“As it should be. Thank you for everything, Korab, and I wish you all the best.” The two men shook hands. They had only known each other for one day, but it felt like two old friends saying goodbye.
Korab moved to the task of relocating his family and friends to safety and Carr went to the room where Mumphrey was being cared for. Passing Korab’s wife in the hallway Vesna said nothing but shook her head in a dispirited manner.
Entering the room, he found Mumphrey barely conscious. Her skin was pale, and she was shivering. Sanchez sat on the other side of the bed, pressing a bloody towel to the Inspector’s shoulder with her right hand and holding Mumphrey’s hand with her left. She looked up at Carr as he entered, her eyes telling him everything he needed to know.
Pulling up a chair on the older woman’s right, he took her free hand in his and mustered up a broad smile. Mumphrey’s eyes slid slowly over to him.
“You look like you could use a shave,” said Mumphrey weakly.
Carr rubbed his hand across the stubble on the top of his head. “Yeah, I do, don’t I?”
He and Sanchez laughed and Mumphrey grinned, her attention fading in and out.
“You know,” said Carr, “it occurs to me that we don’t even know your first name, Inspector.”
A pleased look spread across her face. “Susan. My name is Susan.”
“Well, Susan, just try to hang in there a little more. Korab says a doctor is on the way.”
Sanchez picked up the rally cry. “That’s right, Susan, after we get you patched up, Korab’s people will take us to Kite. We’ll get you up to a Union warship, and then we’ll all head for home.”
Mumphrey looked at Sanchez, then back at Carr. “I’d like that,” she said wearily. “Have either of you ever been to Arethusa? It’s a lovely moon. You know, before they transferred me to Sarissa, I’d never been off Arethusa in my entire life. Now look at me—I’m on Earth.” She paused for a moment, trying to gather strength. “The funny thing is I’m not all that impressed with it. When we were children, we were always taught how beautiful Old Earth was, but I don’t think it’s even close to Arethusa. The broad steppes of manna grass and the stands of ryouta trees, and Nesa hanging in the sky so big and bright…”
“And you’ll be home again before you know it,” lied Carr. “Just rest now.”
Mumphrey looked at him as a flash of pain crossed her face. “Just take me home, Frank. I should have never…” Her eyes fell shut. Sanchez made a little whimper of a sound and then felt the inside of Mumphrey’s wrist for a pulse that wasn’t there. Carr stood and checked for life on the side of her neck, finding nothing.
“You’re right old girl—you should have never come here.” Frank Carr bent down and kissed Mumphrey on the forehead as Etta Sanchez wiped at the tears on her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Voss. “I’m sorry for all the nasty things I said to her—to all of you.”
Carr pulled up a blanket and gently placed it across the older woman’s face. Sanchez realized she was still holding a bloody towel and let it drop from her hand.
Walking over to the big man, she gave him a small hug. “How’s the leg, big guy?” she asked.
“I’ll live. Carr did a good job patchin’ me up.”
“Voss,” said Carr, “when all of this is over, we’ll come back for her body to take her home, but until then…”
“We can clear out a space and put her in one of the plant’s freezers, if that’s not too disrespectful, that is.” The big man looked slightly embarrassed about the idea.
“Under the circumstances, I think that would be fine,” Carr said, grasping the man’s shoulder to reassure him. “Sanchez, I need to see you outside.”
After they both washed up, the Sarissans retreated to a small courtyard in the back of the Korab family living quarters. The butcher had posted sentries around the plant as his people were reporting in. There were also some lookouts hidden on the rooftops. Otherwise, it was a pleasant evening with a bracing chill in the air.
“What’s the plan?” asked Sanchez.
“One of Korab’s squads is going to take us to the ships. You’re going to take Kite and find our task force so they can download all the data we collected. Hopefully, there will be something in there they can use.”
“And you?” Sanchez asked in a wary tone.
“I’m taking Kestrel.”
“Taking it where?”
“To Haldryn’s big warship.”
