The Orion Deception

by Tom Bielawski

  Heck squinted in the dim light to identify if the cruisers were local or Commonwealth. After a moment he could make out the tell-tale green and gray hulls and five-point star emblems of county sheriff cruisers. Doubtless one each from Lake and Volusia Counties, as the river was the dividing line between the two.

  He looked upriver to the south and then back downriver to the north, continually scanning the police activity. A small boat was in the water south of the restaurant, a spotlight flashed this way and that as a man with a long hook was pulling things from the river. Heck smiled grimly, their ploy had worked. Looking back downriver to the north he saw that there was no activity, just a few lights from homes situated along the water's edge, but that gave him an idea.

  Heck slipped quietly into the water and swam across the river to the side where the others were hiding and continued beyond, moving downriver with the slow current. He came to a small wooden dock and climbed up, very slowly, thankful that the moon had moved completely behind the clouds.

  He was very pleased that some things in small-town America did not change, and patted the old metal signpost that greeted him.

  Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission

  St. John's River District,

  State Road 40 office

  A set of old wooden stairs led up to the small hut that overlooked the dark waters of the river. The irony of the old game warden's office so close to the ancient booze-running hideout made him smirk. It was clear to him now that his uncle had to have had the game wardens on the take, else they would not have been able to operate right under their noses.

  The dim blue light of a holographic computer interface that had been left on could be seen flickering in the office window. But Heck wasn't interested in what was in the office, breaking in would have been too risky anyway. Instead, he was interested in the sleek, gray, flats boat with the 150 lb. thrust trolling motor on the front and twin 225 hp outboard engines on the back. And the key was in it.

  It was his lucky day.

  The darkness on the Florida river was complete now that the moon was gone and clouds still blocked out the stars. Heck stealthily returned to the hideout and told the others what he had found. Very slowly, and very quietly, the men carried the corpse out of the hideout and to the downriver side of the bridge where the gray flats boat was lying against the shoreline. Once Lainne was aboard, Heck and Gelad pulled the corpse onto the back of the boat and Heck asked Gelad to remain there with the dead man.

  Within seconds Heck stood at the bow and the boat slid silently forward, downriver, and away from the crime scene behind them. Lainne was mystified at the silence of the boat until she realized that the motor on the front of the boat was electric and made only the slightest humming noise. The occasional slap of a wave against the hull made more noise than the electric trolling motor, but no one seemed to notice.

  Once they were in the middle of the river, Heck waved to Gelad. The Israeli tied the dead man's hands to an anchor and eased him into the water before finally letting go. Lainne heard the gurgling as air pockets trapped within the dead man's clothes surfaced, and then nothing. Gelad joined the others in the bow, looking backward until the lights of the Highway 40 bridge were no longer in sight.

  "A police boat, Heck?" asked Lainne, nervously.

  Heck answered with a grunt and a nod and said nothing more. He was focused on piloting the boat through inky waters and getting distance between them and the police; he could not do it fast enough under the slow cruising speed that the trolling motor was capable of doing.

  After nearly twenty minutes of gliding quietly through the dark waters, more lights appeared ahead.

  "What’s that?" Lainne asked quietly, hoping it wasn't more police activity.

  "Lake George, and those lights are navigational beacons," he answered as he turned off the electric motor and pulled it up onto the deck of the boat where it latched into place. "Gelad, take Lainne back to that bench seat. We're in for a bumpy ride."

  Gelad and Lainne moved to the bench seat behind the console, where the steering wheel was. Heck turned the key in the ignition and a throaty rumble told him the modernized cell powered outboards were engaged. He eased the throttle forward and the boat lurched, the bow coming up out of the water. The noise from the engines was so loud Lainne thought for sure that the entire Commonwealth Guard Police force would be on them in seconds.

  To everyone's relief, there was no sign they had been detected. No sign that anyone thought they were not just another boater out for a late night race across the lake. As they passed the first set of beacons Heck slid the throttle farther forward and the boat roared to life.

