The Orion Deception

by Tom Bielawski

  Suddenly all of his sensors came back online! Meaning the defensive scanners aboard ROS were back online. His own craft was receiving and responding to scans for identity and purpose. An automated communication message with ROS standard approach protocol appeared at the communications station where Lainne was sleeping. Then the signals began to weaken even as emergency lights around the bay doors flared to life, bathing the craft in blue and red and amber lights.

  "What's happening?" Lainne asked, sleepily. The sudden activity at her comm station roused her from slumber.

  "We're almost aboard ROS."

  "Good."

  "But it seems we've been identified," he added in a dread-filled whisper. "There was a moment of clarity in the solar radiation just now and ROS scanners picked us up."

  "Damn," she answered quietly.

  "Damn," he agreed.

  During that moment of clarity ROS sensors had properly identified the craft that Heck and Lainne were now riding in as an escape craft from a spaceliner of unknown origin before going offline again. By now ROS security officials would know of the hijacking of the inbound spaceliner from Earth and that there had been a deployment of one of its escape craft. As a result of the impending arrival of an inbound emergency escape craft, emergency protocols were activated. Fire and medical crews were now on standby for Heck and Lainne's arrival.

  "My God!" she whispered to herself. "What do we do?"

  "The whole damn space station will know we're here now," grumbled Heck. His mind was racing. How was he going to get himself and Lainne past the barrage of emergency services and security personnel that surely awaited their arrival?

  As the craft entered the arrival tube Heck noticed the presence of a dense fog obscuring his view. Then the sudden jarring force of entering Earth gravity from zero-gravity hit them both like a punch in the gut, despite the sensation reducing effects of high tech dampeners. Groaning, Heck forced himself upright and stared into the fog grateful that all his sensors were back online.

  "Lainne!” he said suddenly. “Activate that drive again! Quickly!" Now that the craft was under Earth gravity, and under the control of the ROS tower, Heck hopped out of the pilot chair to stand by Lainne.

  "Ok," she said, placing the drive on the console before her.

  Heck slid his finger over another corner of the device and a different holographic interface flared to life.

  "It says, 'Emergency Landing Protocols,'" Lainne read aloud.

  Heck didn't answer as he tapped the illusory image with his finger. The holographic status bar drifted for what seemed an interminable three seconds before shutting off completely. Then, with the escape craft drifting through the fog shrouded tunnel toward awaiting emergency crews, he placed the small drive in his pocket and led Lainne to the maintenance hatch in the deck. He pulled open the hatch and slid down into the cramped space beneath with Lainne right behind.

  "Secure that hatch behind you!" he ordered as he grabbed two self-contained breathing devices from a wall cabinet. Lainne did as she was told and activated a locking mechanism above her head as she slid the air mask over her face. A metal arm slid into place, preventing the hatch from being opened from above.

  Heck crawled on his hands and knees down the narrow passage, Lainne followed behind as their craft drifted ever more slowly down the tube toward the landing pad.

  "Got it!" said Heck triumphantly.

  "Got what?"

  It was another access hatch, this one pressurized with hazard placards warning against opening it in the vacuum of space. Heck opened the hatch and coughed as the fire dampening fog seeped through a gap between his mask and his face. As he had hoped, the bay doors to the runway tube had been closed and Earth atmosphere was now in effect in the tunnel. The slowly flashing amber emergency lights from the runway tunnel reflected ominously in the foggy air.

  "Jump!" ordered Heck, shouting over the noise of the rushing air.

  "We haven't stopped yet!" she shouted back. "Why?"

  Heck could not afford any more time to explain. So he reached over and put his arm around Lainne's shoulder and shoved her through the opening. Lainne screamed as she fell, but it didn't matter. The noise of the craft's engines drowned out the sound. He jumped out right behind Lainne, narrowly missing the landing gear as it descended from the hull of the craft.

