by Robyn Bachar
God, he had missed her.
Gabriel paced the abbreviated length of his quarters. He would do better. He would convince her of his sincerity, of his dedication, of his—
His data tablet beeped insistently and he cursed at the screen.
MISSION UPDATE AVAILABLE. INITIATE DATA TRANSFER, Y/N?
“Most certainly no, you infuriating piece of junk.” Gabriel scowled as he snatched the tablet from his desk and pressed his palm against it. His skin stung as it sampled his blood, but it was nothing compared to the continued smarting of his pride.
“Idiot,” he muttered.
TARGET CONFIRMED. PERMISSION TO ACQUIRE/QUESTION/ELIMINATE IS GRANTED. TARGET IDENTITY CLASSIFIED A-1 LEVEL ONLY.
Shit. Gabriel had been hoping that a mission update would at least allow for him to share the details with Lindana. She needed to know this, but her security clearance was nowhere near A-1. She served the Alliance as a privateer, but as far as Intel Command was concerned she was little better than a civilian.
He tapped out a quick reply asking for permission to share mission details with key personnel and sent it, then tossed the tablet onto his bunk with more force than was necessary. The gadget bounced across the stiff mattress and banged into the wall with a beep of protest. It would take some time for the message to travel out, be pondered over by his handler and a few other paper-pushers. The Mombasa was still in transit to the nearest slingshot—it was simpler and cheaper to let a slingshot hurl a ship into hyperspace than to spin up to it on one’s own—and Gabriel might not receive a reply before communications went dark.
The tablet beeped again and Gabriel frowned at it. REQUEST DENIED.
He blinked. He couldn’t remember receiving a reply so quickly, not even during high-priority missions where a timely response would have meant the difference between life and death. Someone was monitoring this situation closely. Too closely—were they being followed?
“Please explain,” he said. His hands shook a bit too much to trust a text response.
INFORMATION LEAK CONFIRMED. SOURCE IDENTITY UNKNOWN. SIGNAL ANALYSIS UNDERWAY. INITIATE LOCAL MONITORING PROGRAMS TO INVESTIGATE FURTHER.
Gabriel frowned. Technical work was not his strongest suit. Several sweeper programs were built into his tablet, but the traitor might detect them if the programs were activated—probably would detect them if the person was skilled at manipulating data signals. An engineer of Chief Watson’s expertise could easily bury transmissions within the Mombasa’s standard communications, or likewise dig signals out. It would be a simple thing to detect his communications with Command, though that was to be expected from a privateer’s Intelligence agent lining up missions for his ship. He wasn’t doing anything out of character yet, but the situation was sure to sour as soon as the mission’s true parameters became apparent.
Gabriel activated the programs and set his tablet aside. Then again, if Chief Watson wasn’t the leak, she could be a useful ally in finding out who was. She would be the best judge of the crew’s technical ability—the tablet pinged, and Gabriel arched a brow at it. A signal detection so soon? Either his tablet’s programs were suddenly functioning at a superior level, or someone was overconfident about not being discovered.
Gabriel drummed his fingers atop his desk, the noise loud in the cramped room. He could let the signal alone and monitor it, gathering data to decrypt, or he could track the source of the signal. With the critical nature of this mission he could hardly afford to leave a lead alone. With a sigh he removed his ear cuff, then picked up his tablet, tool kit and a handlamp. The cuff tracked his movements aboard the ship so it was best to leave it behind, but unfortunately it also keyed open doors and activated lights and he would need to light his own path.
The black corridors were freezing—in space heat was as much a luxury as light. Most ships he had traveled on kept things warm and well lit, because the comfort of the environment was directly related to crew morale. The Mombasa must have truly hit rock bottom to sacrifice such basic creature comforts. Gabriel’s handlamp illuminated a small circle, accentuated by the green glow of the text filling his screen as he tracked the signal, and his breath puffed in eerie, misty clouds in the weak light. His boots echoed dully, the sound devoured by the endless hum and hiss of the ship’s machinery.
