So, it would be extortion. Alasdair studied the readout again, looked at the broken and twisted hulls of over twenty starships on the surface. What could one little ship do against whatever had done that? "Fine. I'll go, only because death might be a more fitting end than whatever is or isn't waiting for me back home." He stepped away and moved toward her. "But I won't let your personal vendetta endanger my life or the lives of these people, or even yourself. If it's too much to handle, we're gone. Clear?"
She was taken aback by the passionate stance he had on the matter. "I thought you didn't care for them?"
"I don't. But, for now, they're my crew. That means, no matter what, I get them back alive."
"And me?"
"You?" He then added a smirk. "Well, you're the captain."
Chapter 17
Beyond the forward viewports, as the fourth planet in the Camia system became more defined, Quinn Stone was too absorbed in his work to admire the view. His face was buried in the sensor display as he scrutinized every detail the instruments were relaying to him. Kristin watched as the engineer intently studied the screen, made minor calibrations, and then considered their output again.
"Anything yet?"
Stone's eyes narrowed. "Possibly, but there's a lot of interference near the site of the downed ships. Could be the result of radiation leakage. There’s also a weather front moving in."
"But it could be something else."
Quinn nodded. "We'd have to take the ship in closer to get a better look."
"And possibly get detected by whomever is down there," Alasdair replied.
Kristin began pacing behind Quinn. "Any chance we could avoid it?"
Quinn shrugged. "Depends on the quality of their sensors, and how many stations are deployed."
"Can you make the ship invisible?"
Quinn laughed at Kristin's question. "This isn't science fiction. You can't just make a ship like the Rose disappear from a detailed sensor scan directed at our coordinates."
Alasdair countered. "But we could alter our cross-section, couldn’t we? Perhaps make us appear smaller?"
"Theoretically," Quinn agreed. "It'd be tricky. The Rose isn't designed to be stealth in any way. I could probably make some alterations to help shield us from most EM scans, but not much else. That incoming storm might help us, too. If it’s messing with our sensors, it should affect theirs, too. Again, it depends on how sophisticated those sensors are," he finished, nodding to the planet outside of the ship. "But, any alterations I make would also affect our own instruments."
"How much?"
"We'd be practically blind until just before we reach the surface. Even then we'd be flying mostly by visual."
Thad grunted. "No offense to your piloting abilities, captain, but that’s not an appealing thought."
But Kristin had an idea. "What if we launch the shuttle ahead of us? It's small enough to avoid most sensors, but if it were detected, we could use it to distract anyone from our entry."
"But who's going to pilot it?" Alasdair asked.
"No one,” Kristin said. “We'll set the autopilot to put it down near the periphery of the downed ships. We'll land the Rose a few kilometers away. With any luck, whoever scans the shuttle won't see us at all."
"That's a big gamble," Thad replied. "If they do scan the shuttle, they'll send someone out to look."
Kristin nodded. "That's the idea. I want to know who is responsible for this. If we can lure them out in the open, maybe we can capture a few of them for interrogation,"
"We're criminals," Mia pipped in, rubbing her chest where De Lorome’s round had bruised her. "We’re not guerrilla fighters."
"I can do it," Thad countered. "But we'll have to recon the terrain first to form a plan."
Kristin shook her head. "We might not have time. You'll have to think on your feet."
Thad checked the charges on his sidearms. "Then it could get messy."
"At this point, I don't mind messy. Just keep it quiet."
Quinn leaned back in his chair. "We can use the shuttle's sensors to make a rough scan of the area as it makes planetfall, but they're not nearly as powerful as the ones on the Rose—which we can't use."
"It's risky," Alasdair said.
"It's not up for debate. Quinn, make the modifications to the Rose and get the shuttle ready for launch."
"I'm on it. I'll have to keep an eye on the power levels throughout the descent."
"Understood. Thad, you'll have to monitor the engines then. Mia, you'll take the environmental controls. Alasdair, you handle the maneuvering thrusters."
Twenty minutes later the Rose's lone aerodynamic shuttle drifted out of the aft hold. Maneuvering on autopilot, it took up station forward of the ship. Slowly, the aft engine glowed to life as the small craft headed directly for the planet.
Kristin was behind the controls of the Rose as she watched the shuttle's distance increase to a few hundred kilometers. "Alright. Here we go." She applied pressure to the throttle, and the Cobalt Rose made her way into the fourth planet's atmosphere.
"EM countermeasures are now running," Quinn said from behind her.
In front of her, over half of Kristin's displays either powered down or dissolved into static-filled screens. "Mia, reduce environmental power to the absolute minimum. Thad, get ready to power-down the main drive engines."
"Outer hull temperature increasing," Quinn remarked as the Rose began to quake under the first strains of decent.
"The shuttle?" Kristin asked.
"It just entered the stratosphere. It's on course and relaying sensor data."
"Drive engines are down," Thad replied from the engineering console.
Alasdair entered the commands into the co-pilot's console. "Maneuvering thrusters are on standby."
Forty kilometers from the planet's surface, the Rose entered a dense cloudbank. Flashes of lighting enveloped the ship as sheets of rain pelted the forward viewports.
