by Jason Kent
Jonte pushed back his hood. The sides of his head were shaved high up over his ears. The remaining swath of silver hair atop the Watcher's head was pulled back in a tight braid which hung down his back. The Watcher's eyes glowed with an inner green luminescence. He tracked the likely path of the skipjack, bemused the ship already had slipped from his normally all-seeing gaze. Jonte contemplated his next move.
Taking his ship to orbit would have been the most likely move for most trackers. Jonte was not the average Tallinn bounty hunter though. Yes, his prey found their way to Transom, most likely from one of the many battles the Watchers were charged to coordinate over the past few hours. The loss of their shuttle, probably due to extreme damage beyond their abilities to repair, and the utter destruction of the landing bay on the station was evidence enough they sought alternate transport. Somehow, the refugees persuaded the Captain of the Blade Redeemed to take them on as passengers. But how? Money? Most likely. The common populace Jonte reluctantly came into contact with seemed to find monetary gain to be the only sort of motivation they ever needed.
Jonte frowned.
"Where now?" he murmured. Jonte cleared his mind of the humans and focused on the streams of insight available to him though Knowl. They swirled before his vision like intertwining threads of light, ever-moving, ever-changing; usually all-knowing... except for now.
Again, Jonte was troubled by this darkening of his inner eye, the dimness where these rebels were concerned amidst the usual clarity of the insight derived from Knowl. Something was wrong.
The Watcher shook his head. First, he would find and destroy these interlopers. Then, Jonte planned to expend his vast intellect to resolve the issue of this intermittent interruption of knowledge. In the end, Knowl always prevailed. All else was temporary.
Then something tickled at Jonte's conscience. It was not the clear insight he expected to receive since becoming a Watcher. But, if he had learned anything in his years of service to Knowl and The Council, it was this; sometimes you had to go with your gut.
The Blade Redeemed would not leave Transom. At least not yet. And Jonte felt he could divine their destination.
"What are you up to?" Jonte wondered. He smiled, temporarily amused by his ignorance. He stared out into the sun, now dipping to the horizon. Jonte's eyes flashed. He set his face into a hard grimace and turned to descend the tower which had served him well while being forced to wait in this desolate complex.
The fleeting moment of Jonte's amusement passed. These humans could negate Knowl's omnipotence. They, and everyone they contacted, must be exterminated.
The smile crept back onto the Watcher's face. He would be the instrument of their fate. This much he could clearly foresee.
Chapter 11
Dagger's Quest
Kate made it to the Blade's command deck just as Dagger was ready to lift. Despite her early unwillingness to take-off, the pilot obviously kept all the systems in hot stand-by. Garrett was already in the co-pilot acceleration couch, checking the flight controls. Georges took the seat directly behind him.
"Don't let them fight," Sparrow breathed into Kate's ear. She let go of Kate's arm and nudged her into the final open seat in the cockpit. Kate fell into the seat, off balance thanks to the link sprite's insistent guidance.
"Ready Flyboy?" Dagger asked. She laid her hand on an oversized handle. Kate was impressed the pilot could go from one extremely stress-filled situation like the showdown with Georges to calmly running through flight pre-checks. Perhaps it was this trait which allowed Dagger to have survived for so long as a for-hire transport Captain plying the dangerous space between Tallinn- and Earth-controlled territories.
"I live but to serve," Garrett replied.
"You have sensors and weapons," Dagger ordered. "Anything sneezes at us, blast it."
Kate saw Georges open his mouth then shut it. Apparently, he was not used to a pilot dictating the rules-of-engagement. Especially when they were set to kill. Kate suppressed a smirk. Many things changed for this small quest in a matter of hours. They were becoming more of a group of equals seeking to overthrow the Tallinns in what could only be considered a Hail-Mary play. A play for which Kate did not quite have the whole book. Ranks were blurring. It was their skills as individuals and the synergy of the team which would either win the day or end up with all of them dead.
