“Sybil and Tiago Brand,” Mud said, “we need to go. This building won’t last long.”
“Mission team to Arrow,” Steelbox said into his suit’s comm, “we’re a go, see you in three.”
Sybil and Tiago didn’t move. “We’re fine here, thank you very much,” Sybil said. She looked at her brother. “You can kill us if you wish, but I do not think we’ll be coming with yo–” she was cut off by a shot from Olivet’s blaster. A second shot stunned Tiago. Olivet moved to collect Tiago and nodded at Steelbox, who lugged Sybil onto his shoulder.
“We do not have time,” Olivet said to no one in particular as they left the room, their cargo slumped in fireman’s carries.
They walked out of the building in time to see the Arrow hovering overhead. GravPacks shot them up and into the ship, passing through the wide-open airlock quickly. Olivet and Steelbox walked the Brand siblings to what the crew of the Arrow called their holding cell. Really the room was just the smallest crew room, and unnecessary since it would be the sixth of the living quarters when they only had five crew members. Some reinforcements and a security door later and they had a nice comfy holding cell they almost never had cause to use.
Cargo stored and strapped in, everyone took their seats, keeping GravPacks on and adjusting harnesses to fit properly.
“Ship status?” Mud asked, looking at streams of data across his screens.
“We’ll be able to break orbit,” Bee said, “and get home, just not under full burn. It’ll add a day to the trip. Also not sure if our backup have enough fuel to make the first depot. Assuming they’re doing all right.”
“Let’s make sure,” Chellox said over his shoulder, keying the mic. “Arrow to Deep Water. Is the door open?”
“Door open, Arrow, but make it quick,” came Bushfield’s reply.
“Copy that, Deep Water, see you soon.” Chellox looked back at the crew, his bird helmet hiding his smile. “So you want me to say ‘Hold on’ now, instead of about three seconds from now, correct?”
“Just get us back into the black,” Mud said, shaking his head.
Chellox nodded, turning back to his instruments. Steelbox fed him data in soft tones and the Arrow thrummed to life, arcing cleanly to escape the sky.
They started back toward base, as fast as they could safely manage. They let the Ratzinger know they were under way, and that it would take an extra day, but left out any other details for the actual debriefing.
A while out from the first depot they ran into a snag: Deep Water and Beef didn’t have the fuel to reach the depot, after all. So, with a shrug and map, Mud and Bee got out and pushed using their GravPacks. The smaller fighters were easy to hang onto, and from there it was a simple long-range use of the GravPacks that the team had prepared for.
They got to the first depot, refueled both fighters, and made the rest of the multi-day trip without incident. They docked at the Ratzinger easily, with Steelbox marching the Brands out and turning them over to the ship’s guards. While he did, Bee and Chellox left instructions that they would need a complete teardown of the Arrow soon, so it could be loaded into a work bay.
They felt good about the mission, or at least good enough. Right up until Mills marched into the docking bay, his face showing anger.
“My office,” he said. “All of you. Soonest.” And with that he turned and left before they could ask him anything.
CHAPTER 11
UNADORNED, FULL OF CLEAN LINES and very little personalization, Mills’ office took up just enough space to fit the seven people filing in to it. He himself sat behind a small desk, too small for the room, actually—it’s size betraying, to Bushfield’s eyes at least, that he had only recently moved into the office and didn’t know what to do with it yet.
Two chairs sat in front of the small desk, and Mud and the crew of the Arrow stood behind them, leaving room along one side for Bushfield and Beef to stand as well.
“You wanted to see us?” Mud asked lightly.
“No,” Mills said, “I really didn’t. I need to, but let’s not mistake it for desire.”
“Sir,” Bushfield said, “what—”
“Bushfield, you and Oblick—”
“Who?” Mud asked quickly.
“Me,” Beef said, “Ted Oblick.”
“Oh, sorry, I—”
“Mud.” Mills said harshly, “do you mind? Thank you. Bushfield, you and Oblick were supposed to be backup. Only backup.”