  The big flats boat thundered across the dark waters of the Lake George. The only part of the boat that was in the water was the very back of the hull and the lower units of the engines. Lainne thought that if the boat had wings it would be flying. A large rooster tail of water soared up in the air above the engines and cascaded down in the wake behind the boat. To the three who raced across the waters of the vast lake, it seemed eerily devoid of other boaters.

  "Can't they track us in this boat?" Lainne shouted over the roaring wind. Heck had disabled the head's up display and the boat's lighting systems, banking that there would be little enough traffic this night to worry about a collision.

  "I disabled everything but the engine and steering systems," he called back, thinking that his face must be flapping in the rushing air like a dog with his head out the window of a ground car. "There is nothing that can be tracked unless you or Gelad have a tracking beacon!"

  Lainne just nodded, it was too hard to talk at that speed. Heck was glad she didn't ask any more questions, he just wanted to concentrate on piloting the boat between the navigational beacons on the water. Lake George had some very treacherous, shallow, areas. If he wasn't completely on his game it could be disastrous for them all.

  Finally, they came to the north end of Lake George and reentered the St. John's River. Heck slowed the boat down as they left the big lake behind and continued downriver again, heading north toward Jacksonville.

  "Where are we going, Heck?" asked Gelad now that he could be heard above the roaring wind.

  "Jax Areospace Port."

  "Jacksonville?" asked Lainne. "Isn't that where we don't want to go?"

  "Precisely," answered the ex-lawman. Lainne just shook her head and gave up trying to figure things out. The man was being illogical and unpredictable. But so far, that was exactly what had kept her alive and she wasn't going to question it.

  Chapter

  Five

  ~

  The journey to Jacksonville Aerospace Port was going to be a long one by boat. The river, though uncrowded, did not truly allow for great speed. And with daylight soon to break, the trio did not wish to be seen in a stolen police boat.

  "We should make landfall, Mr. Thomas," suggested the Israeli. "It will not be good to be in this boat when dawn breaks."

  "You're reading my mind, Gelad. We're in Palatka right now. We can lay low here until nightfall and try to secure land passage to Jax. If that doesn't pan out, we'll take another boat and head north. Seems the least conspicuous mode of travel."

  "Fine. But let us do it soon, Ms. Connor truly needs to rest."

  Heck nodded. Lainne looked terrible, pale as though she were getting ill. She didn't seem to be sea sick, so Heck assumed fatigue and stress were catching up to her. She looked as though she might fall asleep on the bench seat next to Gelad.

  "Gelad, is my brother ok?" Lainne asked, suddenly. Her eyes were bleary and she was fighting to stay awake.

  "I do not know what happened to Dr. Connor, but I am sure I know where he is," began the Israeli enforcement officer. "My government has received intelligence that a number of the most brilliant minds in the Solar System have chosen to live permanently on Rigel's Escape.

  "The reports were shocking, as you can imagine. Why would these brilliant scientists abandon their renowned work to spend their free time g
ambling and whoring?"

  "What are you saying?" Lainne demanded, angrily.

  "Please, Ms. Connor, hear me out." Lainne nodded reluctantly and Gelad went on. "Your brother is certainly among the brilliant, if not the wealthy, who have relocated to the luxury drift. I have seen recordings of this activity myself. But I have questions. How would people like your brother, of modest income, come into the money necessary to afford life on the drift?"

  Lainne let out a sigh of resignation. It was all coming together now. "They said he had become a gambler, that he was working for organized criminals and running drugs."

  "Indeed. I am sorry to hear that your brother's good name has been so soiled by this, and your brother is not alone. But something beyond the obvious is bothersome."

  "What does it all mean?" she asked as Heck cut the engines on the sleek boat and glided up to a wooden dock. Heck hopped out of the boat and tied it to a large cleat with a mooring line.

