by S M Briscoe
Orna’s curious gaze caught Jarred’s attention, but he did not bother asking the question she would no doubt be expecting. He had learned better by now. She wanted him to do this on his own and that was exactly what he intended to do, when the time was right.
First, he had a promise to keep.
* * *
Repairs to the Fancy Girl actually seemed to be nearing completion, at least as far as the breaches in the hull were concerned. That much Jarred had been able to ascertain on his approach to the vessel. He hoped the damaged drive had seen the same amount of progress, otherwise he wouldn’t be going anywhere in much of a hurry, which was exactly what he needed to do if he intended on moving forward with his plans. Of course, getting the ship back into space worthy condition was only the first obstacle in his path. The second, he knew, was waiting somewhere onboard.
Entering the main hold of the ship, Jarred found Elora sitting at the centralized common table. She smiled a greeting at him and he returned it with one of his own. He was glad she was here. They had a conversation of their own to finish, though it would need to wait. Right now, there were some things that she needed to hear along with the others that took precedence.
Kern emerged from the vessel’s aft end, his coveralls smeared with grease and other engine lubricants.
“Look who decides to show up once all the hard work is done,” he greeted Jarred, dryly.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Jarred returned. “I’ve been a bit . . . distracted.”
“Don’t worry about it.” Kern unzipped the front of his coveralls and slipped his shoulders out of them. “This is mostly just for show anyway. Got to look busy for the boss. The Toguai did the majority of the work.”
Jarred snorted a laugh. “So, does that mean we’re back up and running?”
“All systems ready for launch, along with a few unexpected surprises.”
Jarred raised his brow at that. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I don’t know how they did it,” Kern began, “but along with repairing half the ship, the Toguai also managed to bypass its encryption locked security protocols and opened every sealed compartment and locker onboard, along with granting access to all of the computer’s protected systems and files.”
“Really?” Jarred said, actually surprised. “Find anything interesting?”
“That would be an understatement,” Kern answered. “Would you like the tour?”
“Maybe later. Right now I was hoping to speak with both you and Sierra.” Jarred looked back to Elora. “To all of you, actually.”
“It’s about time.”
Jarred turned in the direction of Sierra’s voice and found her leaning against the archway of the flight deck corridor, eyeing him with her usual air of hostility.
“In fact,” she continued, “I would say that that it’s well overdo.”
“I agree,” Jarred admonished. “And I apologize for keeping everyone in the dark. I’ve just needed some time to sort through everything for myself before trying to explain it to anyone. I’m ready to do that now.”
Sierra’s glare remained as she folded her arms across her chest. “We’re all ears.”
Jarred wasn’t entirely sure of what had incited the woman’s anger with him, but it had been painfully obvious since his return from the caves. His assumption was that she had been put off by the regularity of his conversations with Orna and the secrecy in which they had been conducted. In her place, he probably would have felt the same. Regardless, her issues with him were something she was going to have to deal with. He didn’t have time to reassure her bruised ego. He would lay it all out for them, followed by what he was planning to do. It probably wouldn’t go over well, but he had made his decision.
“Maybe you should sit down.”
Over the next half hour, Jarred recounted the events of the previous day, from the long trek into the mountains with his Toguai guide to his discovery of the sphere, describing as best he could what he had found inside it, followed by the vessel’s destruction and the subsequent cave collapse he had only narrowly escaped.
Along with Elora and Kern, Sierra had remained silent for all of it, he assumed waiting for him to finish before voicing any of the follow up questions she would undoubtedly have. Surprisingly, once he had gone quiet for a sufficient period to suggest he was finished, she did not immediately launch into her interrogation, instead continuing to scrutinize him in silence. For a moment, Jarred thought he may actually escape the expected barrage, but realized quickly that he would not be so fortunate.
Leaning forward, her brow furrowed in a deep arch of obvious suspicion, she finally spoke. “Why?”
Jarred was actually surprised by the simplicity of the question, not knowing quite how to answer. “”Why what?”
“Why you? Why would Orna send you in there?”
When he did not immediately reply, Sierra continued. “Why is she so interested in you? Who are you?”
“Sierra,” Kern interrupted. “Take it easy.”
“He’s been hiding things from us since we met him,” Sierra argued, her eyes burning into Jarred as she spoke.
“I saw that blast burn a hole into your chest,” she said, accusingly, as though the fact somehow proved her point. “No one could have survived that. No one human. What are you?”
Jarred hesitated, but there was no hiding from it anymore. “I don’t know. I’ve always been . . . different. I’ve kept myself from facing that fact for a long time, but Orna . . . has a way of making you see things you don’t always want to.”
“What did you two talk about that day?” Sierra pressed. “What did she tell you?”
Jarred had thought a lot about how to answer that question. What he would say, and also, what he would leave out. A lot of what Orna had told him, he found hard enough to understand and believe himself. Voicing it all to Sierra and the others now would only serve to further complicate matters.
“That she had known my parents,” he finally answered, receiving surprised looks from everyone.