“Sir, we were, sir,” Bushfield said, growing more and more uncertain as to what was even going on.
“As for you, Mud, Arrow crew,” Mills said, looking away from Bushfield, “would it have been possible for you to have made more of a mess?”
“Mills,” Mud said, “I’m not sure what’s going on here, but we completed the mission objectives and then some.”
“Really?” Mills asked. He shook his head and flipped open a folder. “Because I am already dealing with complaints about a spaceport that is unusable and a citizenry that seems terrified of, and I quote, ‘flying invaders,’ which feels like it may have been you.”
“Sure, and those terrified people were probably all working for the two we have in storage now,” Mud said. “I mean, this is all just ridiculous. But the thing that gets me...that really nags at me...why are you playing their game, Mills? You know we did our jobs and did them well.”
“Right up until you had Gov ships do a fly-over of a city where we weren’t supposed to have ships at all, much less on some mission. The Arrow? That I can disavow easily, I’ve done it a bunch of times, that’s why we use you guys—why you don’t even have ranks! But once Bushfield and Oblick entered atmo—”
“Sir, with respect,” Bushfield cut in, “there was nothing in the mission brief about us not being seen at any cost.”
“Backup. You stay out of atmo and hold open the door, that was it.”
“And you think,” Mud said, his own anger starting to seep in, “that none of the fighters we faced could have taken a picture of Gov ships up there? What’s really going on here, Mills? Hell, even this dressing down doesn’t need everyone present.”
Mills stood and walked over to his office door. Locking it, he then walked around the assembled groups to the back wall of his office. He slid open a panel in the wall and took out a small, squat, brass-colored device.
“Is that a—” Bee started to ask.
“When I ask for your input,” he said harshly, cutting her off. Twisting the brass device, he stared at it, holding a finger up to the group. Confident the device worked, he lowered his hand as he walked back to his desk. “Anyway, now that we’re shielded, sorry about that. Needed a record of me yelling and you being clueless for the archives when this gets combed through by the higher ups.”
“Mills, just spill it,” Mud said.
“The Brands sell some of their tech to Gov holdings. Going after them was a huge mistake on my part. I need to dress it up a bit to get away with it. I thought I was covered when I sent you guys out, and I’m sorry about that, but now I need to clean this up so we all still have jobs.”
Bushfield smiled, moving closer to the desk. “So what you’d need, then,” she said slowly, “would be something that the Brands didn’t want to sell, but keep for themselves—something the Gov didn’t have and would utterly love and could now, realistically, have for free?”
“That would be a thing to have, for sure,” Mills said, agreeably.
Beef took a metal cylinder out of his suit’s cargo pocket and set it on Mills’ desk.
“Oblick?” Mills asked, picking up the container and turning it over in his hands.
“Drones. Explosive warding drones. There’s one in there—in a few pieces, admittedly, but both my ship and Deep Water’s have a good number of them intact and disabled in our intake storage tanks.”
“How’d you disarm them?” Chellox ask.
“They were disabled without control so we figured that was off enough to work.”
“That
—” Mud stopped and chose his words carefully. “That was incredibly stupid. Both of you. Contact-explosive micro-drones just sitting in the intake holders?”
“They aren’t contact unless they’re active,” Bushfield explained. “We noticed when they started just bouncing off our hulls with no effect. It was safe, Mud, don’t insult my intelligence.”
“Or mine,” Oblick added.
“You can insult his,” Bushfield said.
“Hey now.”
“Folks,” Mills broke in, “this will help, but still—do me a favor and act dressed down while we sort through this jamming problem.”
“It wasn’t the Brands,” Bee said, “their jamming is utterly different.”
“We know, we had a comm blackout while you were gone, just a different degree of space than you sat along. Regardless. Go along, all right. You’re all grounded for the next few days.”
“We need to overhaul the Arrow anyway,” Mud said.
