He Who Dares: Book Two (The Gray Chronicals 2)

by Rob Buckman

  “Record it and anything else he puts out, but if he starts reporting anything out of the ordinary, like seeing a ship, jam his signal.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  “What’s your thinking, Conner?” Pete asked.

  “I worked the asteroid field back on Earth for a while before enlisting. It wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t land occasionally on an asteroid and go ex-vehicle. I’m betting central control wouldn’t get upset if he didn’t report in for a while.”

  “OK, following you so far, that takes care of us nabbing him, if he lands near here.”

  “Then, someone reports in with some sort of radio trouble and he heads to the Star base with a Marine combat team on board.”

  “That’s good, Conner, very good and it just might work.”

  “Sir, if these miners are anything like the ones working the asteroid belt around Earth, they are an independent bunch and don’t take well to the bloody Navy telling them what to do. I doubt these miners are any different.” The sound of booted feet pounding on the deck plate came towards them, and a few seconds later and the breathless Marine runner came onto the Bridge.

  “Sergeant Rice said to tell you, sir, that they are gearing up to go get the mining ship.” He stood, panting, waiting for a response.

  “Great, tell them to be careful, no energy weapons, and don’t kill the miners.”

  “Aye, sir.” Taking a deep breath, the Marine went running back to the Marine deck.

  “Well, that’s one way to keep the Marines fit, switch off internal communication, and have them hand deliver messages.” Gable chuckled. At least he looked happy now, and not so mournful.

  “I’ll mention it to Sergeant Rice the next time I see him, Gable, I’m sure he’ll have a beautiful and pointed response as to what you can do with your suggestion.”

  “Yes, probably that I can, respectfully mind you, shove it where the sun don’t shine.”

  “Yes, I think it would be something along those lines.” That broke some of the tension on the Bridge and they all laughed despite the continuing pinging from Sirrien sensors as they rotated.

  “Where’s our uninvited guest now, Janice?” She tweaked her controls for a moment.

  “It’s a little hard to tell as he keeps popping in and out between the rock, but it looks as if he’s about one mile and closing, sir, about four rocks away.”

  “His mineral tracer unit is bound to pick us up soon, sir.”

  “I hope it does, that will bring him deeper into the belt, and closer for Sergeant Rice to grab him.”

  “Damn, he’s gone onto a blind spot again, sir, I’ve lost him.”

  “Don’t panic, Janice, he’s probably setting his ship down to have a closer look on foot.” As it turned out, Mike was perfectly correct.

  The miner had set down on the other side of the same asteroid they were hiding on, and donned his suit to walk round for a closer look at what he’d detected. He still had a look of shock on his face when two Marines frog marched him into the Wardroom and shoved him down in a spare seat, minus his helmet.

  “Poor guy nearly had a heart attack when we stepped out of the shadows and grabbed him, sir.” Sergeant Rice reported, smiling slightly. Mike poured and handed the man a drink.

  “Here, you look as if you could use this.”

  “Merci, Mon Capitan.” The miner grabbed the glass and down the drink in one quick swallow, the glass clinking against his teeth.

  “Sorry for the little shock we gave you.” Mike refilling his glass.

  “Who is you?” He downed the second almost as quick, looking around at the gaudily dressed people.

  “Just your friendly local pirate is all.” The man gulped and took another drink as Mike moved over to speak to Jan.

  “Talk to him and pour as much liqueur into him as it take. Find out as much as you can, you know what we need.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.” Mike, nodded his head to Sergeant Rice, and he followed him out of the Wardroom, leaving two Marines to guard the prisoner. When they were out of earshot, he questioned Sergeant Rice.

  “Did you manage to secure his ship?”

  “Yes, sir, and checked to see if there was anyone else aboard, there wasn’t.”

  “Good, a one man show. Now the question is, what's the best way to use it?”

  “If I might venture, sir, two of my Marines did a stint as miners in the belt before joining up.”

  “That would help, but we need to know how many people know this man, or would recognize his ship?”

  “From what I know, it won’t matter, sir. Once we dock and mingled with the rest of the miners and people on the Star Base, who would know?”

  “Good point, unless the Sirriens have issued ID card or something.”

  “Fat lot of good that would do them with a bunch of rowdy rock rats. They’d promptly lose them, eat them or wipe them as… Sorry Skipper. You know what I mean.”

  “Have your men check him for any ID cards, tattooed bar codes, or implant ID chips.”

  “Right. The bloody Sirriens might just go that far.”

  In all it took half an hour to get the rock hopper totally drunk on the Torgon Brandy, ending up with his singing a French children’s song, badly.

  Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai, Je te plumerai la tête, Et la tête, Alouette O-o-o-oh Alouette, gentille Alouette, Alouette, je te plumerai, Je te plumerai la tête… at which point he fell asleep.

  Even before that, Janice sweet talked him into unlocking his E-pad and showing her pictures of his wife and children, and the moment he fell asleep, the Marines rummaged through his soft suit pockets and came up with an assortment of odds and end, including a much batter and misuse ID card.

  “I can copy the ID card, Skipper, but what about the numbers?”

  “Can you scramble the card enough so the data come out garbage if swiped?”

  “That’s a point, and would fool the computers for a while, but the less swiping the Marines do the better.”

  “Anything else of interest on his E-pad?”

  “Sort of. There were a couple of short videos showing the inside of the station, which aren’t much help, but you can see parts of the station in the background behind some friends or drinking buddies.” Jan pushed the videos to the main screen, but as she’d said, they weren’t much help. Mainly the videos showed the station was typical of a trade, transfer point, with an assortment of human and aliens walking about some kind of central shopping, or trading area.

  “I will say, Skipper, that from the look of it, the local populace is no better dressed than we are.”

  “That means we will fit right in. Anyone see any weapons.” Jan re-ran the video with everyone watching.

  “I see several people with side arms and knives of one sort or another.” Sergeant Rice offered. Most agreed once he pointed them out.

  “That’s going to help. At least we can go in arm to some degree.”

  “Alright. We now have a way to get a number of armed people on the station without attracting too much attention. What then?” Pete asked.

  “Obviously we try to locate those two fighters, and either fly them out of there or destroy them.”

  “I understand, sir, but if and when we do, a diversion would be good.”

  “A diversion... hmm let me think about that.” They entered the Bridge together, and sitting down in his command chair he thought about it.

  “We need a diversion people, something to get everyone's attention and hold it.” He said at last, drawing a blank himself.

  “An explosion would be good.” Sally Goldman put in.

  “Ummm, trouble is, it wouldn’t hold their attention for very long.”

  “What about nudging one of these rocks out of orbit?” Gable suggested.

  “A bit slow, and a bit too suspicious, belt asteroid doesn’t usually go flying off at a tangent without good reason.” Pete answered. Mike studied the battle board, looking at the various installations of the
Star base. Mike listened with half an ear, thinking more about where the fighters might be. The fighter had to be in the main complex, probably under heavy guard, so what would pull them away he wondered. Then his eye fell on the solar furnace.

  “What would happen if one of the Ag tracking stabilizers went wild on the solar furnace?” He asked. For a moment, there was silence, then everyone started talking at once.

  “Yea Gods! You’d have a panic on your hands!”

  “Can you imagine the destruction that focused beam would do, sir?”

  “Yes, I can, and that’s that I’m counting on.”

  “Wow! It's a wild idea, sir.”

  “The main base complex is just far enough away to escape most of the impact of the beam, but it would mean we’d have to make sure it only oscillated and not just tumble and rips itself apart.”

  “If we fed a virus into the stabilizer sub-routine. That would keep it tracking where we wanted it, sir.”

  “How long would it take you to write it Sally?”

  “About twenty minutes to write the program and download it to a chip, it wouldn’t have to be complicated, just efficient.”

  “Get onto it as quick as you can.”

  “Aye-aye, sir, I’ll download it to an e-prom chip, that way they can’t override it.” She chuckled.

  “Sergeant Rice, that will mean we will need two teams, one in the mining ship, the other to plant the chip.”

  “Aye-aye, sir, I’ll use Trooper William’s for that, sir, he’s the electronics nut and our communication specialist.”

  “Good, a three man team should be enough, any more and we might arouse suspicion.”

  “How many for the mining ship, sir?”

  “Including CPO Blake and myself, I’d say four, including you and the shuttle pilot.”

  “Sir, I have to protest, you can’t leave the ship!”

  “Sorry, Pete, but you are not qualified to fly one of the fighters or the mining ship.”

  “Oh, right, and you are, Skipper?” Pete raised one eyebrow as his brow furrowed in disapproval.

  “Barley,” he lied, “but you need the standby helmsman here, so that leave Conner Blake and myself and, or the Marine shuttle pilots to fly them out of there, if we can.”

  “What do you want me to do, sir?” He sighed in resignation.

  “As soon as we leave I want you to wait until you are close to the solar furnace, launch the number two team.”

  “How much time will you need to get the fighters out, Skipper?” Janice asked.

  “No telling, or even if we can. For all we know, they may have all ready started stripping them down.”

  “And if they have?” Pete could see this plan getting more harebrained by the minute.

  “Then we’ll wait for the diversion to start and blow them up and make our way out of there in the mining ship.”

  “Where shall I meet you, sir?”

