“It’s called Vinalyn,” Kelly broke the silence, “this ship.”
“What kind of ship is it?”
“A highly armored weaponized expeditionary transport.”
Talon usually didn’t get intimidated, but she didn’t know what to expect in the formidable tank. Would it be filled with a thousand marines? Did it carry missiles and darpas armed and ready for battle with the Sinupecs? The shaft elevator reached the hanger-like interior.
“Took you all long enough,” a uniformed fleet captain walked stiffly over when the capsule opened.
“Sorry, I couldn’t find my glasses,” Aberdeen apologized.
“I’m talking about finding their home base. We’ve wasted nearly two weeks.”
“She helped track down the heart and soul of one of the most elusive and wanted terrorist organizations our universe has ever known,” Talon snapped to her defense.
“Ah, and you must be Talon Terry. I’ve heard a lot about you. Why are you here?” He asked matter-of-factly.
If Talon was worried about keeping a job, she would be terrified. “I’m here because my ex-bosses feared hypothetical bullshit over my potential, and if I had followed orders and pushed papers behind a desk all day, none of us would be here about to squash these assholes. So let me know now if you’re going to lock me in a room and I’ll fly back to Cousteau.”
The captain threw his head back and laughed. “Is this true, Green?”
Aberdeen looked at Talon and nodded. “She has been of paramount importance…catalyzing, even. She is as talented as you have heard.”
“Hm. No one knows your famous boyfriend out here.” He turned to Aberdeen. “She can continue to work on this with you per my orders.”
“Yes, Captain Lancahoult,” her ex-partner confirmed.
“Very well. Come this way and we will discuss our plan of action.”
Captain Lancahoult and the other brass in the chain of command spoke of stealth and strategy, to which Talon sat respectfully quiet. She was surprised she had been given access to the meeting at all and after many minutes of hearing options she actually began zoning out.
“…send our field officers with the boys in an Alcub to confirm in case they are poised to detect us,” the director of the covert mission commanded.
Talon perked up.
“Aberdeen…,” Captain Lancahoult started to say.
“I know, my leg. You should send Kelly and Talon with them.”
Talon would be accompanying a small group in a special military Alcubierre warp-drive ship to the rogue planet. Talon could barely contain her excitement. Although their mission was simply reconnaissance, she knew the DSO could come back in a matter of days with a million-strong militia and crush them. It would be over. Technically, the same result would have happened if she had gone back to Ohmani with Kierra, but she felt like since it was a lot of her work that led to this moment, she had to be there to finish it.
Captain Lancahoult insisted everyone get some sleep. She was given a room to share with three other woman in uniform. They seemed friendly and badass enough, but the bed was calling her name. She threw her bag on the top mattress of one of the bunks and climbed the rickety ladder. She reached into her backpack and felt around for a Luminestol. When her fingers couldn’t find any more of the little night saviors she had a mini-panic attack. With a couple of forgetful exceptions, she hadn’t slept without her pills in months.
“Is there any alcohol on this ship?” she asked her bunkmate.
“Err…no.”
Talon couldn’t see the girl’s face but she could hear the judgment in her voice. Talon resorted to Levi’s mediation technique, breathing consciously to try and clear her mind. She concentrated on her lungs expanding into her rib cage, on the cold air moving down her throat and the warm air being exhaled into the stale room.
The world was a rocky desert littered with bodies. A woman tugged at her shoelace and Talon looked down at her. She had been speared and was fighting the throes of death. Talon kneeled and held her hand.
“Princess,” she uttered, “this is your doing.”
Talon jerked at the words and the lady succumbed to her wounds. Talon stood and walked into the sea of bodies. She smelled hot blood and roasting leather. This was all her fault. Where was her hair? It was all gone, sacrificed for the pain she had caused.
A screeching sound forced her attention. A large creature was running at her, slobber flying from its jowls. It had teeth and horns and scales and would eat her alive.
Talon drew her sword. She didn’t know how to use it. The beast drew closer and Talon relaxed her stance and threw her arms open.
“Talon! Talon!” a man was calling. “Remember your destiny!”
“Talon Terry!”
Talon shot up with labored breathing.
“You will not believe who we found lurking in the transporter,” Aberdeen said.
“I’m sorry!”
It was Kierra. Talon’s conscious mind realized she had been dreaming. When reality kicked in, she was grateful…and then she was livid.
“Kierra, what the hell are you doing here! You were supposed to go back through the wormhole!”
“Well,” she squinted, “Dr. Phillips came to my room after you left and…,”
Talon’s anger faded to worry. “Did that pig touch you again?”
“He kind of cornered me. He said I figured out everything and he couldn’t go another day without kissing me.”
“What did you do?”
“I used that upper cut thing you taught me! Talon, I hit my advisor in the face! His nose started bleeding and I freaked. My career is ruined like yours,” she slumped.
“So you taught her how to punch people and sneak aboard ships, huh?” Aberdeen put her hands on her hips.
Talon was more sensitive to Kierra’s story. She turned to her ex-partner. “We could really use a nerd on the Alcub if all we’re supposed to be doing is confirming the Sinupec’s presence. You all brought that ship of scientists for a reason.”
