To Touch the Stars (Founding of the Federation Book 2)

by Chris Hechtl

  Those series of realizations came within milliseconds as she sidelined the efforts to track Shadow in the net directly. She checked herself, then for the first time realized what the expression. “Felt like kicking myself” meant. By looking indirectly at the AI, where he had to go, it would drastically reduce their search criteria.

  She alerted Trevor Hillman as well as the authorities investigating him as she narrowed down where he could be. Where he had to be to continue functioning. His preference was for North America, and he liked certain climates and conditions so she limited her search to those areas. Throw in the need for a very powerful net connection, one that was a direct line not a Wi-Fi and it narrowed the field. If they focused on organizations with a lot of data use, they might get lucky. He had to have a lot of processors, so that meant computers. That meant he was not only using a lot of energy, but also throwing out a lot of heat. She put colleges at the top of the list.

  In the meantime she had a lead on Mister X, the lead saboteur on One Earth's payroll. It was time to end his career.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brandon realized company security was on to him when he went into his quarters. Everything was still there, but they were slightly out of place, not quite where he remembered it. A slide show photo display on his tiny desk was knocked over. His bed was partially made. His pillow was fluffed. He frowned thoughtfully as he went into the bathroom.

  As he went pee he looked around the room. His toothbrush was still there as was the soap and shampoo. He preferred a water shower over ultrasonics; the ultrasonics set his teeth on edge and still left him feeling dirty afterward. His assumed identity as Blake Howard kept him on edge.

  Years ago he'd quit the company thinking he was done. But One Earth had sucked him back in. He really didn't care about the cause; he just liked screwing with people. Hannah … his fists clenched briefly as a wave of anger rose through him. The pee splashed and an alert sounded.

  “Yeah yeah, aim,” he muttered, finishing up. He didn't bother to wipe it up, the damn bot could get it later. If there was a later, he thought. He had had plastic surgery to change his looks. The One Earth medics had even changed his fingerprints but his DNA couldn't be changed. Instead they'd used nanites to alter the blood he'd given during his re-entrance to someone else.

  He glanced at the toothbrush again, then the comb. Both were slightly out of place. He picked up the toothbrush and looked in the mirror as his fingers played over it. Again he preferred old school over ultrasonics. This brush had nylon bristles that should have been worn with age. Instead they were new. That told him all he needed to know.

  He turned and grabbed his jacket as he walked out of the tiny apartment. If they had the DNA, it would only be a few moments with a database for them to confirm his identity. Somehow they must have found him out or that last hack had exposed him. It couldn't have been Prometheus; he'd only had a small hand in that, getting the second drink on board and in what's-his name's quarters.

  He felt like a hunted animal, there was no way he could escape the facility. But he decided that he'd show them what a cornered animal could do. Grimly he smiled as he made his way to the foreman's quarters. They'd hurt, hurt worse than they'd ever known. The systems he had access to wouldn't do what he had planned, but it would do enough if he played his cards right.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  “He's on the move,” Elliot said, observing the suspect from down the corridor.

  “We're watching him,” Charlie Caesar said gruffly from his office. He had been roped back into the company by Roman. The bastard was right, sitting around “retired” sucked. A person had to have a hobby, something to do. His cold brown eyes watched Brandon Simpson as he moved through the corridors.

  “I thought he was off shift?” Elliot asked. “He didn't get a call. And I didn't see any invites in his email,” he said.

  “He could be going out for a beer?” Charlie suggested.

  “Is he social? I didn't see that in his file,” Elliot replied.

  “I'm not sure. He's headed to his foreman's quarters. We don't have that rigged with cameras like his quarters.”

  “Could he be in on it?” Elliot asked, marking the foreman down as a suspect. Everyone who had any sort of contact with Simpson would be marked as a suspect.

  “Don't know. Now shut up and don't let him know you're tailing him,” Charlie replied with a growl.

  “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” Elliot replied tartly as he pushed the mop bucket along. He paused occasionally to spot swab the deck, always with his head down but to one side to avoid causing a road block in the narrow corridor.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Joe looked up in surprise when Blake entered his room unannounced. “What's up?” he asked tiredly. “And don't tell me a transfer,” he said sourly.

  “No, not really,” Blake replied, surveying the room. He immediately found what he was looking for, Joe's hunting knife. The guy had it lovingly strapped in its sheath on a plaque under a picture of an elk he'd killed. “I've got a problem,” he said as Joe turned his back on him to get dressed. His hand reached out, steady as a rock as he pulled the knife out of the sheath.

  “Oh?”

  “And now you do too,” Blake/Brandon said, slitting the man's throat as he turned back to him. It was surprisingly easy he thought as he turned away from Joe as the other man clutched at his ripped out throat. Joe tried to reach the door but he knelt on the other man's back until he stopped twitching. He cleaned the knife and rubbed blood off his face. “Shit. Now I need another shower,” Brandon muttered.