“How?” Sierra asked, skeptically, obviously thrown off by the unexpected response.
“I don’t know. It was before I was born. They were . . . part of something. Maybe a resistance. I’m guessing she was part of whatever it was. Before you ask, she didn’t elaborate.”
“That makes some sense,” Kern commented, Sierra shooting him a sharp look. It was one Jarred had seen before, whenever Kern had let information slip that she obviously wanted kept quiet.
“No,” she returned, sternly. “It doesn’t make sense. Regardless of whether or not she somehow knew your parents, it doesn’t explain her interest in you. Are we supposed to believe she just bumped into you by coincidence and happened to see some family resemblance?”
“Not at all,” Jarred answered, starting to get a bit tired himself of her own secrecy when it came to her involvement with Orna. “She said that our meeting wasn’t a coincidence. She knew that we would meet on Isyss and that it would lead us here, and she told me that all of you were part of making that happen.”
He hadn’t intended on saying as much, but the statement seemed to draw the desired effect. Sierra’s outrage was obvious.
“Part of making that happen?” she almost shouted. “Two good people died to get Orna to us! Not to have some family reunion and a scavenger hunt with you!”
“I meant no disrespect to your friends,” Jarred returned, apologetically. “But I did help them. I brought Orna to you. Believe me, I would have been glad to pass her off to you and be done with all of this, but despite my best efforts, that hasn’t worked out. She claims that there’s some sort of purpose to us all being here together. Now, I don’t know if that’s true, but we are here, and it would seem to be a fair guess to say that she’s planned it that way. So, I guess the question is, what does she want with all of us?”
Sierra was silent a moment, appearing deep in thought, before responding. “I think you’ve got thing’s mixed up. We’re the o
nes bringing Orna in. We sought her out. Not the other way around.”
“Are you sure about that?” Jarred replied, raising an eyebrow. When Sierra did not respond, he continued. “While we’re on the subject, I think it’s time you elaborated on just what it is you and your people want with Orna.”
“Why is it that you think I would ever consider telling someone like you that?” Sierra asked, with obvious disdain.
“You want me to be honest with you? Then you need to do me the same courtesy. As little as you may think of me, for the time being, we’re stuck with one another, and whether you like it or not, I’m holding the keys to your only way out of here.”
Sierra’s glare could have burned straight through the ship’s reinforced hull plating. “Was that some kind of threat?” Her hand automatically fell to her sidearm. “I don’t respond well to threats.”
“She doesn’t respond well to threats,” Kern confirmed, carefully.
“It wasn’t a threat,” Jarred assured them, though in a way, it was. “It was a suggestion.”
Sierra maintained her aggressive posture. “The ‘I tell you want you want to know or you abandon us here’ kind of suggestion?”
“No. The ‘It’s in all of our best interests to cooperate with one another’ sort of suggestion.”
“Oh, really? Because it sounded a lot more like the first one to me, and in that one, it would seem that your interests are the only ones being served.”
“Yeah, I have to agree with Sierra on that,” Kern added. “It sounded a lot like the first one to me too.”
The conversation was going astray and Jarred made his best effort to sound calm and reasoning, despite his growing agitation. “Nobody is being abandoned, alright.”
“Oh, I already know that,” Sierra challenged, flatly.
Jarred let the remark pass, not wanting to feed her temper with a lot of aggressive remarks. “The truth is . . . I need your help as much as you need mine. If we’re going to work together, I need you to be straight with me.”
After a moment of stubborn silence from Sierra, Kern spoke. “He’s right, Sierra.”
“What?” she exclaimed.
“It’s because of him that Orna’s come this far and that we weren’t all captured in Trycon. I think we owe him an explanation.”
Sierra glared at him, but folded her arms in a gesture Jarred took to mean she had finally relented on the subject.
“Orna has been communicating with our people from deep within the Sect,” Kern began. “She’s been feeding us sensitive information for some time. Helping us to stay a step ahead of the Dominion. Three weeks ago, she communicated that her position had been compromised and our people made the call to extract her. Kam and Meera were the operatives assigned to get her out. They disguised themselves as a family and made transport on various refugee freighters to eventually rendezvous with us in Trycon. Somewhere along the way they were found out.”
“Now it’s our job,” Sierra cut in, “to complete the mission and get Orna safely back to our people. I won’t let anyone stand in the way of that.”
“I don’t plan to,” Jarred assured her.
She continued to scrutinize him. “You said you needed our help. What did you mean?”
Jarred took in a breath. He needed to sell this, because in truth, he really couldn’t do what he was planning without them. He chose his words carefully. “Orna has . . . revealed some things to me. Things about my family and myself that I need to . . . explore further.”
“We don’t have time to help you research your family tree,” Sierra interrupted, sounding and looking impatient.
“I’m not asking you to. It’s something I’ll do on my own when all this is over. What I need from you is something much more immediate. Once it’s done, I’ll drop you and Orna wherever it is you’re taking her, we’ll part ways and you’ll never have to see me again.”
“As tempting a proposition as that is-” Sierra began.
