The Orion Deception

by Tom Bielawski

Heck slowly opened his other eye and very quietly said, "Because they are being jammed."

  "Jam-"

  "Shh," he interrupted. "This isn't an ordinary shuttle."

  "Then what is it?" she demanded in a harsh whisper. "Looks like any other commuter hopper I've ever been on."

  "The other passengers are probably government agents," he replied in a low voice. She knew now he had been feigning sleep all along. "They usually jam communication devices during flight."

  "Oh my God! What are we going to do?"

  "Nothing. They aren't on to us yet, but mind yourself. They look like US government agents, not Commonwealth types, and are probably riding the shuttle for another reason. The Commonwealth might ask US police to help them apprehend a suspect, but they won't call in any local or federal help in a man-hunt."

  "Oh no!" she exclaimed in a whisper, her eyes fearfully glancing back to the man she thought looked familiar. Just then the shuttle seemed to begin to descend.

  "What?" he asked in harsh whisper, losing patience with the woman's dramatics.

  "That man in the aisle seat behind us looks familiar."

  "What makes you say that?" he asked, a dangerous tone in his voice. Heck suddenly looked like a coiled spring, ready to leap into action.

  "I think he was the one who had been snooping around right before my brother disappeared."

  "Ok, anything else?"

  "Yes," she gulped. "A few moments ago, right before I noticed my phone wasn't working, the display above the pilot's head read Jacksonville for just a moment, then it displayed Tampa again."

  Heck lay his head back on the seat rest in resignation and looked out the window at the world passing below.

  "What is it?"

  "They're on to us."

  "They are?" she asked in a slight panic, though she knew he spoke the truth. "My disguise is wearing off."

  "Mine too. I was hoping we'd be in Tampa by now. If what you say is true, they've figured us out. Damn." Heck appeared genuinely frustrated and let out a long sigh. "Ok. That means this shuttle is headed for the Commonwealth Aerospace Port in Jacksonville."

  "Why haven't they just arrested us? Why the charade?"

  "Because they respect my abilities too much." Lainne knew that Heck wasn't being arrogant; he was just speaking the truth. His reputation was in fact very well known.

  "So all of the passengers on this shuttle are Commonwealth agents?"

  "I don't know, maybe."

  "How did they know about us?"

  "Your phone," he said suddenly. "I should have had you trash that sooner. Too late now."

  "I can shut it down," she offered, fumbling for her phone.

  "Do it, but it won't help us right now."

  "What else can we do?"

  "Sit there, do nothing, and look ugly." Heck smirked as Lainne's ugly face grimaced at the insult. "I'll handle this."

  Lainne watched as Heck casually strolled back toward the lavatory at the rear of the shuttle. As he neared the well-dressed man seated aft of them, he very quickly drew a small pistol from inside his waistband and shot the man in the foot. Using that moment of stunned surprise, he stepped behind the seat, put his arm around the man's throat, and used him as a shield. The seat-backs on this shuttle were low, below the shoulders of the passenger, and Heck was able to use his weight to keep the man's neck over the top of the seat like a lever. The suddenness of the attack shocked everyone into a moment of inaction; even the pilot was distracted and the shuttle veered dangerously. Two passengers sitting to the left of the aisle, and behind the pilot, stood and reached for their weapons. Disbelief was on their faces.

  Lainne had expected Heck to offer a warning or a shouted command to the two who were clearly moving to confront him, but he didn't. As the man managed to get out from the narrow seats and into the aisle, Heck shot him. He dropped his gun and fell down, clutching his wounded shoulder, whimpering. The woman stopped where she was with her hands out at her sides, a look of caution in her eyes.

  "Look," began the woman. "This doesn't need to happen. You have to-" but she didn't get to finish her sentence.

  The man on the floor had made a sudden move for the gun that he had dropped a moment earlier. Heck fired a shot into the deck near the man's head, just as he reached for the weapon; the man wisely decided to remain still. The woman glanced down at the man that Heck assumed was her partner, and said nothing. Seeing the woman's choice of attire, a dress with high heel shoes, Heck thought that these two must be very inexperienced agents. They had a very poor grasp of tactics and had allowed their quarry to overcome them very quickly. Not to mention the lack of maneuverability that the woman's attire forced upon her.

