her. Bishop offered her a gallant bow and seated himself, while March simply sat. Heath looked at Roanna, hesitated, and then remained standing on March’s side on the table. For an instant Roanna looked hurt, but then her cool mask fell back into place.

  “All right,” said March. “We’ve found a secret encampment of Graywolves in Ore Complex 5. The Graywolves are a mercenary company the Machinists like to use for covert ops, and we think they crept aboard the station in that shipment of fake ‘mining equipment’ that you found. They’ve got a prefabricated barracks set up down there, and it is possible they’ve got your brother inside it.”

  Roanna blinked. “Could…could we break him out?”

  “Maybe,” said March, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Vigil, the most recent video file, please. Let’s have a look and see what we can figure out.”

  The flatscreen on the wall flickered, and the recording from March’s binoculars appeared on the display. They watched in silence, though Bishop grunted a few times. The video finished, and Bishop asked March to play it again, which he did.

  “What do you think?” said Roanna once the video finished for the second time. “Is Thomas in there?”

  “Possibly,” said March. “It may even be likely. But if I had kidnapped your brother and was holding him for ransom, I wouldn’t keep him at the meeting location. I would send you the location, and once you had arrived, I would take you somewhere else to make the exchange. Less chance for you to make trouble or arrange an ambush.”

  “Then Thomas isn’t in that building?” said Roanna with some exasperation.

  “We don’t know,” said Bishop, “and there is no way to know unless we go inside and have a look.”

  “Can we do that?” said Roanna. “Could you…break into the building and look around? Or send in a drone with a camera?”

  “We could,” said Bishop, “but if anything goes wrong, they’ll realize we’re on to them.”

  “Better to take them all at once and keep them from sending a warning to their friends,” said March.

  “What do you mean?” said Roanna.

  “What Captain March means,” said Heath, “is that he wants to attack the Graywolves, overwhelm them before they can report to their masters, take as many prisoners as possible, and interrogate Lord Thomas’s location out of them.”

  Again, March found himself impressed. Heath might have been a fool with women, but in military matters his thinking was clear.

  “Would…would that work?” said Roanna, some fear leaking through her calm mask.

  “It might,” said March. “It might not. A billion things could go wrong. But it’s worth the risk. They might have your brother in that prefab building. If they don’t, they’ll know where he is. If we really get lucky, we might catch Simon Lorre. He’s either the mastermind behind this, or he’s in charge of the entire operation. And if we don’t find Lorre or your brother, we can capture some of the Graywolves and get useful information about them. There might be data inside the prefab building as well.”

  “That is all very logical,” said Roanna, “but there are just four of us, and while I am not prone to self-deprecation, I doubt I would be much use in a fight.”

  “I’m afraid it might be some time to apply some bribe money,” said Bishop. “Have you had the pleasure of meeting Station Administrator Heitz?”

  “I have not,” said Roanna, “but I heard the captain of the Fisher paying him while we were landing. Is he that corrupt?”

  “And more,” said Bishop. “Ronstadt Private Security Corporation has the law enforcement and public order contract for the station, and Heitz regularly feeds them bribe money. It should be relatively cheap to hire them for an assault on the Graywolves.”

  Heath frowned. “If these Ronstadt mercenaries are corrupt, will they not turn on us?”

  “Probably not,” said Bishop. “Heitz is corrupt, but he’s a survivor of the battle at Martel’s World, so he hates the Machinists and will go out of his way to screw with them so long as it doesn’t put himself at risk. Ronstadt dabbles in corruption, but they wouldn’t dare work with the Machinists since they have too many contracts with governments opposed to the Final Consciousness.”

  “Can the Ronstadt mercenaries handle the Graywolves in battle?” said Roanna.

  “I would say they are both equally inept,” said Bishop, “but with proper preparation, we should be able to win.” He looked at March, eyebrows raised.

  “We’d have to jam any radio signals in Ore Complex 5,” said March. “If they get word to their friends, this entire thing will have been for nothing. They were wearing armored tactical harnesses, but no body armor or powered combat armor. No gas masks. If we gas them, that will take out quite a few of them, and we can overwhelm any who remain awake.”

  “That sounds like a reasonable plan,” said Bishop. He sighed. “The bribes will not be cheap.”

  “No one joins the Silent Order to get rich,” said March.

  “A fact of which I am reminded every day,” said Bishop. “All right. Let me make some phone calls, and we’ll see what Heitz can do for us.”

  ###

  Administrator Heitz walked into Bishop’s restaurant at noon, flanked by four Ronstadt security officers. The officers wore their black jumpsuits and scowled at everything in sight. They were muscl
e-bound and looked dangerous, but March took one look at them and thought of a dozen ways he could neutralize them in the space of three seconds.

  Perhaps asking their help wasn’t such a good idea.

  “Administrator Heitz,” said Bishop, walking around the bar with a wide smile on his bearded face. “Welcome, welcome. A beer on the house?” He lifted a cold bottle.

  “Thank you,” said Heitz, taking the bottle and opening it. He took a drink, paused to admire the backside of a passing waitress, and then turned his attention to March. “Well, well. Captain March of the Tiger.”

  “Administrator,” said March, keeping his voice calm. He did not like corrupt officials, even if they were useful to the mission of the Silent Order.

  “I thought you were trouble the moment you stepped off that ship,” said Heitz. “I can always tell.”

  “I was hoping for a moment of your time,” said Bishop. “Captain March and I wish to speak to you about a business matter.”

  Heitz smiled. “As Station Administrator, I am always delighted to talk about business.”

  “Shall we have a drink in my office?” said Bishop.

  “Certainly,” said Heitz. He looked at his bodyguards. “Wait here. I assume your friend Captain March will join us?”

  “If you do not object,” said Bishop.

  Heitz only grunted, and March followed them through the storeroom and into Bishop’s office. Bishop dropped into his desk chair, and Heitz sat in the guest chair. March leaned against the wall and folded his arms over his chest, watching them.

  “All right,” said Heitz, dropping the genial mask and lifting his beer. “Let me guess. This is Silent Order business?”

  March frowned. “You know about the Silent Order?”

  Heitz snorted. “Of course I know about the Silent Order. I’m not an idiot. And I like working with the Silent Order. You know how to play ball, and you hate the Machinists, too.” He took a drink of his beer. “That, and you don’t mind a man turning a profit under the table so long as he’s loyal. Mention that to a Navy man, and he won’t shut up about it.”