Kate's quest. It was a self-centered name, but this was how Kate was beginning to think of their mission. Their instructions were shadowy, only becoming clearer as they took each step. But in order to make any progress, they were required to take a step into the unknown. Kate knew each move they took forward was a step of faith. She did not know what to expect. None of them did.
Dagger's little side trip felt...well, Kate felt it was right somehow. It was simply the next step on their quest. Ultimately, Kate would reach Knowl. She knew this. What Kate did not know was how their path would twist and turn before they reached the end of their journey.
Kate's thoughts were interrupted as Dagger shoved the lever in her hand forward. The engines surged and the Blade leapt off the ground. Kate scrabbled to get her harness clicked into place. The last time she had not properly buckled in, she found herself thrown across a shuttle bay with a jarring effect on her backside.
The Blade did not rise far, just enough to clear the structures around them. Dagger rotated the ship. Facing away from the center of the mining complex, she tipped the nose down and the ship shot forward. They cleared the heaps of tailings which marched away from the complex by only a few meters. Instead of heading out into the desert as Kate expected, Dagger banked hard to starboard and headed straight for the edge of the heart of Solom's Mines. The pit.
"Tral!" Ross cursed from further back in the ship. Kate figured the marine ensured the cargo was secure but neglected to see to himself.
Kate's eyes went wide as they approached the mine. At the lip of the open pit, Dagger shoved the control column forward. The Blade dove into the abyss that opened below them. Kate clawed at the cloth-covered armrests of her seat.
The bottom of the mine was at least three kilometers below.
"Wow," Kate heard herself say. She could not help it, the sight of the man-made canyon was spectacular even if she was hurtling towards the rocky bottom. Kate would have fallen forward into the back of the pilot's couch if her harness did not have a death grip on her. She felt the auto-retract systems straining to keep her in place.
"Crud," Garrett grunted. He reached forward and flipped several switches to adjust the sensor arrays for optimal use in their new surroundings.
"Suck it up, Flyboy!" Dagger laughed. Her voice was strained as she fought against the dive the same as everyone else.
She's enjoying this, Kate thought. Tral, she likes this stuff. Who have we hitched our wagons up with?
As suddenly as they pitched into the dive, Dagger pulled them out of it. With only a few hundred meters left before they met the bottom of the pit, she poured on the full power of Blade's twin engines. Kate was pressed back in her seat then flung sideways as Dagger twisted the control column. The Blade tore along the bottom of side branch of the mine, the walls not more than twenty meters away on either side.
"Not much room," Kate exclaimed with a gulp.
"Don't worry, Cupcake," Dagger snorted. "This vein was probably tapped out years ago."
"Tell that to them!" Kate shouted. She leaned forward as far as her harness would allow and pointed past Dagger's shoulder.
A massive mining machine squatted on eight huge legs in the middle of the chasm. Clawed arms, drills, and chutes to capture the ore reached up the chasm walls.
Dagger cursed and pulled back on the controls. She declared, "Flyboy..." It was as close as she would ever come to asking Garrett for help while at the stick.
Garrett was a good enough pilot not to ask any questions. He grabbed the co-pilot's set of controls and pulled back along with Dagger. Together, their combined inputs caused the Blade to pour on one-hundred
and ten percent of its control thrusters and enabled the control surfaces to accept extreme overstress conditions, something only allowed when both the pilot and co-pilot operated the controls in unison.
The Blade protested.
Kate heard the superstructure fight against the unfair strain. The engines whined and the rocket thrusters, normally used only in the vacuum of space roared to life in the nose of the ship and underneath the engine nacelles.
The giant mining machine did not react to their unexpected approach. Kate figured even if the controllers wanted to get out of the way, there was no way for the massive equipment to move fast enough.
Dagger's decisive call for help, no matter how difficult it had been for her to make, and Garrett's equally quick response proved to be enough.
Barely.