Sanchez placed her hand on her temple and paced a few steps. “A suicide mission? That’s your plan. What the hell, Carr? You have to be kidding me.”
“You know our people don’t stand a chance unless something is done about that monster ship.”
“You told me we should always have a plan B. We need to find a plan B, because honestly, plan A sucks.”
“There’s no time.”
Sanchez calmed herself, thinking she had come up with a winning argument. “Look, even if you do throw your life away and smash Kestrel into that titan, it would barely make a scratch against that thing.”
“I’m going to take the bomb Haldryn’s people gave Sandu—that will give me some punch.”
She sat down on a chair and rubbed her eyes with equal measures of fatigue and annoyance. “Carr, is this about Shannon?”
His face reddened—she could see it even in the dim light of the evening. “How do you know about her? She’s none of your concern.”
“She is if it’s affecting our mission and I think that’s what’s going on here. Mumphrey told me a few things, but not much. Fill me in—talk to me.”
Neither of them moved as a silence dragged out through the autumn night. Sanchez sensed that veteran operative Frank Carr had reached the end of his rope. The man was crashing. He was a car running on a low charge. Another mile, another foot, and then he would simply stop. His resourcefulness, his ingenuity, his training—they were all failing him, so much so, that all he could come up with was a futile gesture.
“Carr, talk to me,” she said forcefully, and then more gently added the word, “please.”
He looked up at the sky and then back to her. “Shannon worked for Nuevo Mundi, the terraforming company.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard of it. It’s headquartered on Quijano.”
“She was stationed on the Uritski Outpost, working at a site they call the Periclean Plateau. One day, she didn’t report for work. When the supervisor checked her quarters, they found her asleep. They tried to wake her but they couldn’t. She’d fallen into some sort of a coma.”
“Where is she now?”
“In a long-term care hospital in Boutwell. She’s being kept in medical stasis: it’s like hypersleep, so they can keep her alive while they work on a cure.”
“A cure for what?” asked Sanchez.
“She picked up some sort of virus on Uritski, something that’s keeping her comatose. The doctors are stumped. They say there’s no physical damage to her body and that she should be fine, except she just won’t wake up. If there was no hope then I’d accept that, but the doctors believe they can still save her. They say they just need more time, but time costs money.
“The other problem is the insurance company—they don’t want to pay for any more care. Her prolonged struggle for life is eating into their profits, so I’m trying to pick up the medical bills on my own.”
“I’m so sorry, Carr,” said Sanchez. “Can’t you sue the insurance company or Nuevo Mundi?”
“I am, but legal action is slow and lawyers cost money too,” he replied, taking a deep breath of the night air before continuing. “Sanchez, what does any of this have to do with our current situation?”
She held her hands out in the palms up gesture. “You tell me. A suicide run? How’s that going to help anyone?”
“If I can cripple that big Rhuzari ship and give our forces a chance to win, it will be worth it. And,” he took a deep breath, “it will give Shannon a chance to win
, too.”
She looked up from her chair as his meaning sunk in. All OMI operatives had a hefty life insurance policy on them in case they died in the line of duty.
“The life insurance money? You can’t be serious.”
Sanchez walked over to Carr. She was very close to him, looking intently into his eyes and then her right hand rose quickly to slap him hard across the face. “You stupid…fool!” She quickly moved to the other side of the small courtyard and then rushed halfway back toward him. “Why do you men always have to be so dramatic? You always have to make some sort of stupid grand gesture, to be a martyr. Fools, that’s all you are.” She paused as something occurred to her. “Besides Carr, you don’t have the command codes to fly Kestrel.”
“I can order you to give me the codes.”
“You know I won’t do that.”
“All right, I’ll just take Kite instead. I have those codes.” Carr started to say something else and his voice broke. Finally, he spoke in a low, defeated tone. “Sanchez, I just don’t know what else to do.”
She shook her head back and forth. “Frank, there just has to be another way, a plan B. Your wife wouldn’t want you to throw your life away like this and…” she hesitated, “And I don’t want you to either.”
“My wife?” he asked, looking at her oddly.