Gabriel chased the signal deep into the ship, away from the crew quarters and close to the heat and noise of the engines. He possessed only the most basic engineering knowledge of how the engines functioned, enough to know better than to fiddle with their workings. Damn things could be just as lethal and destructive as a bomb if the wrong wires were crossed. The signal pinged stronger as the temperature increased, until finally Gabriel chased the source down a rabbit hole into a darkened access tube so tight he could barely breathe.
Bloody hell. He was too tall and broad of shoulder to be crawling around in the Mombasa’s innards. Gabriel doubted that someone the size of Chief Kalani could fit into this particular spot, so that narrowed down the list of suspects. It was being buried alive, standing.
“There you are, you little bastard.” Gabriel spotted the transmitter shoved between two lengths of coolant pipes. The gadget appeared innocent enough, camouflaged among the surrounding equipment as though it was just another regulator or monitor, but the tablet confirmed that it was the source of the suspicious signal.
Gabriel grimaced. Under normal circumstances he would install a monitor to record the data transmissions and track who accessed it, but he couldn’t risk the possibility of their mission being leaked to the enemy. Current intelligence predicted that the Mombasa would face a reasonable target—a decommissioned warship that was now being used as a cargo transport—but if the Soviets were warned and had time to prepare, the Mombasa would be bombarded by a fleet of enemy cruisers. It was a risk Gabriel couldn’t take, so he snipped the wires and disconnected it.
The tiny piece of equipment was little more than a receiver, recorder and transmitter. Not particularly helpful—agents who possessed little technical knowledge were issued standard equipment that was easy to identify, but this appeared to be constructed from scavenged parts. He would analyze it as best he could using the limited tools at his disposal, but he knew from experience that it was irritating to identify the source of homemade bugs. If the parts originated from the Mombasa’s innards, any crew member could have touched them. Clever agents were quick to use wires that many hands had touched, or scrapped parts that had endured many repairs before finally ending up on the junk pile, because if discovered a DNA analysis would shift blame to another person.
The sound of footsteps approached, and Gabriel cursed silently. There was no room to maneuver, jammed inside the access shaft like a feral cat trapped inside a cage. Had he been discovered so quickly? It seemed unlikely that the device was sophisticated enough to send an alert if tampered with.
Gabriel could either move farther up the cramped corridor to lie in wait, or he could confront his attacker in the hallway, where he would have more room to fight. Observation was a higher priority than attack at the moment, so he killed the light, stowed the bug and his equipment, and hustled up the ladder. He wrenched open an overhead hatch and heaved himself up into another tight space. He shut the hatch behind him and waited in the dark.
His breath rasped in the close quarters, impossibly loud like gusts of wind beating against a windowpane. Adrenaline rushed through him, quickening his pulse as his muscles tensed in anticipation. The footsteps drew closer, accompanied by muffled speech—not English, nor one of the languages that he was fluent in. Swahili, perhaps. Due to Lindy and Tomas’s fondness for their countrymen, several of the Mombasa’s crew hailed from Kenya on Earth and from the New Nairobi colony.
A trickle of sweat pooled between his shoulder blades as the volume of the voices swelled, and then receded. Gabriel remained at the ready until silence settled again—or as
silent as the inner workings of a ship could be. Here the constant hum of the engines was nearly as noisy as the rapid pounding of his pulse. He took several calming breaths before emerging from his hiding space, and then he straightened his clothes and ran a hand over his hair.
Too close. An unwelcome reminder that this ship was not so large, and they were hurtling through space in a metal box with a traitor on board.
Getting jumpy in your old age, chap, Smythe had teased on their last mission together. His friend had died two missions later, just shy of his thirtieth birthday. Smythe had been the first of the core colonist Intel agents to die an unfortunate death in the line of duty after the war. Each death had seemed coincidence, spread over the past few years as though someone waited for the grief of one death to fade before killing again. Gabriel was certain that these deaths were not accidents—he felt it in his bones. The suspicion went marrow-deep, filling him with certainty that someone was eliminating his comrades. But why?