  They should never have allowed us to sit behind them, he thought with a smile.

  To further demonstrate the incompetence of the two, the woman suddenly reached into her purse and pulled out a pistol. But Heck was already trained on the woman and squeezed off a shot before she could do the same. He was fairly sure that his first shot hit the mark, but the woman ducked down behind the seat row and he couldn't be sure. She could have been wearing ballistic protection. He fired again, this time at the back of the seat where he guessed she now was hiding and was rewarded with a shriek of pain.

  The last person on the shuttle was huddled in his seat, and Lainne could tell by the odor that the man had wet himself from fright. She didn't think he was Commonwealth agent.

  Heck kept his arm around the throat of the man in his grasp and pinned him to his seat. The man was remarkably calm. He made no complaints and did not seem to mind that his neck was within inches of snapping. He simply waited for the situation to play out. Lainne wondered what Heck was waiting for, why he hadn't released the man's neck. She was beginning to feel sorry for him.

  "Heck," she began quietly. "Shouldn't you-" but she didn't get to finish her sentence. A loud crack told her that another shot had been fired, this time by the woman who had managed to wiggle down and under the seats. She fired again, wildly, the rounds going nowhere near Heck. The ex-lawman had his body behind his human shield, but calmly held his pistol pointed toward the area where the woman was hiding. Finally, his patience was rewarded when the woman made a leap into the aisle and tried to get to the pilot.

  But Heck Thomas had been ready for such a move, knowing that the woman had little choice but to try using a human shield of her own. If the pilot died, it was very likely that they would all die. But her gamble failed miserably. Heck shot her in mid-stride, a bullet tunneling through the back of her knee and shattering her kneecap. She fell to the floor of the shuttle in a heap, writhing in pain.

  "Now that I have everyone's attention," he said loudly. "Since y'all seem to know who I am, we can move right along to 'this is a stick-up.' Pilot: do not descend or prepare to land, we are turning this craft around. Do NOT call for help or I will put a bullet in the back of your skull. I can fly this aircraft as well as you can, I don't need you. Raise your left hand to acknowledge, please."

  The pilot, whose left hand had been near the communications panel, raised his left hand in the air.

  "Lainne, please be so kind as to divest these fine law officers of their weapons and handcuffs and bind them to the nearest seat."

  Lainne looked at Heck like he was crazy. He actually wanted her to touch these people? She was about to voice her displeasure, but his grim face and the dangerous glint in his eye made her fear him more than her dislike of getting dirty or bloody. She certainly did not want him to shoot her!

  "I'm sorry," she said as she picked up the gun dropped by the man that Heck had shot first. She held the lightweight pistol with just two fingers, cringing as though it were a dead bug. "It was his idea, not mine."

  The man just groaned in pain, one hand over his bloody shoulder. Then he started mumbling in a foreign language, she thought it was some variety of Slavic as she removed a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt in the small of this back. Then she handcuffed the man's uninjured arm to the base
of a seat.

  "Both of his hands, Lainne," he instructed. "Hurry up!"

  "He's hurt, I can only do one hand."

  "I'm so glad you're worried about his well-being."

  "I'm trying, Heck Thomas!" she shouted back, offended. "I found his wallet, and he's mumbling in Russian or something."

  "Now the woman."

  Just as Lainne was about to step over the man in the narrow aisle, his hand shot up and he grabbed her ankle. Then the man thrust a tanto style knife up toward her thigh with his uninjured arm, aiming for her femoral artery and a potentially killing blow.

  Before the blade struck home another shot rang out in the shuttle cabin and the man went limp. Lainne jumped back with a shriek as she saw gray matter dripping from a gaping hole in the man's head.

  "What happened?" she asked, frightened.

  "He was so happy you were nice he tried to kill you in gratitude," said Heck. "Now, the woman!"