  He looked around the room and found the items he'd come for. Joe's tablet and uniform. “Time to get to work,” he muttered, pulling his clothes off.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  “Do we have anything in that room? Heat signatures? Anything?” Elliot demanded. He was nervous, feeling exposed. He hated that feeling. He shouldn't linger, he should move further down the corridor but something told him something was wrong. Every instinct told him to go in, but their orders were to watch and observe, not to interfere. They wanted the entire cell, not just one operative.

  He finally sighed when Charlie didn't answer and went back to mopping with his back to the door.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brandon exited the quarters with the tablet tucked under his arm and the borrowed uniform tucked in tight. He'd rolled a few socks up to get the abs and johnson right. His scent was covered by Joe's liberal cologne. He wanted to gag the smell was so bad. He'd even taken the time to shave and cut his hair. A bit of rubbing alcohol had dyed his short hair and eyebrows. From a distance he was pretty sure he'd pass for Joe. Form a distance. Up close if they got in his way … well, that was what the knife was for.

  When he was clear of the room, he accessed the tablet. He snorted when he found what he'd expected. Joe had admitted he could never remember a password and hated the biometrics. The lummox had taken Blake/Brandon's advice over a couple of beers and let him set up a password file with all his passwords in it. Now he had a free pass to everywhere Joe was authorized to go. He entered the lift and set course for the yard slip and the waiting Drake. He didn't plan to steal it, the ship was not quite finished and one man trying to fly it was absurd. No, he planned to do something else.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  “No, this isn't right. Something's wrong. Why would Joe Blow leave the guy in his quarters and just leave?” Elliot said, moving in.

  “Maintain your cover, Elliot,” Charlie snarled.

  “Bull. Something …” Elliot saw the drop of blood and immediately scowled. He hit the hatch button and it opened. He hooted and covered his nose as the smell of blood, piss, and shit hit him. His eyes watered. “He's killed Joe! We've been made!” He said, looking with pity at the body laying in a puddle of blood on the floor. There was a half smeared footprint in the blood. Obviously Simpson had tried to avoid it but he'd failed.

  “We see it from your vid link,” Charlie said, voice going cool and profession
al. “You got the call right,” he said grudgingly. “Now find the bastard,” he ordered.

  “On it,” Elliot said, following the blood trail. “Blood trail. Get someone to cut the lifts off before …” he stopped at the lift doors. “Damn!”

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brandon boarded the Drake, nodding and tipping his hat over his eyes at the guys moving equipment through the lock. He stepped aside patiently as work crews moved by, some chatting, some bitching about one thing or another.

  When he got to his destination, he surveyed the room. There were four guys in the room, a work party working on finishing touches in the engineering compartment. What he wanted to find was there, the ship's drive controls. He knew they worked and that the ship had fuel because he'd been aboard when she'd been towed out to test the fusion drives.

  Two of the guys were working on the office, running down a wiring bug of some sort. He remembered it. The other was Bret Castill he noted. The fourth was a woman. One of the guy's in the chief engineer's office left to run down the wiring bug from the other end. That gave him the opportunity he needed.

  He moved in to the first guy and pulled the knife out of his pocket. The guy was under the desk; a quick throat cut and he was moving, on the hunt.

  Bret looked up when he heard a sound and frowned. When he heard gurgling he got up from the station he'd been working on and came over to investigate. “You, Piquenio, what's up?” he asked just as fire hit his stomach. He doubled over in agony as it moved up into him, under his ribs to find his heart.

  “Sorry, Bret,” a voice hissed in his ear as he fell forward and to his left. Something yanked out of him and he gurgled, then coughed. “I didn't have a choice. Sucks that you're here. Hannah deserved better,” Brandon said. He turned with the blood drenched blade, looking for his next victim. A hand clutched at his ankle weakly.

  “Maddy! Run! Get out! Get …secur …” Bret choked out. Brandon looked down at the old man's dying eyes, lips curling in contempt. He kicked at the hand and then kicked the old man in the face. When he turned back, he saw the wide eyed woman staring at him dumbly.

  “Come to pappa, little doe,” Brandon said, licking his lips as the woman screamed.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  “Security alert! Red alert!” Charlie snarled. “Lock down! We've got a killer on the loose! Find him!” He ordered, pounding at the desk.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Athena had noted her security systems were suspiciously vague in the yard and other places. When the lock down was called, she acted. She immediately invaded Roman's files and found out about the Brandon/Blake situation and what was going on. In a second she had caught up with current events and then went on the hunt for the killer.

  Security organics were trying to track the perpetrator, but they were looking with only their eyes. For some reason they weren't trusting the computers. To be fair it was a difficult task. A man in uniform was like looking for a needle in a hay stack; everyone was in uniform. They had started at the lift and rolled back the video there. He'd kept his head down and lost himself in the crowd.

  The AI judged from the time stamp that they were fifteen minutes behind the suspect. That wasn't a problem or so she thought. She ran a scan to find him, setting up bots to track everyone who had been in the elevator lift with him. When she noted the blood, her hunt narrowed to one. “He's headed to Drake,” she warned, opening a channel to Charlie. The chimp immediately started cursing in reply.