  “When the fun and games starts, pick your moment and get this ship out of here the moment the second away team is aboard. Then head for warp point Zulu, I will meet you there, or along the way.”

  “Jesus, this is getting scary, there’s so many things that could go wrong I’ve lost count, Mike.” He muttered his face a picture of worry.

  “I know, we are flying by the seat of our pants on this one, Pete, but we do have the elements of surprise.” Mike sounded positive, but wondered who he was trying to convince, himself or his XO.

  “Oh, right, all one hundred and thirty odd of us have the whole Star base surrounded.” He snorted.

  “Just make sure that the second away team gets to the solar furnace and gets the job done. In the ensuing panic, our job should be a piece of cake, so stop worrying, Pete.” He knew he was telling Pete things he already knew, more out of nervousness than anything.

  “It was hairy enough getting onto the rock. I hate to think what will happen when we try to get out.”

  “You needn’t be delicate about it, as by that time it won’t matter. Blast your way clear if you have to, and maybe set a few of these rocks free, that will help cover your departure.” Reluctantly Pete sat down in Mike’s command chair and looked around the Bridge. There was a subtle difference from his position below.

  “Pete. Whatever happens, your job is to get this ship and the data we’ve collected back to Earth.”

  “And you?” Mike knew what he was asking and shook his head.

  “The assault team is secondary to your main mission. If this all goes sideways it won’t matter, and there’s probably nothing you can do about rescuing us anyway.” He could see Pete Standish was not convinced. “Take a look out there Pete,” Mike nodded towards the main viewer, “they have you out number and outgunned ten to one. Slip away and report back to Earth. That’s a direct order, Mr. Standish.” He could see Pete didn’t like it, and he hated making it an order.

  “Aye-aye, Captain. Slip away and report our finding back to the Admiral.”

  Pete watched as Mike exited the Bridge, feeling an odd sense of loss for some reason as he sat in the Captain’s chair. From the second seat, he only had to worry about carrying out the Skipper’s orders and the general administration of the ship, trusting that the said Captain knew what he was doing. From this seat, he had to make all the decisions, and hope he knew what he was doing. He shook his head. This was a case of the blind leading the blind. A thousand and one things could go wrong in the next few hours, if that happened Mike and his team could be killed or captured. He stopped, not wanting to think about that. It would be up to him to do something about it if that happened, or run for home as quick as he could as ordered. He didn’t like it, not one damn bit.

  “Janice, can we safely use the internship comm system now?” He asked as he walked down the companionway towards his cabin.

  “Aye, sir, I believe we are safe out of range now.” She radioed back.

  “Good, order all hands to stay at ‘at ease’ battle stations, and tell them to rotate in one hour intervals, they might be there for a while.”

  “Aye-aye, sir.”

  Mike made his way to his cabin and changed into civilian clothes, putting on the ones he’d used for the mercenary masquerade. From what he’d seen of the miner, none of them would be out of place dressed like that. After adding an assortment of jewelry, weapons and a headband, he headed for the shuttle bay. Jenks didn’t look at all happy being left behind, and in one way, Mike would have liked to take him along, but there just wasn’t any room. Giving him a nod of understanding, he took off for the flight deck.

  * * * * * *

  “We can use the light evac suits, sir. The mining ship is only a short walk from here now.” Sergeant Rice said as he came in.

  “Thanks, Charley,” He took the thin suit and started to climb into it, “is your team ready?”

  “Aye, sir. All dressed for the party, three men and two women, sir.”

  “Good, that should look natural.”

  “We got the miner pretty drunk, sir, and found out a few interesting facts.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for one, there are so many new people arriving all the time that few of them know each other.”

  “What about security?”

  “Lax at best, sir, we have the forged ID badges, but they won’t pass close inspection.”

  “I’m hoping they won’t have to, oh, by the way, don’t forget the tracer unit.”

  “Have it right here, Skipper.” He padded his leg pocket, sound brisk, with no overtones that his Captain’s question was unnecessary.

  “Good man.”

  “I take it we’ll be playing this by ear, much as we did on that moon?” Mike snapped him a quick look as he zipped the suit up, thinking that Rice might be laughing at him. He wasn’t.

  “Right, our job it to find out where they are keeping the fighters, get there and either fly them out of there if possible, or destroy them if we can’t. After that it’s just a question of getting out of there as fast as we can.�
�

  “And it they are already in pieces, Skipper?”

  “Then we blow the hell out of the place and make sure the parts get destroyed.”

  “There could be casualties, sir.” The expression on Rice’s face said he was dead serious, a far cry from when they’d first met. He doubted Rice would have trusted him to pour beer out of his boot without help and instructions on the heel.