“Good. And look, let’s solve this comms problem, and then we can look into why some of my bosses are buying from mobsters, OK?” Mills twisted the device again and looked at the assembled tams. “So don’t get any more ideas that you’re untouchable.”
“Sir, yes sir,” Bushfield said, leaving the room. The others followed suit. Given Mills’ performance, they didn’t feel they could talk freely in the hallways of the Ratzinger, at least not about the mission. So they made their way back to the Arrow, under the guise of starting work on the ship early.
Bee turned on the internal countermeasures and they relaxed, leaning against the bulkhead and slumping in various chairs.
“Really, this became our problem?” Steelbox said when no one else wanted to say anything first. “We get to now work out some sort of corruption going on?”
“Nope,” Oblick said. “We do our jobs, which is this communications blackout. I mean,” he turned to Bushfield, “sir, if that’s still our mission.”
“We help the Arrow as we can,” she said. “But it isn’t our mission, no. So we go where Mills tells us. I have a feeling it might just be something sneaky.”
“Wait, but the Gov buying from some high-tech syndicate, is that really strange?” Mud asked the room. Everyone just looked at him.
“It was normal on Trasker Four,” Bee said. “Steelbox and I knew about it, everyone knew about it.”
“But Trasker Four also locked itself out from the Gov for the most part,” Steelbox added. “Does the larger Gov do that sort of thing?”
“More than any one would like. I don’t know why this one is such an issue. There’s something else there, but it really isn’t our problem right now.”
Sitting in his normal seat, Olivet started to sway gently. No one noticed.
“But Mud—” Chellox started.
“Nope. We have a communications problem that could threaten the ability of the Gov to get anything done and we still don’t have any leads except it also happened a few years ago. Now it’s back, and worse. We need to stop it. I trust Mills. This sort of thing, it’s not what we do. It’s all sneak and lie, and depends on having access we just don’t possess. We do our jobs, not his.”
“And we’ll keep an eye open,” Bushfield added.
“Right. And thanks. And if you need us, let us know,” Mud said.
“Ditto,” Oblick told him. “Now, we’re gonna go and get some downtime, and you guys might want to do the same.”
Everyone stood and started saying goodbyes, which is when they noticed Olivet slumped over the arm of his chair. Awake, his eyes unfocused, the Bercusan just draped there over his seat, like a rag doll left in the sun.
“Olivet?” Bee rushed to his side.
“Is he all right?” Chellox asked, coming around to Olivet’s other side. They started to right him in his seat, checking for vitals.
“He’s fine, Mud told them, unconcerned. “Just give him a minute. He took in a bunch of mist, by request, a while ago. This must be a hell of a vision.”
“He’s Bercusan?” Bushfield asked. “I thought that was some sort of joke you guys had. You mean he has the visions? Really?”
“Not a street performer,” Mud said gently, “but yes, he is and he does.”
Olivet slowly righted himself, still staring ahead blankly, seeing things the others couldn’t. “A rending,” he said softly, “a tear and a folding. Gone through. The claws of the side mark the intent of the other.”
Beef started to say something but found himself shushed by Mud before any noise could be made. They all stood and watched, Mud having his suit record the second Olivet started talking.
“One dies in darkness, another rises to take the place,” Olivet continued. He blinked several times and looked around the room. “Stop staring,” he said softly.
“Sorry,” Steelbox said as they all tried to look elsewhere, realized that impossible and somehow more insulting, and just tried to relax.
“I recorded it, in case you don’t re—” Mud started.
“I remember—it’s interesting that some of the stronger visions look like trances and all, but we always recall the visions,” Olivet told him quickly.
“Good to know for the future,” Mud said, the most at home with this process. “So.”
“So,” Olivet repeated. “That was the vision, the entire thing. I don’t have insights past what I’ve said. No bigger clue toward meaning. We don’t...we don’t see them so much as feel them. The words are the closest we get to understanding what flashes through our minds. Will it help, Mud?”