  Lainne stumbled over to the unconscious woman. She took the woman's gun and her purse, and found a pair of handcuffs hidden within. Heck instructed Lainne to handcuff the woman to the nearest seat, both hands. Then he told her to do the same to the man who was seated beneath the ex-lawman's gun. Lainne had to use a few of straps from the floatation devices strapped to the seat-bottoms to finish securing the hostile looking man's legs.

  With each of the man's hands secured to the armrests, and his feet secured to the bottom of the seat, Heck gave Lainne a gun and made her guard him.

  "Shoot him if he tries to escape," he growled. Lainne nodded dutifully, but doubted she could pull the trigger if it came to that. She was frightened of this man, there was nothing in his eyes but death and hatred. The man returned Heck's cold glare with an icy stare of his own as Heck searched his pockets. He found a small pistol and a pair of throwing knives hidden in secret pockets, but nothing else.

  Then he flipped through the wallets that Lainne had recovered, nodding to himself as he perused the identification cards within. "Commonwealth Transportation Security Agency," he growled. "Figures." He tossed the wallets onto the seat next to his prisoner and left Lainne to her duty.

  Heck approached the pilot with caution and was suspicious of the man from the start. A small tattoo of a crescent moon and dagger logo was visible on his dark skin above the collar of his t-shirt. He placed the barrel of his gun against the man's skull.

  "Soldier of the Crescent Moon?" he asked with a snarl.

  "What is it to you?" sneered the man in return.

  "Only the lives of some good US Marines I served with in my youth."

  "Your country's war on the sovereign State of Nuristan caused those losses, not me."

  "You don't know how tempted I am to squeeze this trigger," whispered Heck.

  "So the great Heck Thomas can give in to his anger," said the pilot. "Go ahead. I'm sure God will forgive you."

  Heck couldn't understand why, but the man's words hit home. He was right. While Heck was certainly not a Muslim, as he thought this man must be, he had been a Christian and now felt ashamed that a Muslim terrorist was putting him in his place. What was happening to him? Drinking, self-pity, uncontrollable anger? That was not like the typically in-control lawman. He took a deep breath and pulled the weapon back from the man's head. Aside from helping to lessen his growing anger, holding a gun to a person's head was certainly not an effective way to control someone, especially if that person had any tactical training.

  "Do as I say and we will get along fine," cautioned the ex-lawman. The pilot nodded. He was a young man, far younger than Heck's own forty-five years, and couldn't have been involved in the Nuristan insurrection of twenty years before.

  "Activate the nav computer," instructed Heck. When the man hesitated he said, "Since you seem to know who I am, you must also know that I am one of the best pilots in the System. I can kill you and fly this craft manually, without nav systems or guidance controls. So please, do as I ask."

  The pilot did as he was told and in a moment the navigation system holocontrols projected into the air in front of Heck. He punched in the coordinates for their new destination just as he felt a tap on his shoulder.

  "Uh, Heck?"

  "A little busy here, Lainne."

  "That man keeps staring at me. He won't talk at all."

  "Why are you talking to him?" he asked.

  "I'm just trying to find out about my brother," she said defensively.

  "Don't."

  "What? Why?"

  Heck turned to glare at here fiercely. "You dragged me into this, Lainne. Now I'm in it and we’re going to do this my way. That guy is a killer. He is not an agent of the Commonwealth, at least not any agency I know of. The two clowns behind us were Commonwealth Transportation Security rookies, probably here to supervise the killer in the back of the aircraft. But him, he will probably swallow his own tongue before he tells you anything. At least as long as we let him keep his tongue."

  Lainne was shocked at the turn in Heck's demeanor. "Ok, Heck." She returned to her prisoner who just glared at her, danger and death in his cold eyes.

  "Why are we going there?" asked the pilot, nodding to the coordinates on the navigation computer. Heck returned his attention to the man at the controls of the aircraft. "That part of Lake George is a swamp and incredibly dangerous, especially in the dark."

  "Don't worry about it, Soldier."

  "It will not be long before the Air Force dispatches fighters to find and destroy us," warned the man.