  "When we looked at the background of the scientists who have joined Rigel, we found something else that they have common with your brother. Each and every one was working on breakthrough projects related to space engine propulsion."

  "How could you know that, Gelad?" asked Heck with a smirk, offering Lainne a hand getting out of the boat. "As a foreign national, wouldn't that have been classified from you?"

  "Mr. Thomas, I will be frank. Since the downfall of the once great United States, Israel has had no choice but to look out for herself. That includes espionage. We know a great deal about what's left of the United States and of the Commonwealth Government. In this case, the Orion Project will have ramifications for the entire Solar System. Our own future, and that of our settlements in space, could be affected by the FTL project were it to fall into the hands of a renegade state."

  "That doesn't matter to me now, Gelad," said Heck sadly as the Israeli climbed from the boat. "I am a man of no nation. I have no home now, and no allegiance to anyone."

  "I understand. However, as I am certain Ms. Connor has already informed you, the FTL project Dr. Connor was working on is certainly providing the core of the project that is under way now. The Orion Project was formed a few years ago, according to our reports, when the reports of First Contact with the aliens were made. I believe the directors of the Orion Project kidnapped Dr. Connor, and others, to provide the brainpower needed to complete the project.

  "The FTL project will affect your decision to search for your lost girlfriend."

  "My brother mentioned Orion in passing a few times. But he was never specific and I never understood his meaning."

  "He was referring to the constellation, Ms. Connor. The intelligence reports concerning the aliens always led to Rigel. Now the reports seem to make sense."

  "Rigel's Escape," Heck said aloud. "Rigel is a star in the Orion constellation."

  "Indeed. Documents show that the drift belongs to a conglomerate of corporations not belonging to the Commonwealth states. Following the leads of these companies has only led to a spiderweb of people and businesses, many of whom are merely ghost entities, with little information gained. Our best hackers have not been able to crack the programming of the systems running the drift or any of its member states or companies. It is has been an incredibly frustrating endeavor."

  "Alien technology?" asked Heck.

  "I do not know, Mr. Thomas. But I intend to find out."

  "We are wanted criminals. By now, even you are surely wanted by the United States authorities. What's your plan?"

  "We will find out when we go to Rigel's Escape."

  "I like your style, Gelad!" said Heck. Something was coming alive in the ex-lawman, something that he thought had died when he lost Laylara. That spirit and thirst for adventure that he had never been able to satiate, the same thirst that had kept him from settling down, was coming back. "I assume we will have the authority and backing of your government?"

  "We do."

  They walked up the dockway as the sun began to peek above the horizon, the city of Palatka was coming to life. It was a busy city, far busier than the sleepy and long-forgotten town of Astor, and boasted a thriving business in eco-tourism. Visitors to the city often came for wildlife tours up and down the river, legendary bass fishing, and even alligator hunting.

  "And how do we infiltrate that tight-lipped drift, Gelad?"

  "We need to get to Roosevelt Orbital Station where we can meet my counterparts in the ISP."

  "Ok,” said Heck, after a moment's thought “Jax Aerospace Port is only a twenty minute ground ride from here. This city still has a pretty good ground transport system, so we can stay offline."

  "How will we board any spacecraft? Surely our 3-D point reference scans will be downloaded into every database in existence," said Lainne. "Don't they have those scanners in the aerospace port that scan everyone walking around?"

  "There are ways to fool the ID scans, Lainne," answered Heck. "I have some contacts here in Palatka that can give me ID cloakers and passports, but it will cost us.

  "Luckily our recently deceased friend had enough Commonwealth Credit Currency in his pocket to pay for it!"

  Lainne remembered her last experience with identity cloaking microbots, she wasn't sure luck was the right word.

  Heck stepped out of the taxi and stood a moment as the hatch slowly closed. When the dirty gray door locked into place with an audible click, the taxi released a blast of air from its undercarriage and began to float above the road. Heck stood in front of the ground entrance to an abandoned Rite Stop convenience store and waited for the taxi to rise above the Jacksonville skyscrapers and disappear into the smoggy sky.