He frowned at the spot where the transmitter had been, and then turned and began the stealthy journey back to his quarters. Taking the position aboard the Mombasa was supposed to keep him safe from the fate that had befallen his fellow core colonists, but it seemed that he had simply put himself in different danger.
* * *
“Okay, Jiang. Run it down for us.” Lindana ceded the floor. Only the brave or foolish dared to interrupt Jiang, and allowing Jiang to run meetings made Lindana’s life easier.
Jiang rose and activated the holographic display table. A three-dimensional schematic of the Novosibirsk swirled to life from a blizzard of rainbow pixels. “This is the Soviet ship Novosibirsk. She started life as a military cruiser, but her design was phased out in favor of a heavier hitter. She’s been retrofitted for intercolony equipment transport, mainly atmosphere enhancers.”
Tomas raised his hand and waited for Jiang to acknowledge him with a nod. “Are they carrying industrial oxygen tanks?”
“Possible. We’re limiting the strike teams to hand-to-hand weapons, just in case. No tasers, no rifles, and no grenades.” Jiang cast a stern look at Ryder, who scowled in frustration. Grenades were Ryder’s weapon of choice, but he was skilled in hand-to-hand and should do fine.
“Not even smoke grenades?” Gabriel asked.
The room inhaled a collective gasp and waited for Jiang’s reaction to the interruption. Lindana hoped she threw something at him; Jiang had once nailed Tomas between the eyes with a powdered donut, and Lindana later rigged every screen in the med bay to play a loop of the footage in slow motion.
Jiang turned toward Gabriel, her brow furrowed with a thin line of irritation. “Smoke grenades are ignited by a spark, and a single spark is all it would take to roast our people if an oxygen tank ruptured. So no, not even smoke grenades.” She turned away without giving him an opportunity to respond. Jiang shifted the view of the Novosibirsk to a wide angle. “The Mombasa will board the Novosibirsk after it arrives in the Dektan System, but before it reaches its destination. We’ll approach from the aft, using its exhaust trail to hide from its sensors. Once we’re within range we’ll hard dock here.” Jiang zoomed in on a section of the hull on the ship’s belly. “Ryder has point on the away team. Tomas and Maria will make their way to the data node here.” Another shift in the schematic brought up a small room with a rat’s nest of wires routed through it. “They will access the Novosibirsk’s systems and take control of the ship.”
Jiang continued the plans from there, standard procedure for their group. Atmospheric equipment wasn’t particularly glamorous, but it was worth a small fortune. She answered a few questions, and then the briefing was over. Most of the crew filed out, except for Gabriel, who continued to frown at the floating schematic.
“Something on your mind?” Lindana asked. Tomas stood at her side, unwilling to leave his baby sister alone with the man who had broken her heart.
“What role do I have during the mission?” Gabriel asked.
“You’re on comms, with me,” Lindana said. “Why?”
“Is that usual for your intel officer?”
“Yes,” Tomas said. “Erik didn’t like to get his hands dirty, being near retirement and all. He was part of the boarding party on our last mission because it was supposed to be low-risk, and we needed all hands on deck to handle cargo transfer.”
“And you were ambushed. I read the report.” Gabriel straightened, his hands neatly folded. “I prefer the boots-on-the-ground approach instead of watching the mission on a vid screen.”
“I understand that, but you don’t do fieldwork until I’m familiar with your skill set,” Lindana said. “Unless classified is an actual skill.”
“I have field experience.”
“Not that we know of. You’re going to sit this one out, end of story. There’ll be other missions.” Unless she kicked his sorry ass out the airlock into space, but he had been well behaved since coming aboard. Quiet, kept to himself. He seemed to spend most of his time reading. There wasn’t a lot for an intel officer to do during downtime other than check his messages and make calls to his contacts, neither of which he could do while the comms were dark when the ship was in hyperspace.