  Athena however didn't stop to curse; she dived into Drake's systems. Most of the security systems were online thanks to Roman, so she wound back the video with a bot to watch and track Brandon while she took a few steps to check the whereabouts of everyone on the ship. She started with those people assigned to the critical compartments on the ship.

  Three life signs were missing in engineering. The cessation of their vital signs told her where to look, main engineering. She alerted security, then threw herself into the local net to see what was going on.

  One person was working on the drive controls, trying to engage a drive start-up.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brandon pounded at the drive controls. “Come on, faster,” he muttered, his face twisting in a rictus of concentration as he tried to remember everything he'd learned about booting the drive. The reactor was on standby which had made the job simpler. But there were safety interlocks preventing the drive from firing up while in the fitting slip. That was a problem. Getting around them meant some creative programming and a way to fool the ship's sensors and computer to think they were in deep space. Five more minutes he judged.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  When she realized the man's intent, Athena immediately shut his control panel down. He banged on it in frustration then charged out of the compartment through the closing hatch before she could lock him inside. There was another way to activate the drives, however, from the drive rooms themselves. She closed the hatches between him and his intended destination. When he realized what she was doing, he stopped, yanked off a hatch cover to a Jeffrey's tube and then dived in head first with the knife and tablet in his hands.

  “He's in Jeffery’s tube echo baker one nine five headed to junction four one echo and from there to the drive rooms,” Athena said, updating security. “He's trying to activate the drive to tear the ship and shipyard apart. I'm taking steps to prevent it, but you need to catch him fast,” she warned. She watched as a Neo chimp in a janitor's uniform peeled off from the pack of hunters and moved out.

  She focused on his face and then got a hit when she scanned for his bio. Elliot. She should have known. She sent him a welcoming ping. He grunted. “Not now, Athena,” he gasped and kept moving. “I'm a little busy,” he muttered to her through his implants. She put a map up in his vision, and he grunted again. “Thanks,” he said, moving out.

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brandon realized he was in trouble. Fortunately the Jeffrey tubes didn't have security cameras. They did have hatches though, but they could be over ridden by the tablet he had. He saw the blood on his hands and paused. He stared at them, then clenched his fists. He hit the bulkhead then smeared the blood there. Then he continued on.

  When he got to the junction he paused, then turned the mirror app on the tablet and used it to look inside cautiously. When he didn't see anyone standing on either side of his tube opening he sighed in relief and climbed through. Just as he was straightening up a pair of incredibly strong hands grabbed him from above by his wrists and crushed them. He gasped and yelled in pain, letting go of the knife and tablet.

  “Busted,” Elliot said, looking at him upside down. He dropped the perp then let go of the ladder he'd been holding onto with his toes. He dropped onto the perp as the man tried to wring some feeling into his hands. The man moaned as the Neochimp kicked the knife casually away, then pinned him with his incredible strength. The chimp grabbed him by the throat and banged his head once against the bulkhead. Brandon's eyes rolled back. “Damn, too easy. I was hoping he'd fight more,” he growled.

  He looked around the tight compartment and then sighed again. “And now we get to get him out of here. Joy.”

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  “What a mess,” Jack said as he read the report. “Four dead …”

  “It could have been worse. Much worse, sir,” Roman said. He was proud of his people. Charlie had hesitated but Elliot had made the right call. So had Athena. “Sir, about the perp. We wanted to follow him to get his Intel but …”

  “But we can't. So, I guess we'll have to do it the hard way,” Jack said as Aurelia came into the room. From the look of her puffy eyes it was clear she had been crying. “Honey?” He asked her.

  “I just got the news,” she said softly. “I sent our condolences to his widow,” she murmured, nuzzling into Jack's arms. He wrapped them around her. “God, I don't know how we're going to tell Hannah. Or the kids,” Aurelia said then started bawling.

  “I'll, um, get on, um, that thing,” Roman said uncomfortably. Jack nodded
as the other man retreated.

  “Hannah …”

  “Bret was a good father. We talked a few times about him,” Aurelia choked out.

  “Oh,” Jack said softly, stroking his wife to try to ease her pain. Finally he understood. “Bret Castill,” he said, closing his eyes, finally making the connection he should have seen right away. He really was getting old. “Damn.”

  -*-*-^-*-*-

  Brandon was sucked dry of information by copying his memory, then mind wiped and returned to Earth. One Earth and the civil rights union immediately logged protests over such treatment. “No trial, no rights, he was tortured then mind wiped into a drooling idiot and then dumped,” a civil rights lawyer said, clearly incensed. He had been hired by the “victim's” family to represent him in the lawsuit against the company.

  “At least he was not executed,” Alphones said, playing devil's advocate since Miss Cole was remaining silent. “Are you arguing the guilt of your client?”

  “As I said, no trial! They had no right!”

  “Didn't they? He murdered people. They have him on video doing it. They have his confession, as well as his memories. What more evidence is needed?”

  “The usage of a person's coerced confession and their own memories against them has been banned in every courtroom!”