“How long have the kids been on the base?” Brit said.
“Two days,” Transon replied.
“How old are they?” she asked.
“The boys are twelve and eight. The girl, Yandi, is thirteen,” the captain said.
Andy caught the tick in Brit’s jaw.
“Put me on Fireteam Two,” she said. “I want to breach.”
Transon raised his eyebrows. “Now, that’s interesting. A pilot with some fucking courage. Who’s going with her?”
Andy considered waiting to raise his hand but knew he couldn’t. He didn’t bother looking around the room. “I’ll go,” he said.
“Good, Sykes. Who else?”
More raised their hands until Transon had enough volunteers to fill his breach team. He checked their names against the squadron roster then nodded. “Good. Here’s some other news I neglected to tell you. The mom has offered bonuses to anyone who enters the base to help save her kids.” He flashed an evil smile. “So, for all you heroes, if you survive, you might come out rich. That sounds pretty good, yeah?”
His burned face made the statement lose any inspirational quality it made have offered. His eyes were never completely sarcastic or serious.
“Here’s the timeline,” Transon said, slapping his tablet. “Eight hours for a bit more rest. We’ll be in burn during that time. Load out in nine hours. Final technical checks and then you’ll depart for the station in squadron formation as Aggression’s Cost starts long range bombardment to soften their outer defenses. Depending on what we get from that, Fireteam One will close to draw out their mobile defenses as we discussed. Once Fireteam One is decisively engaged, Two will move in to conduct the breach. We don’t have a good interior scan on the object yet. If I have that information nine hours from now, I’ll share it with you. Otherwise, conduct scans to determine habitable areas and make your on-ground decision from there.”
“Are we going to split the breach team?” Brit said.
Transon nodded. “You could do that. Don’t want choke points. Honestly, you need to do what looks best once you’re close enough to make a decision. Don’t go cutting into their power plant.”
“What do we know about this gang?” Andy asked.
“We thought they were typical long-range smash-and-grab type. Then they pulled this off. The kids were on a lightly-armed yacht en route to Ceres. They overwhelmed the yacht, killed the crew and grabbed the ankle biters. They have to have been on a hard burn to reach their base in just three days. We don’t have good intel on the ships they used for the kidnapping but that’s not important. We have good evidence the kids are on this object.”
“We know they’re alive?” Brit said, voice cold.
“We do. They sent a ransom demand and verified status with a tissue sample.”
“Tissue sample?” somebody asked.
“A finger,” Transon said. “We think it was Kylan’s.”
“Damn,” Andy said.
“He’s lucky,” Transon said. “His mom can grow him a whole new body as long as we get his brain back in reasonable condition. I’m not showing the usual touchy-feely crap because you aren’t going to need it this time. These kids need our help. I don’t care that they’re rich fuckers. That’s not their fault. We’re Aggression’s Cost and we’re going to get them back in one piece. Yeah?”
The squadron responded with a booming, “Yes, sir!” that reminded Andy why he liked the TSF. There were times when he really felt like he was one of the good guys.
He watched Brit shout with the rest of them but her face was still flat and cold, gaze staring ahead as if she saw something terrible in the holodisplay that no one else could.
Chapter Thirty
STELLAR DATE: 08.27.2981 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sunny Skies
REGION: Cruithne Station, Terran Hegemony
“We’re clear,” Fran said from the second console. “Out of the lane and tempting fate.”
Andy checked the flight plan for the third time. He looked at the kids across the room. Cara met his eyes and gave him a small smile. He could see in her face that she was having a hard time just sitting there keeping Tim busy. She seemed to have aged a year since they arrived on Cruithne, while he couldn’t tell where Tim had gone. Sometimes it seemed like he was sliding backwards into being a toddler again.
Petral’s wounds had gone deeper than the autodoc had seen on the first pass. After a second scan, the system found her liver crushed and she’d lost kidney function. While Sunny Skies’ med system could regrow the damaged organs, it was going to take weeks. She might not wake from the medical coma by the time they reached Mars 1 and there was no chance of her leaving early with Fran in the shuttle.
The flight plan returned clean, as it had the first two checks. The main danger was the traffic density all around Cruithne. the Benevolent Hand had pulled back another ten thousand kilometers, apparently to give them more stand-off distance against the attacking TSF waves. Their slowed responses pointed toward Lowspin breaching teams already fighting through the corporate battle cruiser.
Andy’s gaze hung on the coordinates for Mars. Before Cruithne and Fran’s overhaul, there was no way Sunny Skies could have managed this level of initial burn. He hesitated, hands hanging above the controls.
“Everything all right?” Fran said.
“I can’t help thinking I’m about to tear the ship apart,” he said.
Fran raised an eyebrow. “Don’t trust my work?”
“I do. It’s hard to forget how I was feeling when we came into Cruithne. I lose the ship, I lose everything.”
“We stay here, we lose everything,”
“Maybe,” Andy said.
“Aren’t we going, Dad?” Cara said.
Andy nodded, not taking his eyes of the numbers on his screen. He tapped the command.