Gabriel nodded and retreated, and Lindana turned to Tomas. “Well?”
“No luck with his military record so far.” Tomas grimaced. “His file has an encryption I can’t crack. I tried talking to Maria about it, but the rats chased me out of the engine room.”
“I’ll talk to her. Are you two going to be okay together on this mission?”
“We’re great during missions because they’re in neutral territory. She’s pissy at everyone who invades her engine room, except for you, because you’re the captain. The real question is: are you going to be okay working with him?”
“I can taser him if he gets out of line.”
Tomas grinned and chuckled. “Good point. He was telling the truth about his finances. New Britain granted his land, the house and its contents to a neighboring lord. Gabriel has saved his Alliance wages, but you know how that is.”
“Yeah.” Military wages were decent, but by no means extravagant. “Good to know. Thanks.”
Tomas left, and Lindana stared at the schematic. A cargo ship with colonizing equipment seemed like easy money. So why did it tie her stomach into anxious knots? Gabriel’s nearness must’ve contributed to her uneasiness. He really did have nothing left—from prince to pauper. Did that change things?
Lindana scowled and killed the slowly rotating image of the Novosibirsk. She didn’t have time for complications now. She’d worry about Gabriel Steele and his indecently tight pants after the mission. For now she had a pre-mission checklist to run through and anxiety to blow off.
She visited each officer and area of the ship in turn to determine their readiness for the mission and discover if they needed anything. As always Maria had a long wish list of parts she’d like to scrounge if the opportunity presented itself, and Tomas had an equally long list of medical equipment. Lindana doubted that the team would have time to scrounge on this mission, not if they wanted to remain undetected. They once had a mission unravel when Maria insisted on stopping to grab a giant spool of copper wire, which slowed the team down until they were discovered by a very surprised security patrolman.
This mission had them all spooked. What if their bad luck continued? They lost a crew member last time. How much worse could things get?
Lindana’s shoulders were pinched with tension by the time she arrived in the armory, where Ryder was finishing the weapons check.
“Everything’s green here, Cap,” he said. “Are you sure we can’t bring any grenades? Because I’d really rather have them and not need them—”
“Than need them and not have them,” she completed. “I know, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. If things get bad enough that we need them, we’re alrea
dy fucked.”
Ryder snapped the weapons case shut and stowed it in his locker. He approached Lindana, frowned down at her for a moment, then enveloped her in a bear hug. “We’re going to be okay. Our luck’s due to turn.”
A fraction of her tension eased—as Tomas’s best friend, Ryder was like a second big brother. “I know. Get out of here and get some sleep.”
Ryder grinned and stepped back. “Don’t have to tell me twice. Oh, the light over the heavy bag is still on the fritz.” He nodded toward the overhead illumination panel, and Lindana sighed. The armory doubled as the Mombasa’s fitness center. Lindana had been initially wary about keeping weapons in the same area as exercise equipment, worried that someone might decide to put a few rounds into the treadmill as revenge for an overtaxing workout, but so far the most amount of damage had been caused by Tomas and Ryder’s epic sparring matches.
“I thought Maria fixed that,” she said.
“She refuses to fix it because Tomas broke it. I tried to talk her into it by arguing that technically it was Tomas’s shoe that broke the light, and she shouldn’t blame the shoe because it was an innocent accomplice. She didn’t buy it.”
“I appreciate the effort.”
Ryder tossed a jaunty salute in her direction as he retreated from the room. Ryder was one of the few crewmembers who could sleep before a mission—really the man could sleep through just about anything. Lindana envied him for that. Tension crept back into her muscles and knotted her stomach as she taped up her hands and donned a set of boxing gloves.
Lindana glared at the heavy bag hanging ponderously from its chain. Easy mission. She set her feet and swung with a sharp right. She was tired of promises of easy missions that turned sour right out of the gate. Bam! Of scraping to cover the ship’s bills. Left, then right, then left again. Of pouring her heart and soul into this ship, only to have it fall apart around her.