“Kierra is a citizen.”
“So am I,” Talon pointed out.
“Kierra is an innocent civilian,” she said with a stern look.
“The Cousteau was brought to B-5 whatever when we thought the Sinupec’s were out there.”
“Cloaking an exploratory research vessel and bringing a civilian along on a black bag operation are two completely different things and you know it.”
“I want to be here,” Kierra pleaded. “I can help.”
“Well, you’ve already missed your ride back so I guess you’re stuck here, but there’s no way Admiral Dutton is going to allow her on the Alcub,” she reaffirmed.
“Wait…that was Brody’s dad?” She knew he had an influential family connection but his father was a two star and now Director of Covert Operations. No wonder the little storm cloud got so many perks. At least he wasn’t here.
Talon couldn’t have been that lucky. The next day, after Kierra had in fact been approved to accompany the task force for her expertise, Brody came brooding in.
“Why are you here?” he acknowledged her.
“Because I’m still getting more points than you, daddy’s boy.” Talon hit the nerve she knew so well, and it began throbbing in his temple.
“I heard you quit, so you don’t get any more points.”
She fought to keep her inner child from coming out and meeting Brody’s. “Try to convince yourself I’m not better than you, Brody, but you’re wasting your time.”
They would be taking a personnel carrier for a full day mission to confirm the Sinupec’s were actually on the rogue planet. The reconnaissance team was small because the Alcub could only fit eight people, other than the two aviators, Kaitlin and Avery. Kelly was commander on the mission. There was a special ops officer named Asher Whitman who was assigned battle captain and executive officer, a logistics captain named Jupiter Kryst, and two other contracted paramilitary personal officers, Malay and Logan. Brody
, she was convinced, was there because of his father was a brass.
“The fabric of space is contracted in front of the ship and expanded in the back, so, even though we’re traveling faster than the speed of light, it’s not really the same playing field,” Kierra said thirty minutes later when they hit speeds faster than light.
Talon was convinced Kierra came along so she wouldn’t miss seeing her exotic matter rogue planet, which the command officially named Lataan, since Talon took too long to come up with something better. Kierra reminded her more like Fletch every day. She was a gorgeous nerd in her element and Talon could relate to breaking the rules for the passion behind a job.
After a couple of hours they slowed gradually so as not to create a detectable wave. Between creating no graviton boom, cloaking the ship, and beginning radio silence, they were a virtually invisible visitor. All navigation systems were turned off in case the Sinupec’s had their instruments poised for tracking electromagnetic signals. She watched as the temperature gauge on the dashboard rose ever so slightly as they approached the internal radiator of a planet.
Talon didn’t know if it was just her imagination, but Lataan seemed restless and haunting. With no star around, the world was almost completely black, with a hint of midnight blue. As they drew closer she could see cracks riddling its surface.
“It’s covered in ice,” Kierra said with her eyes locked onto an observation telescope.
“Ice? I thought the planet was warm?”
Kierra almost looked shocked that Talon did not understand. “The outside is cold, but the inside is not, remember? With no sun, the only thing heating up that planet is the core. Ice is a good thing. It’s probably miles thick and acts as an insulator. I knew it was either going to be ice or have a hydrogen atmosphere,” she said more to herself. “They are on the inside of it…underground, like we suspected before.”
They cruised around the planet and did not see any lights or signs of habitation. Lataan simply looked like an interstellar hermit that had never seen life.
“It’s moving away from us at ten thousand kilometers an hour,” Asher said. “That’s actually quite slow,” he added for reference.
“It’s moving away from the solar system we just left?” Talon asked.
“Yes. Most rogue planets fly pretty fast until they are pulled by the gravitational force of a sun into another solar system.”
“The tattoo,” Talon realized, “If the rogue planet is moving it has no set coordinates. They just picked the closest star and the arrow shows the planet’s trajectory.”
“So how do we know if the Sinupec’s are there?” Kelly asked Kierra. “We assumed there would be some sort of industrialization on the outside of the planet. A satellite, transportation or communication lines…something. I don’t see any artifacts of civilization. We can barely see anything. What about the gases you were talking about?”
“With no atmosphere, we can’t test anything from up here,” she explained. “We are going to have to pick up some sort of optic or radio signal. If they are underground with the purpose of hiding, I don’t think we’re going to be picking up any visual confirmation.”
“So we have to break electronic silence,” Asher concluded.
“No. We must maintain our anonymity,” Kelly said.
“There’s another way,” Kierra said, “but—”
“We’re open to any of your suggestions,” Kelly encouraged.
“I brought my survey kit. If we could get on the surface we could use my vibration sensors and audio enhancers to listen through the ice. I could also pick up focused beams of electromagnetic signals using this,” she took out a square black instrument. “It’s short range but very sensitive and it would be undetectable. Also, if we can get close to one of those vents we can sample the gas and look for industrialized by-products.”
“Absolutely not,” Kelly affirmed. His sentiment was echoed among the crew. The only two who disagreed were Talon and Brody.
“There are cloaking suits on this ship. We’re here to do a job,” she argued.