There was no immediate change. Fran stared into space for a second, most likely communicating their status change to the battle net. When her eyes came back into focus, she turned to Andy and said, “Confirmed. Lowspin also sent an update on the Benevolent Hand. They’ve breached the ship. Teams are fighting through their lower decks, headed for the command section.”
“Fight well,” Andy said, still focused on the incoming data from the drive systems. Sunny Skies was coming to life in ways he hadn’t seen before. The shields had activated in tandem as the engines came on line, something he used to have to time manually. The point defense cannons were coordinating with the sensor arrays, shifting between potential targets that were identified as TSF and civilian ships without him needing to scan through in a frantic race against the outdated automatic system, overriding non-targets.
“What’s wrong with you?” Fran said. “You look like your heart’s racing. Breathe.”
“You don’t understand. Everything’s working. It’s never been like this. Not even when we bought it. Every time we burned, it was like holding up a house of cards.”
Fran put her hands behind her head and leaned back, grinning at him. “I told you. Trust me.”
Her face as she said the words ‘trust me’ was more open than it had been before, her eyes holding on his.
Acceleration set in, pressing Andy into his seat. He looked over at the kids and made sure their posture was correct, heads back and arms in the armrests. Tim was humming to himself, staring up at the ceiling.
Andy let his head fall back so he didn’t have to fight against the acceleration any more. A wave of fatigue rolled over him, probably the blood constricting in his veins. They had an hour of acceleration before reaching the delta-v they’d need for most of the trip, a testament to Fran’s engine upgrades. If the systems held, reaching Proteus would be a real possibility.
Thinking about the moon made him wonder about Lyssa. Since the flash in the engine room, any attempt to reach her met only silence. He wished he had some kind of meter or sensor to let him know she was even there. What if she had somehow “died” during the surgery. Was that possi
ble? It would be easier to understand if he’d been implanted with a simple storage device carrying the AI, but Jickson had specifically said he would find another mind living inside his head, experiencing his body to a certain extent, walking with him.
His eyes felt dry as he stared at the holodisplay, trying to pull it back into focus as his vision clouded. Points of light marking other freighters and cargo ships were blinking out as they left alongside them. The TSF fighters continued to buzz like angry hornets, looping around the gray clouds of drones that had grown smaller, reforming at times, then splitting apart.
He hadn’t seen a dandelion since leaving Summerville.
came the response, compressed as if crossing long distances.
A low laugh answered.
Andy considered the words.
Starl laughed.
Andy said, abruptly angry.
Starl chuckled.
Starl coughed.
The Link cut off before Andy could answer. He blinked at the holodisplay, now only showing Cruithne and the Benevolent Hand. He pulled up a menu he didn’t check very often and queried his credit accounts in the bank he used for InnerSol transactions.
The first account number showed a new deposit. Andy stared at it for a second, forgetting to breathe. It was twice what Starl had promised, easily enough to fund fuel out to Proteus and back, and pay for private school for both the kids for twenty years.
He quickly transferred the money into a new account run out of a bank on Ceres that no one else could access and then sank in his seat, thinking about what he would do with the funds. He had a few debts to pay. After that, he couldn’t even think what he would do. The repairs on Sunny Skies had always been at the top of any list of priorities. With that taken care of, he didn’t know what should take precedence. Buy an apartment somewhere? Where would they go?
Fran shot him a look, then slid her gaze toward the kids.
She raised her eyebrows.
Cara couldn’t help jumping in her seat. She looked at Andy and Fran, eyes frantic.
Andy groaned.
“I haven’t been listening the whole time,” Cara said quickly. “I promise.”
“Then what have you been listening to?” Fran said aloud. “I could see from your intense expression over there you were eavesdropping on someone.”
“I don’t know who it is. I think it might be that other ship, the one attacking Cruithne.”
“You mean the Benevolent Hand?” Andy asked. “They’re attacking everyone. Including us. Or they were.”
Cara nodded. “I think it’s one of their maintenance channels. It’s not encrypted like the others. They’re talking about hull pressure and something about drive economy.”
“The drives?” Fran said. “That could mean they’re about to—”
In the holodisplay in front of Andy, the long shape of the Benevolent Hand blurred and disappeared.
Andy closed the display showing Cruithne and ran a scan for all objects leaving the surrounding space. The scan locked on Benevolent Hand, the largest moving object, and measured a vector. When the data gave him a projected destination, he swallowed hard.
“They’re heading for Mars 1,” he said. “They’re following us.”
Chapter Thirty-One
STELLAR DATE: 9.11.2963 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Object 8221
REGION: Near the Mars Protectorate Border, InnerSol
Eighteen Years Earlier
Aggression’s Cost fought off a steady barrage of missiles and long-range fighters as it approached Object 8221. There was no way to hide the squadron’s advance. The battle cruiser could try to draw the pirates out, or get them to hold off for the fight when the fire teams arrived.
When the battle cruiser reached a stand-off distance of five hundred thousand kilometers, it launched the two fireteams Captain Transon had assigned the mission.
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