Kate closed her eyes as the top of the massive machine rushed into view. She was thrown forward as something on the bottom of the Blade caught on the railings lining the topmost level of the mining equipment. The Blade's course wavered for just a moment before Dagger and Garrett regained control. When Kate reopened her eyes, they were still in the mine branch but were flying just below the top of the pit instead of along the floor far below. From this altitude they would be able to react to any unexpected obstacles but were also still out of the line of sight of anyone who might be watching from the mine complex falling further behind them with every minute they flew.
Dagger and Garrett grinned at each other. Kate joined in and smiled in relief as well.
One more step accomplished.
Her smile faltered. What was next?
Kate shook her head. Dagger's quest awaited. After placing their next foot firmly ahead of them, they found solid ground underneath. Now for another. Solom's mines flashed past. Their quest headed deeper into unknown territory.
The Blade flew through kilometer after claustrophobic kilometer of the pit mine's connecting chasms. They flashed over dozens of active mining machines. Dagger adjusted their course after they passed over each one in order to mislead anyone who might receive a report on their passage and attempt to vector in pursuit. It took nearly twenty minutes of high-speed flight before they finally passed over the outskirts of the Solom Mines.
Once out of the cover of the mine, Dagger still hugged the surface. The hills and valleys of the dry land served as concealment enough for their purposes. Someone looking down from orbit might spot them, if they knew what they were looking for. But, Kate figured the probability of this was slim. In her experience, the Tallinns did not rely on high tech surveillance satellites. They were more comfortable relying on ground observation posts or blimps drifting high in the sky. Neither were usually equipped with sensors sophisticated enough to pick up the readings from the Blades engines. But, with high-power optical systems, capable of picking out minute details, they could possibly see them. But, such optics maintained a very narrow field of view. The more finely focused the view, the less area the Tallinns could watch. From high up, in order to spot the Blade, an observer would essentially need to be looking at them through a soda straw. They were unlikely to spot the ship unless they happened to be looking at the right spot at the exact moment it passed by. Even then, tracking the Blade would be difficult as they would only have caught a glimpse.
Kate shivered. Would they know where to look? Would Knowl shield them? Or, as in the mines, was there someone else watching them?
Dagger flew on for another forty-five minutes. Kate knew she was ready to find a spot to land when she started craning her neck to look down at the rocky terrain flashing below them.
"That'll do," the pilot murmured. Louder, Dagger asked, "Got anything on the scopes, Flyboy?"
Garrett double-checked the sensor read-outs and shook his head. "No. Nobody's tracking us...and no pings from the active systems either. We're clear."
"We're never clear," Dagger snorted. "But we can hide for a bit." She rolled the Blade and nosed down. Dagger flared the wings as she got close to the ground. The Blade's nose rose and the landing pads extended, seeking firm ground. When the braking jets ignited, a halo of dirt was thrown up all around their landing site.
When the dust settled, Kate looked out the windscreen. Blade sat under a massive natural stone arch. The spectacular formation served as the entrance to a dry canyon whose walls were eroded into wavy patterns by countless flashfloods and the gritty winds of Transom.
"I thought you wanted to pick up your sister," Kate commented. She waved out at the canyon and the red stone arch. "Is she around here?"
Dagger expertly flipped off the harness securing her to the acceleration couch. She stood up in the narrow space between the pilot's and co-pilot's seats then crossed her arms over her chest. Dagger looked down at Kate and let her talk.
"If we're going to be walking through the desert," Kate continued, "I'm going to need some new shoes. These..." she started to show Dagger the wear her station shoes sustained during her earlier adventures then she caught the frown on the pilot's face. Kate put her foot back down and rubbed her hands on her dusty pants. "Right, maybe later."
"Planning conference?" Georges asked. He was slowly removing his harness, one strap at a time. Kate knew he was using his deliberately slow movements as an excuse to think over his next move.
"Where is your sister?" Kate asked before Georges could launch into an argument with Dagger. Since the team was out of danger of an imminent Tallinn counter-attack, she knew the Colonel would be keen on re-entering negotiations. He wanted to get off-world as soon as possible, with minimal side trips or further disruptions. Kate was beginning to see this entire quest would be full of detours though. Dagger's quest just happened to be next in line.
