THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS #3 - TYRANTS_TEST

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THE BLACK FLEET CRISIS #3 - TYRANTS_TEST Page 31

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell


  tragedies do not enrage your conscience, then shame on you. If we

  cannot stand together against such a predator, the New Republic stands

  for nothing of value."

  Leia paused to drink in the utter silence that reigned in the great

  chamber.

  "In consultation with Admiral Ackbar and the Fleet Office, I have

  ordered additional forces to Koor-nacht to strengthen our position

  there. I have charged General A'baht, the sector commander, with the

  task of eliminating the Yevethan threat and reclaiming the conquered

  worlds of Koornacht. He has the necessary command authority to do so,

  and he has my full confidence.

  "We will take away the Yevetha's ability to make war on what they call

  the vermin. Not only because we, too, are vermin in their eyes, but

  because they have shown us an evil heart, and evil must be challenged,

  even though the cost may be great.

  "Any government that objects to this decision is free to withdraw from

  this body. And this body is welcome to choose a new President--the day

  after Nil Spaar is defeated and the Yevetha disarmed."

  Leia fully expected the silence to follow her away from the podium.

  But she had not gone two steps before a tumultuous roar of approval

  washed over her from the floor below and the galleries above. Turning,

  she saw virtually the entire Senate on its feet, affirming her decision

  by acclaim.

  The acclaim was not unanimous--dozens of dissenting senators had

  remained in their seats or headed for the exits in disgust. But they

  were a startlingly tiny minority of the whole. Leia stared, barely

  comprehending the miracle she had wrought. Her words had reached them,

  and moved them, and united them--for a moment, at least, a moment of

  principle over politics.

  She would have been moved to joy, but for the fact that at the end of

  the straight line she had drawn, Leia saw Han's death.

  Maltha Obex

  It was a cold day on Maltha Obex, even by the standards of a planet

  locked in the grip of a century-long ice age. A brutal storm half a

  continent wide was scouring the northern latitudes with driving winds

  and sheets of tiny, hard snowflakes as coarse as sand. The storm had

  forced Team Alpha to abandon its excavation site on the ice field east

  of Ridge 80.

  Team Alpha's cold shelters had been fighting their tie-downs' all

  night, as though eager to take flight and tumble headlong across the

  wastes. When team leader Bogo Tragett suited up to check the status of

  the excavation dome, he found the rip-proof tunnel connecting his

  shelter to the dome torn lengthwise and shredded to tiny y ellow flags

  whipping from the tension cables. Visibility fell to near whiteout

  with the gusts, hiding a bright blue work dome that was no more than

  five meters away from Tragett.

  Inside the dome Tragett found an ice-cold heater, a massive drift of

  crystalline white, and a continuing swirl of snow particles blowing in

  from under the dome's cartial floor. The heater had chewed through a

  three-ay fuel supply in something less than ten hours land then quit,

  surrendering.

  Tragett did likewise. Crossing to the supply shelter through a still

  intact connecting tunnel, he hailed Penga Rift and asked for a pickup,

  then paged the rest of the team and told them to pack whatever personal

  and team gear they could backpack or carry. Then it was a matter of

  waiting for conditions to ease enough for the expedition's

  weather-rated shuttle to fight its way through to them.

  That wait stretched to three hours, in the course of which Tragett's

  shelter broke loose from its tie-downs and was thrown against the

  upwind side of the excavation dome. Before the shelter itself had

  collapsed and torn free, it had caved in a third of the dome and turned

  the faces of two team members as white as the landscape.

  But Dr. Joto Eckels never gave as much as a passing thought to

  offering Team Alpha a respite aboard Penga Rift. He regretted the loss

  of equipment and the investment of time at N3, with no return on

  either--but there were many more sites, and far too little time.

  Trusting that Tragett would see to the motivational needs of his team,

  Eckels had dispatched the shuttle to the relatively balmy coastal site

  S9, where the dawn temperature had been twenty-six degrees below

  freezing under quiet skies.

  "We preloaded the shuttle with the entire spare excavation kit, from

  domes to bits," Eckels informed Tragett as the shuttle turned south

  instead of skyward.

  "You can draw whatever replacements you need from there. I'd say you

  should have no trouble getting set up by nightfall--be ready to go

  again first thing in the morning."

  Tragett, a veteran and a pragmatist, understood the issues driving the

  decision. "Affirmative, Penga Rift. But if that's the plan, I'd like

  to rotate Tuomis out, bring someone else down. He's been fighting

  shelter fever, and he's a little shaken right now."

  "Site setup is half outside' work," Eckels said.