“As always, yes and no.”
“Of course,” Olivet said, nodding. He stood, not in the least shaky, and looked at his teammates and friends. “I’m sorry, I just realized none of you except Mud has ever seen that. Apologies.”
“Don’t apologize,” Bushfield said, “I mean I’ve heard, I knew that was why you originally went on the ship with Jonah, but—”
“But seeing it is different, I agree,” Olivet said, nodding at her. “Anyway, I believe we were going to discuss the Arrow and how to rebuild it?”
“Shouldn’t we discuss what you said?” Bee asked.
“No point just yet. What was said will be. The how and why is a mystery, even to me. So let us go back to what we were doing.”
“We can’t just ignore it, Olivet,” Mud said. “You’re the one who keeps reminding me they come true.”
“And you remind me we can’t use them to chart our course, only guide at best. And I agree. So let the words guide us as they begin to make sense, but let’s not do what my people sometimes try, and work them to death until we force an answer.”
Bee shrugged. “Right then. Chellox, Olivet, let’s go look at engine linkages and try to get human and Tsyfarian tech to work together better. Steelbox, you and Mud reconsider the interior layout. Bushfield, Beef...sorry, Oblick—”
“Whichever.”
“You guys go and get some rest, I suppose. Bushfield, dinner?” Bee smiled at Bushfield, who smiled back.
“You got it.”
They left and the crew of the Arrow got to work—all them, including Olivet, regardless of what he had said—working over his words of prophecy.
CHAPTER 12
OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DAYS, the crew of the Arrow tried to resume a normal life. As normal as one got living on a large, space-faring battle cruiser, at least. They took care of important things, such as sleeping and eating, as well as finding time for hobbies and friends.
Mud started his time by catching up on paperwork. Missions meant documentation, both on and off the record.
For the Gov and ship records he wrote up events as transpired, careful in what he said and how he said it. He wrote the report as he’d been taught to. Everything that went wrong ended up phrased in a way to make it his fault over anyone else’s. Everything right found the proper crew member assigned credit. He wrote both missions up, attached various supporting documents—logs, scans, and such—and filed them with the central office.
&nb
sp; That done, he started over from scratch and wrote up the missions again, an eye on deeper thoughts regarding the crew, linkages to older missions he found interesting even if coincidental, and any other strange sidebars he thought of along the way. This version of his reports also included tactical thoughts detailing his choices as well as the rest of the crew’s, mostly written in terms of what worked and didn’t, and why he thought each case did what it did.
Wrapping up that version, he sealed it under special encryption and uploaded it to a different server, one off base entirely. The family mission drop, for historical archives. His father insisted, and catalogued them with the original Insertion Team’s mission logs that he had kept. These second mission reports were an easy way of keeping the family up to date and seeing linkages that no one else could. Theoretically. Privately, he just thought it was a way for his parents to ensure he, in some way, constantly phoned home to keep them updated on the gossip out in space, now that they’d retired for good. Either way, the act of putting it down helped sort his thoughts.
Outside of that, Mud trained and helped out with the retrofit of the Arrow. Mud had other friends on the ship, and he would grab a meal and catch up with a few of them, but he had a problem nagging at him and it kept him focused down. He remained perfectly all right with that turn of events.
Olivet spent his time doing research. The communications problem bothered him. It bothered all of them, but as the science officer on the Arrow, he considered it rather more his problem. Right or wrong, he started to dig back, working to find out what could possibly block communications the way it was being done, and that meant being deeply and obsessively familiar with how the communications worked.
He discovered something on the second day that he chased for the next few, not telling anyone else about because, though he believed it, he couldn’t actually believe it could be right. It was.
Steelbox spent most of his time working on his star charts and, remembering what he had noticed before they left on their last mission, diving back into his study of the Bercuser charts, and how the systems the planet inhabited overlaid. Someone else needed to have noticed what he’d seen, and if not, then they could reason why he was wrong. So he dug into stacks of data and studied.
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