"She's in a Tallinn villa near the town of Overlight," Dagger announced.
"A Tallinn has her?" Georges clarified.
"He's not just a Tallinn," Dagger snarled, "He's Tallinn Scum. Capital 'S'."
"Noted," Georges replied evenly. Kate could tell he just wanted details. The marine wanted to be able to say this whole mission was impossible. But, given what Kate had so far learned of her team-mates, she was not sure anything was impossible for them, just varying degrees of difficult.
"Why is she there?" Kate pressed. She knew such background was probably not important to the success or failure of their trip, but, if what she sensed was correct, the facts would help move Georges and the others more firmly over into Dagger's side of the court.
Dagger looked away and focused on the canyon entrance outside the cockpit. She bit her lip in an uncharacteristic sign of deep thought.
"Amanda?" Kate urged softly.
At the sound of her given name, Dagger turned to face Kate. Her eyes widened and she seemed surprised to find anyone else onboard her ship. She shook her head and brought herself back to the present.
"My sister," Dagger began, then smiled weakly, "my sister was the pretty one." Her smile faded and she paused to take a ragged breath. "I kept telling Andrea her face would get her into trouble..."
"What happened?" Kate prompted when Dagger trailed off.
"I was able to keep her safe when we were young." Dagger picked up her story. "Let's just say I earned my nickname early on. Word got around to keep your hands off the Rodgers girls. But, then I got the Blade. I hoped to support both of us with a little side business. I left her in Overlight. Andrea needed one more year of school. I insisted she finish, then we could start working together. We had some friends who promised to look after her, but things did not play exactly as I wanted."
"The Tallinns came," Kate surmised. She felt a chill run down her spine. Kate crossed her arms in front of her and hugged herself.
"Yeah," Dagger snorted. "The freakin' Tallinns arrived with their tral-for-tech machines." She looked into Kate's eyes and held them.
Kate felt suddenly uncomfortable, but did not flinch. The abilities Kate now possessed were the same secret weapon the Tallinns used here on Transom to take the entire world from the Stellar Union. The Tallinns
wanted the mineral riches buried at places like Solom Mines. They took it using steam-powered mech and the Watchers. There had been no time to fully explain her situation to Dagger. The story of how she came by her glowing eyes, an unmistakable calling card of a Tallinn Watcher, would have to be told later.
"When the Scum came," Dagger continued, "they took whatever they wanted."
The implications were clear to Kate. Andrea's pretty face attracted the attention of one of the newly arrived Tallinn overseers. Dagger's prediction came true.
"You couldn't protect her because you were out on this ship." The statement came from Sparrow as she approached the bridge from Blade's common area.
"It's a little thing called a job," Dagger snarled.
"Peace," Sparrow replied. She held up her hands, palms outward to the pilot. "No argument there."
"Is the villa secured?" Georges asked as he tried to get the conversation back to the facts.
Kate glanced over at Georges. He stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger. Kate knew he had heard all he needed. He was determined to go through with the mission...no, Kate realized, this was not just a mission any longer. Dagger's tale turned this side trip into a rescue operation. Georges was all in and in full ops planning mode now. Kate let him have his lead.
Dagger shook her head. "There are guards, but it's not fortified." She reached into a pouch at the side of her acceleration couch and pulled out a sheaf of printouts. Dagger stared at the image on the sheets for a long moment. Kate watched as a cloud of grief passed over her face. As fast as the emotion appeared, it passed. Dagger's face hardened into a mask of determination. Dagger held the stack out to Georges.
"Recon," Georges grunted in approval. He flipped through a half-dozen pictures then handed them to Garrett. Georges motioned at the images. "How recent?"
"Four weeks."
"You were going to go in," Garrett wondered, "alone?"
"Yes," Dagger shrugged. "I got pretty close, a few times."
"Tell us what happened," Georges prompted as he plied the pilot for more intelligence on their target.