  "Might turn him around, just being able to see that horizon. And hard

  work is a lot better for the disposi

  tion than lying there all night listening to the wind howl.

  Let's wait twenty and review the options when we see how he is in the

  morning."

  With the Team Alpha crisis past, Penga Rift returned to its normal

  orbital pattern, and Eckels contacted the other teams in turn for their

  daily updates.

  Team Beta was conducting a deep-water survey from a camp on a massive

  slab iceberg; Team Gamma was working the ridges above Stopa-Krenn

  Glacier in search of post-catastrophe Qella habitations and nomadic

  artifacts.

  "You have one more day to wrap things up there," Eckels informed the

  Beta team leader. "Then I'm moving you to S-Eleven. With Alpha being

  driven out of N-Three, we still haven't gotten into a city site--which

  is why I'm making that our top priority for the time remaining."

  "Understood, Dr. Eckels. No objection here--we're clearly into

  diminishing returns."

  Eckels's news for Gamma, delivered half an orbit later, had a similar

  flavor. "You have a hundred hours to find a no-fooling,

  hip-deep-in-midden habitation before I pull you off and split you up so

  we can go double-shifts at S-Nine and S-Eleven. We have all the skin

  flakes, callus scrapings, scat sheddings, and ice-burned limbs the

  Institute can use. We're not leaving here without at least a peek at

  how they lived--before if not after, and both if at all possible."

  "Acknowledged," said the Gamma leader. "Let me talk to Tia about

  yesterday's side scans. There's a spot I want her to get a second look

  at."

  "Transferring you now."

  Eckels studied the schedule on his datapad's display a moment longer,

  then stored it. He knew that he was pushing the team hard, both those

  on the surface and the analysts and catalogers in the lab. But he saw

  no real alternative. They had custody of Penga Rift for twenty-nine

  more days--after which Dr. Bromial's Kogan expedition, alrea
dy

  postponed two months, would take over. That broke down to thirteen

  produc tive days at Maltha Obex and sixteen wasted days in transit back

  to Coruscant.

  All that time just to drag our hands and brains from one side of the

  galaxy to another--the universe is an offense to any reasonable concept

  of order.

  Eckels found himself envying his client for having a ship like Meridian

  at his disposal. The black-hulled sprint that had made the pickup had

  completed a round trip to Coruscant in less than the time it would take

  the elderly research vessel to complete one leg. But the Obroan

  Institute would never invest its precious resources in something as

  ephemeral as speed.

  "Archaeology is not a race," Director bel-dar-Nolek would say. "It is

  a profession for the patient. We, who think in centuries and

  millennia, can hardly notice a handful of days."

  But bel-dar-Nolek no longer did fieldwork. The longest trip he

  regularly made was a twenty-minute walk from his home to his office at

  the Institute.

  Leaving the comm booth, Eckels started aft toward the labs. But before

  he reached them, he found himself paged over the shipcomm.

  "Captain Barjas, to the bridge, please. Dr. Eckels, to the bridge,

  please."

  Eckels recognized the voice of the first officer, who had been with the

  ship for nine years and uncounted expeditions. Eckels also recognized

  the note of urgency that made Manazar's words more than a Polite

  request.

  Turning, Eckels reversed his steps, adding a jot of haste to them until

  he passed into the crew section and climbed the triangular ladder to

  the bridge.

  Barjas had arrived before him. "Doctor," he said with an acknowledging

  nod.

  "What is it?"

  Barjas pointed at the navigation display, Manazar out the forward

  viewport.

  "Incoming ship," Barjas said.

  Manazar added, "And they don't seem too happy that we're here."

  Wary of being followed, Pakkpekatt had guided Lady Luck through a

  series of three hyperspace jumps en route to Maltha Obex. The extra

  jumps added less than an hour to their travel time, but vastly

  increased the difficulty for anyone attempting to divine their

  destination.

  Having taken those extra precautions to ensure that they would be

  undisturbed, Pakkpekatt was all the more concerned to discover that

  though the planet was dead, it was not deserted.

  "Vessel answers as Penga Rift, registry Coruscant, ownership Obroan

  Institute for Archaeology, captain Dolk Barjas. Supplementary: Length

  one-twenty-six, beam thirty-two, no registered armament, rated speed--"

  "Agent Taisden, can you suppress that vessel's comm ability?"

  "Local," Taisden said. "Not hyperComm."

  "Do nothing, then," said Pakkpekatt.

  "Colonel, you weren't thinking about taking that ship out, were you?"