“I think we both know,” Jarred interrupted, “that it isn’t a proposition. There’s only one solution to both of our problems . . . and this is it.”
Sierra drew her sidearm in a smooth and practiced movement, aiming the barrel at him for a quick hip shot. “Are you sure about that?”
Jarred remained calmly still. “Very.” Both Kern and Elora grew visibly tense.
“Maybe you can take a point blank shot to the chest,” Sierra commented, cooly, “but I’m betting one to the head would be a different story.”
Jarred kept his face deadpan. “Don’t miss.” It was a direct challenge, but he had come to the conclusion that it was the only way to get through to the woman. She was a fighter. She respected strength. It was a risky approach. She had a lock on him, and he was fairly certain she would have no qualms about pulling the trigger, but he had run out of options. He needed to push her.
“Take it easy,” Kern cautioned, raising a defensive hand to Sierra. “Let’s hear him out.”
Sierra kept her glare on Jarred, seemingly contemplating whether she should take Kern’s advice or just burn a hole into the space between his eyes.
“Alright,” she said, finally, not lowering her weapon. “I’m listening.”
“Like I said,” Jarred began, giving Kern a nod, “after you’ve helped me, I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
“After we’ve helped you?” she clarified.
“That’s right.”
Sierra’s eyes narrowed, apprehensively. “Helped you to do what, exactly?”
Jarred’s focus shifted towards Elora, his eyes locking with hers. He had made her a promise. One he intended to keep. He owed her that much.
“I’m going after Ethan.”
Chapter 27
“Well, I'll say this much,” Kern commented from his seat in front of one of the flight deck’s control terminals, Jarred and the others seated around him. “Whoever you stole this bird from sure wasn’t playing around. They’ve got enough firepower stowed away to equip a small army. They also had access to some very cutting edge tech. Top of line defenses; we’re talking military grade armaments and shielding; advanced sensor relays and a long range comm package with crypto beyond anything we’ve got. And that’s just the beginning.”
Jarred couldn’t say that he was surprised, considering who he had borrowed the ship from. He would have expected no less from the personal transport of the system’s top crime boss.
“Unfortunately,” he began, “it’s going to take a whole lot more than just firepower to get us past whatever Durak’s got out there looking for us.”
“Which brings us to the crown jewel,” Kern answered, turning back to punch commands into the control console. “This ship has a second power core, and for the life of me, I hadn’t been able to figure out why . . . until the Toguai broke through the computer lockouts.” A new control readout came up on the station’s display screen. “It seems the previous owner had some kind of advanced stealth generator installed.”
“A stealth generator?” Jarred echoed, curiously, eyeing the status readout on the monitor.
“That’s not odd in and of itself,” Kern continued. “Though cloaking tech has mostly been aimed towards the concealment of stationary structures, I have seen some experimental models installed on smaller ships. The difference here is that even in those cases the stealth generators can only be activated on the vessels once they’re powered down. One, because of the generator’s high power consumption, and two, because the stealth field can’t be maintained while the ship is mobile. This one seems to be the exception. I don’t know who built it, but he-” He shot Sierra and Elora a quick look over his shoulder. “-or she . . . was a certified tech wizard. The power output on your garden variety stealth generator is through the roof. This one is minute by comparison. And the generator is actually tied directly into the main propulsion drive.”
“Meaning?” Jarred asked, starting to get lost.
“Meaning . . . it was designed to remain cloaked
while mobile.”
That did surprise Jarred. “A fully mobile stealth generator? Does it work?”
“Well, that remains to be seen,” Kern returned. “But from what I can tell, it looks to be fully functional. I’ve run a few tests and the field successfully cloaks the ship and masks its active power signature. By all measures, it should render the ship invisible to the eye and outside sensors, as long as our power output stays out of the red.” He indicated the power readout on the display screen, measured in a standard colored status bar, running from safe green through yellow and ending in critical red.
“What’s our threshold?” Jarred asked.
“This is just a guess on my part,” Kern answered. “We won’t know for sure until we fully test it, but I’m thinking, along with the main life support systems, we should be able to run the propulsion drive at cruising speed with the cloak engaged. Anything faster than that and we’d probably break the threshold.”
“So, no weapons,” Jarred concluded.
“No. Power output is too high. The cloak would probably fail, but without a doubt we’d be a bright shining light to any nearby sensor equipment. Again, this is all speculation on my part. We won’t know for sure until we try.”
“It’s a big gamble,” Sierra commented, warily.
“I don’t think so,” Jarred returned. “The previous owner wasn’t the gambling type. And he would have had access to tech like this.”
Sierra was scrutinizing him in her usual way and he knew that he wouldn’t be able to hide this particular secret any longer.
“I think it’s time we knew just who this previous owner was,” she stated, more than asked.
Jarred took a breath, hesitating a moment, or stalling for time, he wasn’t sure which. Seeing no delicate way of disclosing the answer, he simply blurted it out. “Arden Taliss.”
The moment of stunned silence that followed allowed him to prepare for the coming outburst.