"Range?"
"Descending rapidly," Quinn shouted. "Based on the shuttle telemetry, we should be about fifteen kilometers from the planet's surface."
"Should be?" Alasdair shouted back.
"Best guess based on the data I have."
The clouds were getting thicker, the rain more substantial, and there was simply no way to tell if their predicament would be extended all the way to the surface. Kristin wasn't going to take the chance. "Alasdair, engage the landing thrusters!"
The first officer was quick to reply. "Yes, ma'am!"
The vibrations in the hull lessened as the ship slowed its approach. Alasdair kept thruster power to a minimum until, as the final moment, the Rose broke free of the clouds. It was only a few kilometers from the surface and coming in too fast.
Kristin clutched her control tightly. "More power!"
But Alasdair had already reacted. He applied maximum power to the thrusters just in time to stop the ship from slamming into a lightly wooded forest, but not without lighting a few of the trees on fire in the process. Thankfully the rain will put them out quickly. As the ship ground to a halt, Mia and Thad were thrown from their chairs to the cold deck.
Kristin turned, wide-eyed to Alasdair. "Let's not do that again, okay?"
He felt the controls pop out of his hands. "Agreed."
"Everyone alright?"
"I'm undamaged," Thad said as he hefted himself up, then reached down to assist Mia.
"I think I'd rather be shot again," she said as she got to her feet.
"Quinn?"
"Fine. I was wearing my seatbelt." He then snapped the harness. "After all, Alasdair was in charge of the brakes. Better safe than sorry."
She nodded, then looked out the forward window. The forest the ship was over was a mixture of tall, orange trees and clearings of golden-yellow grass. The cover should be ideal for the time being. "Alasdair set the ship down in that clearing to starboard. Quinn, anything from the shuttle?"
"It touched down right in the center of the downed ships.
Just over a kilometer from here." When he noticed an anomaly in the logs, he didn't hesitate to speak up. "Well, that's odd."
"What?" she asked just as the Rose's landing pads made contact with the surface.
"Just before the shuttle entered the atmosphere, and just after it landed, it received a distress call from one of the downed cargo ships."
"Then there are survivors?"
Quinn scratched his head. "That's what's odd. See, the shuttle received the distress call and did what it's programmed to do—focus its sensors on the source of the distress."
"Standard procedures," Thad agreed.
"But," Quinn inserted as he continued to pour over the data. "Before the shuttle entered the atmosphere, the sensors were detecting positive life readings from the source of the distress. After it landed, it didn't detect any."
Mia giggled. "Maybe the shuttle landed on them. That'd be ironic." All eyes turned to her. "What? It could happen."
"Anything else, Quinn?" Kristin asked.
"Not much. And we can't turn our active sensors back on."
"Then we'll have to take a look. I'll get my gear and—"
Alasdair gripped Kristin’s forearm. "Not this time. We're in unknown, likely hostile territory. It's the captain's job to stay with the ship this time. Besides, you're the best candidate to get the Rose off the ground quickly in an emergency. No, this is a task for the first officer."
"You might need backup."
"Thad and I will go. We should be able to make it to the shuttle in under an hour." Getting out of the seat, he moved to a locker at the aft end of the cockpit and retrieved a sidearm, raingear, and a pair of communication headsets. "Quinn should be able to keep comms open without giving up our positions."
Quinn looked over the sensor computer. "It'll have to be something low power. I'll keep it to one of the older frequency bands. Range will be severely limited, especially if that forest or the rain gets any denser, but it’s low enough on the spectrum not to be detected. Unless, of course, someone is looking for it. Take this," he added, tossing a hand-held device to Alasdair. "It's a homing beacon, but I've modified it into a small holo-recorder. You'll get maybe thirty minutes of data on there, so use it wisely."
"What about me?" Thad asked. "Don't I get any fancy toys?"
"These are a little too fragile for those ground-pounder mitts of yours. Besides, they don't hurt people, so you probably won't be interested."
"Just keep things quiet," Kristin cautioned. "Get out to the ships, record as much pertinent data as you can, and get back here. And, at any sign of trouble—"
"You'll take off and not look back." Alasdair interrupted.
"I'll come and get you."
"You'll do no such damn thing."
"No one gets left behind, regardless of how much of a pain in the ass they are. Understood?"
Nodding to Thad, the two made their way to exit. As the door opened, he looked back to her. No words were exchanged as he flipped the weatherproof hood over his head and made his way down to the cargo hold.
Chapter 18
Blessedly, the torrential rain had stopped within ten minutes of their feet touching the surface. It had still been an hour into their journey to the graveyard of wrecked ships before either Thad or Alasdair had engaged one another in conversation. They’d checked in with Kristin on schedule but had little to report. Of all things, Alasdair had spent the time admiring the trees, with their dark amber trunks and the canopies of fire-colored leaves that topped them. They reminded him of the forests of his home planet, and the time he’d spent running through them as a child. The time of his free youth—before boarding school, etiquette classes, and then all matters of politics had clouded his unmarred view of creation.