  Hammax asked, his face showing concern. "That's not only a civilian

  boat, but a friendly--and from the size of her, probably berthing

  upward of thirty."

  "My concern is that we have sufficient privacy to do our work here,"

  said Pakkpekatt, slowing Lady Luck to give them more time before being

  detected.

  will entertain all options."

  "This entire expedition has been black ops from the start," said

  Pleck.

  "Why not just drop the curtain over the whole system, commandeer the

  ship under NRI authority, and lock in a comm blackout?"

  "I do not think we have as much authority here as you would like to

  presume--either in fact or in appearance," Pakkpekatt said. "If you

  were her captain, would you surrender your command to the crew of a

  private yacht that showed up without its registered owner?

  Only the greenest captain would fail to suspect piracy in such

  circumstances."

  "Okay, so when we blip in on their sensors, they're not going to be

  intimidated," said Hammax. "But surely we could get General Rieekan or

  Brigadier Collomus to have them ordered out of the system. We could

  even wait out here, out of range, until they've been spanked and sent

  home."

  Taisden was shaking his head. "Listen, I did a turn in the Senate

  liaison office. The colonel's right. Without a native population

  here, Maltha Obex is an open system, and Article Nineteen of the

  Charter applies. The Obroan Institute has as much right to be here as

  we do.

  The NRI doesn't have the authority to claim territory for itself--not

  even the Fleet has that power. They have to go to the Senate Defense

  Council for a presumptive finding of a security interest to support the

  claim, give public notice to the member nations--" "So how do we get

  them to leave without telling them who we are and why we're here?"

  Hammax demanded.

  "That's another question, isn't it?" asked Pleck.

  "What are they doing here?"

  "They are here because we sent them here," said P akkpekatt.

  That drew puzzled looks. "We did?" Hammax asked.

  "Effectively. Before the vagabond escaped our control at Gmar Asklion,

  I asked General Rieekan for Qella genetic material, and for reasons of

  expediency the agency enlisted the Obroan Institute to locate and

  retrieve it. But we now have what they came here to retrieve for

  us--they should be gone."

  "Well, then, it's simple," said Hammax. "If we sent them here, we can

  order them to leave. We just have to tell them that we're here to take

  over the operation and their services are no longer required."

  "I don't think so," Taisden said. "From the comm traffic, it sounds

  like they have at least three operations under way on the surface.

  They're not going to believe that this ship, and the four of us, are

  here to take over."

  "Doesn't matter what they believe," said Hammax.

  "If we hired 'em, we can fire 'em. And maybe this yacht

  isn't very intimidating, but everyone here knows that the colonel can

  be. That could turn out to be all the authority we need."

  "And if they don't go for it?" Taisden asked.

  "They're civilians, Colonel---even worse, scientists.

  They don't herd well."

  "Then there's one other option. Colonel, that's basically a Dobrutz

  liner," said Hammax. "I know something about the type, because I've

  spent some time in one. The Alliance had a fistful of them, pressed

  into service as small troop transports during the Rebellion."

  "Go on," said Pakkpekatt.

  "See, that ship down there has a single comm array, mounted outside the

  nav shields because of the interference from those miserable DZ-nine

  shield generators," said Hammax. "It was a known vulnerability.

  I'm sure I could take it out without collateral damage. Shouldn't

  require more than two shots. Might get it in one."

  "Thank you, Colonel," said Pakkpekatt, advancing the throttles.

  "However, I believe I will hold that option in deep reserve. There is

  something here that still eludes me. Perhaps I can encourage these

  interlopers to reveal

  The inbound vessel had remained silent until it was nearly on top ofr />
  Penga Rift. Then the first signal had come over the emergency comm

  channel, lighting up several warning bars on the panels at Manazar's

  elbow.

  "Penga Rift, this is a priority alert.. You are operating in a

  restricted area, and your vessel is at risk. Please verify your

  transponder identification profile."

  Startled out of inattentiveness, Manazar nearly sent the confirming

  data without questioning the request.

  Only at the last moment did he recover his poise and respond, "Unknown

  vessel, this is Penga Rift. Please identify yourself--this ship is not

  equipped with an interrogator module."

  "I say again, Penga Rift, this is a priority alert. You are operating

  in a restricted area, and your vessel is at risk. Please verify your

  transponder identification profile."

  As though to underline the seriousness of the request, a concealed

  weapons bay had opened on the underside of the new arrival's hull. The

  retractable laser cannon that emerged cycled through its full range of

  motion, then locked on Penga Rift.

  That was the point at which Manazar called for the captain and the

  expedition leader. Then he quickly checked to see if the transponder

 

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