She stared back at him. Maybe this wasn’t a cold, calculated attempt to be a hero. He might just be cracking up. “Yeah, Shannon.”
It took Carr a beat to get it. “Mumphrey told you Shannon was my wife?” He let out a little laugh and Sanchez almost slapped him again.
“Sorry,” he said. “Oh, Gods, typical SSB efficiency right to the end.”
“Have you gone completely mad?”
Carr straightened up. “Mumphrey, bless her, was wrong. I’m not married. Shannon Carr is my sister.”
“Your sister,” Sanchez repeated, as she blinked her eyes and fumbled for words, but only for an instant. “OK, same question, do you think your sister would want you to throw away your life?”
“Sorry you had the wrong—” Carr stopped talking and stood perfectly still. She could tell something had clicked in his mind. He wasn’t considering her last question—he was concentrating. Finally, he snapped his fingers as his face lit up.
“What?” she asked.
Staring at her for a moment longer, he reached out his right hand and snapped his fingers twice again.
“What, what?”
“Plan B,” he said. “But we’ll need Korab’s help.”
Sanchez looked at him suspiciously. “Does it involve a suicide run?”
“Well, sort of, but I won’t be going alone—you’ll be piloting.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her along as they moved back inside. “C’mon, we’ve got to see Korab.”
Following behind him, Sanchez muttered to herself. “Gods, why did I have to stop Plan A?”
28: Gift
As the scout ship raced upward from the Earth’s surface, Kestrel was just about to trade the darkness of an autumn night for the blackness of outer space. With Etta Sanchez piloting, the small vessel rose to seek out the behemoth Rhuzari warship Imperial Wrath. It was like a gazelle hunting a lion or a baby seal seeking out a great white shark. It was crazy.
Crossing the Karman line and now fully in the vacuum, the stealth scout’s space sensors kicked in and a variety of displays came to life before Frank Carr’s eyes.
“Man, I wish I had a cup of coffee right about now,” said Sanchez from her pilot’s seat to his left.
“You’re doing great,” mumbled Carr as he tried to concentrate on the incoming data.
“Doesn’t a condemned woman get a last request?”
“There it is,” said Carr, swiping at the display in front of him, pasting a copy of it onto the HUD shade worn by Sanchez. The enormous vessel was nearly 44,000 kilometers off to port, and the pilot straightened Kestrel to make a direct bead for the enemy ship.
“I don’t understand something,” said Sanchez. “If you want them to see us, why are we still in stealth?”
Carr finished examining some data before responding. “I don’t want us to be attacked by one of the other Rhuzari ships before we get to Fleetmaster Haldryn. That doesn’t seem to be a problem though—take a look.”
Kestrel’s sensors showed only three other enemy warships near Earth, all hugging close to the Rhuzari shipyard. The rest of the opposition was hours out, beyond the asteroid belt but coming hard back toward the Blue Planet.
“Looks like the Gerrhans got wiped out,” said Sanchez somberly as she noted the wreckage of Commonwealth warships near Saturn. “So if Kestrel’s safe for the time being, shall I drop her out of stealth?”
Carr considered the notion. “No, stay in stealth until we get close to the big ship.”
“Oh, OK—I get it. Sneak up on them, drop stealth, and then get blown up. Gotcha.”
Carr grinned. “Haldryn wants our stealth technology so bad he can taste it. If we crawl right up to him and then reveal ourselves, it will just make him want it that much more. Don’t worry, Sanchez, he won’t kill us until after we dock with his ship.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “So, won’t he suspect something’s fishy if we just show up and want to come aboard?”
“That’s where we have to do a little acting, but before that,” he said pointing to one of his data screens, “there’s TF Nineteen, or rather what’s left of them.”
Kestrel had completed its detailed sensor sweeps and Sanchez now saw the bigger picture—debris strewn over hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. Icons of what the scout ID’d as rubble from Union ships, life pods, and floating corpses.
“Gods,” she said in a near whisper. “It was a massacre. We only have seven ships left.”