  He closed his eyes instinctively against the coming impact. But, as he had suspected, ROS's emergency landing protocol flooded the runway tunnel with an impact absorbing rubberized gel. It still hurt when he struck the floor below, but the gel transferred most of the energy generated by the impact of his fall away from his body.

  He rolled to his feet quickly and searched for Lainne in the fog. Now that the craft was far enough away, and landing, he listened for the sound of Lainne's voice and heard her muffled groans. The air sensors on their masks indicated that the air was safe enough to breath now, despite the fire dampening fog, and it seemed that Lainne had taken hers off. Heck found her in seconds, and he was glad that the craft had been moving so slowly that he had not landed very far from her. He was surprised that she was standing, looking for him. He was even more surprised when she punched him in the gut.

  "That was for shoving me through that hole!" she said with determination and vigor. Then she put her hand under his chin, removed his air mask, and gently lifted him out of his doubled over position.

  "What-" began Heck. But he had to stop, because the woman leaned over and kissed him.

  His head was spinning with conflicting thoughts and emotions. How had this happened? He was in Business Mode! Nothing ever broke through the steel curtain of Business Mode before. Nothing. And yet, a punch in the gut followed by a passionate kiss on the lips was enough to do it.

  "That was for saving us," she whispered. "What's next?"

  Heck had to shake the spinning thoughts away and center himself. He quickly resumed Business Mode in his mind and led Lainne across the tunnel floor to the side.

  "ROS flight protocol puts maintenance doors in the tunnels every fifty meters, we need to find one quickly," he said as they walked along the wall feeling with their hands through the fire dampening fog. "They're already venting the fog and we'll be exposed to the security systems again."

  Heck walked rapidly along the corridor with Lainne close behind. Luckily they found a maintenance door quickly. Lainne stopped next to a console with a retinal ID scanner. Heck took out the small drive again and placed it on a smooth console pad where it stuck as though held by a magnet. He tapped the side and waited as the small drive injected his false ID into the database of authorized users on the system, something which was far easier to do than simply hacking the system to open the door.

  When the holographic display emitted by the tiny drive shut off, Heck placed his eyes in front of the retinal scanner. A loud clunk told him the locking bar had been withdrawn and he had been granted access. The pair ducked inside the maintenance corridor and locked the hatch behind them just as the fog in the tunnel had been completely removed.

  Heck slumped to the floor, his back against the hatch.

  "How did we just pull that off?"

  "The fog is as good at putting out fires and dampening explosions as it is at dampening the security sensors' abilities," Heck answered. He was angry with himself for allowing Business Mode to fail him earlier, and he was angry with Lainne for causing it. He wanted to get up and yell at her. Didn't she know he still loved Laylara? Didn't she know that delaying their escape with a kiss could have cost them their lives? But Heck chose not to ask her those questions. She knew. There was no disputing that.

  The truth was, he wasn't really mad at her at all. She was, seemingly, a stronger woman now than when this whole affair started. He tried to remind himself that he liked strong women. Didn't he? Once again, he had to force his mind to remain in Business Mode and flush all further thoughts of Lainne and Laylara and what they were both doing to his psyche.

  "Why did you push me out of that hole?
You could have told me what was happening."

  "I knew you'd bounce," he said gruffly. But he added quickly, "There was no time to explain anyway. The plan just popped into my head as we were entering the runway tunnel. We had to get out of the escape craft before it crossed emergency services egress points. Once a craft lands under emergency protocols, emergency and security personnel flood into the crash site from those egress points to assess it for safety and fires. The craft will be in lock-down for hours before they're through checking it over for explosives and looking for sick or injured passengers.

  "I knew that the fog would hinder the security systems and no one would see us dropping from the landing gear in it. I've crashed once or twice in my career, enough to trust that rubberized gel with my life. I trusted it with yours."

  "So we had to get out before the craft passed over the emergency services personnel. If we had crossed that point, we would have been arrested by ROS security forces on the spot."