  Satisfied that the taxi driver had been paid well enough to forget him, courtesy of the deceased assassin's wallet, Heck turned and shouldered his way through the vagrants and drug dealing thugs who had taken up most of the space on the sidewalk. None of them seemed to pay any interest to the ex-lawman, his hard features and cold glare warned potential assailants that this man would be no easy mark.

  Heck crossed an intersection and left the thugs behind, sucking on a cigarette as he went. He continued down the road and made his way to Lakeside Drive, a place that had once been prosperous and influential. But that was long ago and none alive today knew of that history. The Lakeside Drive that Heck knew was a hangout for criminals and those who shunned proper society. Jacksonville, like much of Florida, had been hit hard when the colonization of space became popular. The days of Jacksonville's legendary status as a mecca for businesses and sports venues were long since past, and now the city was but a shell of its former glory. The wars with Cuba and Mexico had taken their toll on the Sunshine State; the northern half of Florida, along with the rest of the Gulf Coast, had never been the same.

  Heck flicked a cigarette out into the waters of the St. John's River as he made his way down the waterfront. A pelican swooped in, seemingly from nowhere, and with a dramatic splash and flap of its great wings it picked up the barely smoked cigarette. Then the great, ugly, bird gave Heck a nasty look as it realized the cigarette was no tasty morsel and let out a great pelican bellow in his direction. Heck laughed, happy that something could make him laugh these past few days, as the aquatic bird noisily took to the air and disappeared. He rarely smoked, but when it was necessary to present a different image of himself, he did so with pleasure.

  Heck turned around and noted that no one was following him, of that he was cautiously certain. There was very little monitoring of this part of the city as people of importance did not venture here unless it was to indulge in one vice or another. A few ground cars buzzed passed him, some very nice and others not so, as he crossed the waterfront to reach the ramshackle store on the other side. Peels of thunder told him that he had arrived just in time to avoid the legendary clashes of the Florida sea breezes, which were known to create violent and unpredictable weather.

  A blast of refreshingly cold air greeted him along with the chime of bells as he opened a glass door and walked inside. A tall b
lack man stood behind the counter along the right side, and three aisles of convenience sundries ended at a large walk-in cooler on the left. There were a variety of people here, some Hispanic, some Asian, some white; each coming and going through the busy doors. He walked straight on, passing a display case containing a wide selection of cheap glass marijuana pipes, walking directly to the soda fountain. He waved his hand at the holographic selections and a large styrofoam cup full of cold cola appeared on the platform.

  He took deep swig from the bright red straw and looked askance at the clerk and said, "I think the fountain mix needs some fine tuning, my friend!"

  The clerk blew out a frustrated sigh and nodded toward the open door next to the soda fountain. "You welcome to go on back and tweak it yourself," he said as he continued ringing up customers in the busy store. Heck nodded and walked through the doorway. He turned right and entered another doorway marked employees only and proceeded into a tiny office. He pulled the chair out from under the desk and lifted a false panel in the filthy floor underneath. Then he crawled under and dropped into the hole, landing just far enough below the floor where he could still reach up and replace the panel.

  For a moment after replacing the panel he stood in total darkness, cursing the stale and horrible smelling air, as his eyes adjusted. Then, slowly, he could make out the familiar layout of the dark hallway he was in. He walked slowly to the end of the hallway and stopped at the steel door that looked like it came from the inner vault of a bank. As he placed his feet on the steel panel below the door, a dim blue light activated over his head. Then red and blue and green lights lit up a central point on the front of the door and darted outward toward the corners. Finally, a holographic interface appeared in front.

  "Who the Hell is here?" demanded an angry voice. Then Heck could hear small portholes opening, "murder holes" he liked to call them when he wasn't on the wrong side of one, and the sound of steel rifle barrels sliding into place.