“And the tankers near Jupiter,” Carr added. “C’mon, we have to send the data we uploaded to what remains of the fleet. Can you set up a tight-beam comm signal?”
Sanchez shook herself to concentrate on the task. “Yeah, gimme a minute. And, Carr, you were right. We have to stop these bastards no matter the cost.”
* * * *
The stateroom lights were dimmed low as Haldryn sat in a chair beside his bed. His sheets were mussed from numerous attempts to sleep, but he always landed back in the chair, looking at their pictures.
In his hands, he held a leather-covered trifold case. Inside the case, three panels showed looping video portraits. In the center was a woman flanked by two children—an adolescent girl and a younger boy. In his scene, the young boy was making faces and clowning around. Not quite military discipline thought his father, but he is only ten. His sister was much more dignified, so much like her mother, her beautiful mother…
A chime from the intercom interrupted his trance. “Yes,” he acknowledged. It was Captain Rhaab, mistress of his flagship.
“Sorry to disturb your sleep, my Lord,” came a husky female voice, “but I think you should come to the bridge.” Rhaab was a no-nonsense commanding officer, which meant if she was summoning him to the bridge at this late hour, there was a good reason. As for disturbing his sleep…
When the fleetmaster arrived on the spacious bridge of the Imperial Wrath, he was greeted by Rhaab and his Chief of Staff, High Captain Balasi. Both had obviously been rousted from their beds, with Balasi still working on buttoning his shirt. On the other hand, Haldryn arrived neatly dressed in full uniform, right down to the ceremonial dagger on his belt.
“What is it?” the leader demanded. “Has the enemy fleet moved?”
Balasi began to answer, but Captain Rhaab beat him to it. “No, my Lord, they’re still sitting out there. However, we are picking up intermittent neighborhood signals.”
“What the devil are ‘intermittent neighborhood signals,’ Captain? What exactly does that mean?”
This time, Balasi answered. “It means we believe there is an enemy ship operating in stealth mode nearby.”
Haldryn slid into his bridge chair, whi
ch was slightly elevated behind Captain Rhaab’s command chair. He casually crossed his legs and smirked. “I want that ship intact, Captain. We’ll board her if we must, but under no circumstances are you to fire on that vessel without my personal command.”
Rhaab looked at Balasi and rolled her eyes ever so slightly. “We have to find it first—sir,” she said under her breath. The captain of the Imperial Wrath was a fierce looking woman with a disposition to match. A veteran of several campaigns, she was probably the only person aboard that the fleetmaster did not intimidate.
Balasi settled into his seat beside Haldryn. “I still believe we should just attack the rest of the Union fleet and be done with them.”
“Patience, Balasi. The main body of our fleet will arrive within hours and they will finish off the invaders. The enemy has an advantage in their stealth tech. It may be their only advantage, but it is an advantage, nonetheless. We must stay close to protect Bakkoa since it is our only home now that the Threshold is gone.
“Balasi, speaking of the Threshold, is your prisoner being cooperative?”
The high captain leaned over in his chair and spoke in a low voice. “Yes, Fleetmaster, very. I was going to wait until tomorrow morning to inform you, but—”
“Unidentified ship right underneath us!” shouted a crewmember from his station. The Kestrel had disengaged its stealth mode about 230 meters beneath the mammoth vessel. “Incoming transmission for Fleetmaster Haldryn.”
“Put it through to command stations, lieutenant,” Haldryn ordered. Instantaneously, an image floated in midair before the fleetmaster. The picture was a wide view of Carr and Sanchez sitting at a control panel.
Carr grinned as he put on his best provocative face. “Haldryn, long time…”
Haldryn glowered at the Sarissan as Carr’s taunt produced the desired result. “You do realize that with one word, I could have you destroyed, don’t you?”
“I do, but you won’t,” replied Carr. His smirk disappeared and his demeanor turned sober. “Seriously, Fleetmaster, we need to talk. This carnage has to stop and I want to negotiate an end to it.”
Starhold Page 29