  "Exactly," he said.

  "Are we going to meet Gelad now?"

  "Yes. Assuming he made it safely to ROS and linked up with his own personnel. He should be with King Virgil now."

  "King Virgil," she said with a wry smile.

  "Yeah, your buddy who got me into this mess."

  Then he got up, took a deep breath of recirculated air and headed down the passageway with Lainne in tow.

  Heck and Lainne made their way through the maintenance tunnels deeper into the bowels of Roosevelt Orbital Station. Having been a Commonwealth Marshal, Heck was intimately familiar with the classified security plans of nearly every drift and orbital station in the Inner System. He had served on enough dignitary protection details in his career to have seen the sewer and refuse chutes of those drifts and stations too.

  After nearly an hour the pair reached a location directly beneath the Israeli Consulate to ROS. Heck opened an access panel that led into a crawlspace from the side of the tunnel he and Lainne were standing in.

  "Another one of those?" she asked, despairingly.

  "Gelad is going to open a secret tunnel for us. One that is only available to the members of his government's security agencies. They use it to conduct their own covert missions without detection by other intelligence entities."

  "Are they going to kill us now that we now about it?" she asked. She was smiling when she said it, but Heck knew the woman was still half serious.

  "Lainne," he began. "The path we are taking leads in one direction. You need to get your mind set on the fact that you can never go home again. Your past is over.

  "We have no idea of the extent of the reach of Orion's Sword. We have no idea what world shattering technology they are working on. We don't know if there really is extra-solar life out there or if these aliens are genetically mutated soldiers; I've seen a few of them in my time

  “If so, we don't really know if aliens have made contact with the criminals in charge of Rigel's Escape. But we do know that we have broken the laws of the United States and of the Commonwealth.

  "We have learned highly classified information belonging to another government, one that is not a member of the Commonwealth. The government of Israel will not want loose cannons, capable of divulging their secrets, wandering the System."

  "What do we do?" she asked, fearful. "What happens if -when- we rescue my brother?"

  Heck let out a deep sigh. "Lainne, I don't know. But now might be a good time to think about life in the Outer System where the Commonwealth has no jurisdiction."

  "The Outer System," she repeated numbly. She was a respected businesswoman and very accomplished for her young age. And now she might have to throw it all away to live among the lawless societies of the Outer System. All because she wanted to rescue her brother from whatever terrible fate had befallen him. She leaned into Heck and the two held each other tightly.

  Heck had mentally prepared himself for this moment long ago. This was the moment where he knew he could never go back to his old life. If there had been a small chance of starting over with a clear name in those brief moments before he went in search of Laylara, that chance was gone now. And Lainne was now seeing that very same reality.

  It was becoming real to her now.

  "I just wanted to find my brother," she said between sobs. Her strength had given out now. But instead of reviling her for her weakness, Heck marveled at her resiliency. She was crying in his arms now, but in a few moments the two would be crawling down the dirty tunnel and into a sewer access system.

  Lainne had conquered something that Heck had yet to conquer, had yet to ever really face. Her own fears. She was a woman who could recognize the fear and emotion that was within her. And rather than succumb to her fears, and become incapable of handling danger, she learned to deal with it. She acknowledged her emotions and she understood them. Throughout his life, Heck Thomas had faced danger after danger but had never begun to face his fears. They were there, lurking, bottled up beneath the surface waiting to rear up at the worst possible time and make him a failure.

  As he breathed in the soft scent of her hair, he wondered how he would handle it when he finally lost control. He wondered if it were only a matter of time. Would he be able to overcome such an event, as he had overcome nearly every other obstacle in his life? Or would he become a basket case, incapable of handling danger ever again? Control was something Heck Thomas could never seem to let go of, because doing so would admit the existence of the unknown. And that was something Heck Thomas was not prepared to do.

  "Thank you so much, Lainne Connor," he whispered.

  Surprised, Lainne leaned back and looked up into his eyes. "For what?"