He was admiring the smell of the leaves backed in the sun, one reminiscent of roses when Thad suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
“Hold,” the mercenary had whispered gruffly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Quiet.” Thad turned his head from side to side, taking in the sights and sounds surrounding them. When his caution had been satisfied, he waved for Alasdair to follow. The two made their way quietly through a hedge that opened to the valley below. There, resting in the soft grass, were the hulks of three large vessels.
Alasdair leaned down and withdrew a set of binoculars. “The one on the left looks Thressian. I can’t make out the other two.”
“The one in the center is Jidoan. I’d know those marking anywhere. The other is a mystery to me.”
The way he’d seethed the word ‘Jidoan’ gave Alasdair pause. “Old friends of yours?”
“I am friends with no Jidoan. They’re a blight on this Universe that should have been eradicated when we had the chance.”
“You mean during the war against the Kafaran?”
Thad nodded his response.
“When you say ‘we’ it makes it sound like you—”
“Second Battalion, Tenth Unified Marine regiment.”
The words were sharp, practiced, said with pride. Alasdair was in disbelief. “You? You were part of Sector Command?”
“The way you say ‘Sector Command’ makes it sound like I was some space-jockey hiding behind the protection of a cushy capital ship. I was Marine,” he grunted. “A long time ago.”
“I just didn’t have any idea. There isn’t much in your official record with internal security.”
Thad huffed. “Corps Security isn’t just going to hand over that kind of information to just anyone,” he then turned to Alasdair. “Especially a glorified security guard like yourself. Besides, it’s more complicated than you would understand.” He reached down and took the binoculars. “Let someone experienced used those.”
“Be my guest.”
Thad methodically scanned the field below, taking each detail into consideration before moving on.
“Anything?”
“No movement of any kind.”
“Then we’re safe to proceed.”
Thad stopped him with a raised hand. “There’s no movement, but I didn’t say it was safe. A landmine doesn’t move, but you wouldn’t want to step on it.”
“And can you see underground as well?”
Thad handed the binoculars back to Alasdair. “No. But that’s why you’re welcome to lead the way.”
Alasdair smiled, then reached for his communicator. “Kristin, we’re at the outer rim of the crash site. We’re heading in to take a closer look.”
“Understood,” her static-laced voice returned. “Be careful.”
Closing the channel, the two men skirted the tree line just outside of the valley for several minutes before they came upon the first hulk. The drive section was inside the forest by about fifty meters, with the rest of the bent mass slopping up the hill for nearly two-hundred meters. Whatever had caused the ship to crash had turned its keel into spaghetti—not an easy task for the most substantial component of any vessel.
“Definitely Jidoan design,” Thad said with dissatisfaction. “They break like straw.”
“What’s your beef with them, anyway? They’re our allies now.”
“Not back then, when they sold their allegiance to the Kafaran. Not when their ships overtook a dozen of the outer rim colonies. Not when they butchered and killed those same innocent colonists.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Tell that to the survivors of the Battle of the Two Moons.”
“Two Moons?”
“Forget it,” Thad dismissed.
Alasdair checked his sensor readings. Save for the two of them, the scanner wasn’t picking up any movement for at least three kilometers. He motioned to a large crack just forward of the main drive module of the broken vessel. “I’m going inside to take a look. You stay out here and alert me if trouble comes.”
“It seems like a foolish endeavor.”
“Says the mercenary who takes to time to memorize William Yeats.”
“Out of the quarrel with others
we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry.”
Alasdair deliberated whether that was even an answer. “Well, it might be foolish, but maybe we can find some evidence of what did this to these ships. That could be useful.”
Thad grunted. “I’ll need an unobstructed view.” He unshouldered his rifle and charged a concussive round. “Watch yourself in there. Those three-armed Jidoans are known for placing traps in abandoned ships. He then pointed to the rise of the hill near the nose of the stricken vessel. “I’ll take up a position there. Keep in constant contact.”
“Understood.”
As Alasdair made his way into the derelict, Thad moved off toward his objective. Once at the top of the rise, the mercenary used the shade of a nearby tree to obscure his position. “Alasdair, do you copy?”
The reply was swift but laced with static. “I read you but with difficulty. Must be the damage to the drive section in here. I’m getting some moderate radiation readings, but nothing dangerous.”
“What do you see?”
“There’s a lot of damage to the ship, consistent with a high-speed impact into the surface. It’s safe to say that they didn’t come down willingly.”
“Any indications on how long it’s been there?”
“Nothing is functioning onboard, but that’s no surprise. I did come across a placard with a commissioning date from fifty years ago.”
“Have you found any bodies?”
“None. It does look like some of the equipment was removed after it crashed, but it’s hard to tell what it was. Possibly some fuel cells or drive coils. Maybe the survivors took it with them.”
Movement on the far side of the wreck caught Thad’s attention. Though the wind was still, a smattering of branches were moving in the trees beyond the crashed Jidoan freighter. Peering through the scope of his rifle, he made out one, then serval armed personnel moving toward the ship. “Alasdair, you’ve got company.”
“How many?”
“I count five, all armed.” A squawking, crushing sound was heard as a motorized vehicle came into view. “And a tank.”
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