  "Then I guess we should get on the ground before then."

  "Whatever you say," said the pilot as he forced the engines to maximum speed. "We should be there in twenty minutes."

  "Power off the comm system, we’re going to fly dark."

  "That is not wise, Mr. Thomas. There are too many aircraft flying in this area, we could crash."

  "Then you'd better be very good at flying dark."

  The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Spacefaring Nations, Horatio Arnold, languished in an anti-grav recliner behind a polished desk of cherry wood. He stared out the great bay window to the intriguing world of Palace Drift, sprawled before him in a metropolis of corruption, vice, and betrayal. In the square far below his personal high-rise tower troops marched in tight formation, preparing for the changing of the guard. Ever since that meddlesome ex-Marshal, Heck Thomas, had infiltrated the Prime Minister's Palace, security had tightened up throughout the drift; even the sewer tubes were now guarded by armed guards.

  The Honorable Mr. Arnold smiled as he swiveled his chair about, the window now at his back. The PM was not a sentimental man, and the decor of his personal office reflected his dour personality. Horatio Arnold proudly displayed traditional paintings of war instead of photos of family he did not care for. He had been especially fond of the First American Civil War and the events that led up to it. History had a way of repeating itself and Horatio Arnold was not necessarily of the opinion that such repetition was a bad thing.

  Arnold knew that the current state of the Commonwealth mirrored the unrest that led to the Second American Civil War, which was largely a financial cold war between certain American states and its parent US Government. If things were to continue as they had, the various factions within the Commonwealth would align into two distinct spheres. The first sphere consisted mainly of the drift states existing beyond Earth - Moon orbit near the Asteroid Belt and two autonomous Martian colonies; already there had been rumblings of common discontent among them. The second sphere was the core support group of the Commonwealth. It was made up of the Terran governments who were largely dependent upon the taxes collected by the Commonwealth to support and care for their own peoples; the Earth-Moon orbital drift states, Commonwealth Lunar Dependency, and the Commonwealth Martian Dependency.

  The rift between the two groups had become so great that Arnold was certain war was inevitable. The drift states in particular had become trade powerhouses and had formed their own caucuses within the Commonwealth Parliament, th
ose who remained in the Commonwealth that is. Mining companies had started most of those drifts in the mid-21st Century, and colonization followed quickly with the advent of artificial gravity technology. It wasn't long before the drifts that controlled various mining operations expanded and grew and traded with each other, creating thriving and successful communities. The sense of self-determination and self-reliance was strong and necessary in the far away drifts and brought a resurgence of the well-known American Revolutionary War motto, "Don't tread on me!" among them.

  Arnold smiled at his own reflection in a mirror on the back of his door and smoothed his slick black hair back into place. He removed a small aerosol can from his desk and spritzed a small amount onto a troublesome patch of gray hair. In seconds the gray hair was black once more and the recirculated air sucked the lingering spray out of the room. He tucked his secret spray back into a drawer and tapped the computer interface in the surface of his desk.

  This office, the Office of Prime Minister, signified the pinnacle of his career; it was his crowning achievement. But the achievement had begun to feel hollow. Arnold was nearing the end of his second five year term. He had never been forced to endure a vote of No Confidence, but the rumblings in Parliament threatened one soon. And that could mean a premature end to his dream of mastery of the Solar System. That could not be allowed to happen.

  The System was highly divided over a number of issues and the people of the various member states reflected that division. As far as Arnold was concerned, the Commonwealth had a cancerous growth in the form of those in opposition to himself, only Arnold wasn't entirely unhappy with that scenario. He blew out a sigh of contentment, the drift states were playing right into his hands. The power of the Commonwealth government was going to tip drastically very soon and Arnold intended to be driving the side that tipped the scales.

  Arnold sat down on his anti-grav recliner and tapped a smooth vid screen on the armrest. A holographic menu appeared before him and he made his selection with the flick of one finger. A news anchor flared to life above his desk and began recounting stories he had recorded earlier. He sat back in his recliner to watch and listen, having already known much of what he was about see, a broad smile on his face.