  He was about to speak, to tell her about his inner conflict. But he stopped himself. As he stared into her eyes he knew that he must protect her. He had a duty to help her find her brother and see this mission through. Perhaps then, when all was said and done, he would he let this woman in.

  "Never mind," he said as his eyes took a distant, cold, look. "We have to go."

  Lainne nodded as though she understood and followed Heck into the crawlspace, locking the hatch behind them. They crawled on their hands and knees for a hundred meters before they came to a place where they could stand. It was a large room with crawlspaces that branched off in a number of directions, like strands on a spiderweb. There was a storage locker in the room and Heck opened it, revealing a number of biohazard suits.

  "Put that on," he instructed as he tossed the orange and yellow suit to her. Lainne did so without question, and without complaint. Once they were both dressed in the biohazard suits, Heck helped Lainne put on a helmet with a self-contained air supply.

  "There is a radio in the helmet," he told her. "Tap the left side of your helmet with your finger to speak. But keep the conversation to a minimum, speaking uses up more air."

  Lainne nodded her head in understanding as Heck locked her helmet in place. Then she did the same for him. In a moment Heck opened a door in the room labeled sally port. The two entered the sally port and closed the outer door. This was a very small room, big enough for perhaps three people to stand uncomfortably. There was a bench where three could sit and fog nozzles were located in various places along the ceiling and walls. The door at the opposite end of the small chamber bore a sign with a litany of warnings about the life threatening hazards beyond.

  "Are you ready?" came the question from Heck through Lainne's helmet radio. Heck stood at the door, one hand on the control that would open the door to a world of filth.

  "What's out there?" she asked, pointing to the placard-laden door.

  "It's essentially a sewer system, Lainne. But these suits will protect us from harm." He took a length of cord with a carabiner on each end and clipped one end to his belt. The he clipped the other to Lainne's belt. "It's going to be dark and hard to move in there, stay close."

  "Ok. I'm ready," she said with a nod.

  The placard covered door opened and Heck walked out into another room with three doors
, one to the front and one on either side. He went to the door straight ahead of him, a biohazard placard glowed brightly red above it. Heck tapped a button by the door and it opened silently. They stepped through it into a tube that went from left to right, an amber infused fog very quickly turned their suits an ocher color. Health hazard meters on their wrists blazed red and the biohazard placard flashed its warning, any breach of their suits here could have terrible consequences.

  "What is all this junk?" asked Lainne. She tapped a button her wrist comm and activated her face shield wiper. It was a primitive device, similar to an eyelid, but it did a good job of keeping her vision clear.

  "A mixture of human waste, chemicals and any other type of refuse you can imagine."

  Heck trudged along slowly, there were handrails on each side of the passage and the floor was rough to allow better footing. Even so, the going was difficult. The noxious vapors were moved along through these passages with enough force to make one lose their footing. He was beginning to feel anxiety and was having a difficult time keeping focused on controlling his body. A heads-up display inside his helmet alerted him that his respiratory rate was elevated and he was using more oxygen than he wanted. He scowled at the thought that he, the legendary Heck Thomas, could be susceptible to that most basic human experience.

  "Don't they recycle that stuff? Jettison it into space?"

  "All of the waste is converted into its smallest, and least harmful, state. Some of it is sublimated directly into a gaseous state with harsh chemicals, while other wastes are incinerated. The byproducts of the disposal process, usually gasses, liquids, and ashes, are dumped into these tubes and flushed out into space."

  "Space? Are we in danger of being..." Her voice trailed off as she glanced up and down the tunnel.

  "No. The waste is moved through these tubes by powerful fans. The fans are covered with baffles that prevent solid objects, like us, from getting sucked in and damaging them. Each fan also acts as an automated control station. It checks for matter that cannot be expelled safely through the fans or any other hazardous or dangerous situations. If the scans clear the computers, the matter is moved through to the next point. We are between two of those points."