“We have the chance to get these assholes,” Brody chimed enthusiastically.
“The whole ship would have to go. We can’t risk a civilian life and that was not approved.”
“I chose to be here. Please don’t make any decisions on behalf of me,” she implored.
“What’s the other option? We go back with no more intel than we left with?” Talon asked.
“Yes, and we would prepare. Come up with something better.”
“Did your wife tell you the part about the ‘pecs planning something big? We risk billions of innocent civilians dying if we hesitate now.”
“That intel was from you,” Kelly squinted judgmentally, “not my wife.”
“What are you saying? I’m a liar?”
In a calm centered manner characteristic of any commander he said, “You’re a hothead who thinks she’s running this show.”
“I’m not a hothead, I’ve got a vested interest. You should know better than anyone on this ship that I’ve had to fight every step of the way so we can be here right now, and I haven’t gotten credit for any of this. I’ve sacrificed my time, my family, and my job so I can serve the people. I’m sorry if I feel like giving up when we have a viable option isn’t the right decision. I will follow orders, but please consider the imminent danger when looking at the bigger picture.”
“This is what we’re trained for,” Asher said, seeming to reconsider.
Kelly thought hard. He was making the risk and reward calculations only a highly trained and experienced military mind could make. The analysis included more than just orders, more than the bottom line. What was the greater mission? What was the commander’s intent? Should he put the trained, irreplaceable assets at his command on the line, for a redefined, on the fly, mission? His team’s advice was sound and he folded it into his analysis. The unit did not dare interrupt his thoughts. Then, like all true soldiers, he leaned on the wisdom of ages. Mission first, people always. The people were ready and the mission was clear.
“We will hit ground, but you will stay on the ship with base team,” Kelly commanded at Talon.
Talon nodded understanding. It was a compromise she was more than willing to make.
He then turned to the pilots. “If we are compromised, wait for orders. You are cloaked so you won’t be in imminent danger, but be prepared to dust off, return to Vinalyn, and report. They will need to prep for what’s next. It will be a bloody mess.”
Kierra gave a crash course on how to use her equipment. After a half hour of analyzing the topography, Kierra chose a region based off her knowledge, although she openly admitted she was an astrobiology candidate, not a geologist. Luckily there was only one region on the planet where geothermal vents seemed to be releasing the gases from underneath the ice. The vents were only visible when the thermal imaging feature in the contacts was activated. With no atmosphere to keep them around, the gases vaporized almost immediately into the sub-zero temperatures of space.
“That vent right there,” she pointed as they began lowering.
Kelly, Asher, Brody, and Jupiter put on the special cloaking suits while the ship continued to descend. As a military-grade vehicle, it was ominously silent as it lowered.
“Alright, we have our assignments. You will have fifteen minutes to get the data and the samples and get back to the ship so we can analyze them. This is a recon patrol behind enemy lines. Only break radio silence if there is contact and do not engage unless detected. If detected, engage with extreme prejudice and then withdraw to the ship for extraction. The cloaking carpet will be disabled temporarily when the doors are opening, so we dismount together. Hunker-down outside the ship until all team members have returned so we can mount together. Location bursts and recon data will appear in your helmet displays every forty-three seconds. Questions?”
The team followed Kelly’s lead and prepared to egress onto the surface. Kelly pressed a button on his he
lmet that sealed a latch, ensuring an airtight environment. Then he activated the cloaking device. Just like the ships, Talon watched him become invisible in a wave radiating from the center of his chest. She fought the urge to reach out and touch him just to make sure he hadn’t really disappeared. The rest of the recon team followed suit and threw the equipment into cloaked bags until they were ready for use. Even though Talon was not part of base team, they all had to put on the suits for when the oxygen was sucked out of the cabin upon exposure.
“Suit and equipment check, sound off. EO report.” Kelly barked.
“One up.”
“Two up.”
“Three up.”
“Four up.”
“All suited and equipment ready, sir.”
Then with the deliverance that only comes from expertise he ordered, “Prepare to dismount! Kaitlyn, door.”
The door lifted open like a butterfly’s wing and Talon expected an arctic wind to sweep into the cabin in a whirling frenzy. Instead the outside was stagnant and silent and she simply felt a frigid cold surprise her body like an icy blanket. The team moved with the elegance of a singularly graceful organism. Without a sound, the door lowered and Talon noticed her body shivering violently in protest of the planet’s exposure. She could hear the monotone hum of the cloaking device being reactivated, sealing them again inside their invisible Trojan horse.
A sharp energy filled the space inside the ship. The tension and danger of the situation kept them all silent. Talon’s heart was beating heavily in her chest with nervous excitement. Just as Kelly had explained, the team’s helmet’s had built in programs that would send their locations in short bursts, probably at a different frequency, every forty-three seconds. Her eyes were glued to the display and she found herself counting down to when the bright green dots would appear on the screen. Asher and Jupiter took the kit not far from the ship to get vibration readings and sound recordings. Kelly and Brody dipped down into a shallow valley to get some gas samples from a nearby vent. Both teams were in place.
An Eagle's Revenge (Across the Infinite Void Book 2) Page 22
