by Greg Dragon
This was different. Her joints weren’t sore, and she actually felt rested. After checking the time and seeing that she had an hour before meeting her team, Helga leaned against the wall as she stared out at the cityscape. She felt a chill and looked down to see that one of her legs had slipped out from the sheets.
Her cream-colored skin was flushed pink beneath the sunlight, showing more of her mother’s heritage. Casanian skin tone could be described as coral, though some were darker, almost maroon. Helga had been born with her father’s tan complexion, but was paler now due to a lifetime on a starship.
She stared at her shins, all covered in spots, more of her mother’s side poking through the Vestalian genes. It brought up painful memories that had been suppressed, like her mother committing suicide, leaving her and her brother to fend for themselves.
Was she somewhere out there, watching her now? Seeing how far her daughter had come in so short a time? Was she proud of her, or was she disappointed? She had stated several times in Helga’s memories that she didn’t want her children involved in the war.
Little Helga was now a full-fledged ESO warfighter, born to love but trained to kill. This was evident in her conditioning: smooth legs that were shapely, but built for kicking Geralos rears rather than strutting civilian streets. She could never be the artist her mother was, or a proper lady displaying well-oiled legs through a seam in an expensive dress. She was her father, an Alliance weapon, but her ambition had allowed her to reach peaks that he had never seen.
There was a familiar sound, a chime that brought her to attention, conditioning from years of hearing it cycle after cycle. In an instant she was out of the bed, digging through her clothes to find her wrist-comms. When she found it, she saw Cilas’s face, so she covered up her nakedness and answered.
“Ate, I need you down here as quickly as possible,” he said, then clicked off before she could confirm.
How am I to dress? she wondered, annoyed at him for being so blunt. “Since you’re making it drastic, then so will I,” she said, and dressed in her black 3B-XO suit with a shawl. It was an idea she had toyed with, dressing light with the wrap concealing the high holsters tucked under her arms. This black cross harness was a hooligan accessory that Raileo had given her when she’d shown improvement with her aim.
When she came down the stairs to the hotel’s lobby, she saw the rest of the Nighthawks waiting by the bridge. All except Cilas were dressed for action, and it became increasingly evident that something was wrong. As she grew closer she could see that Cilas was agitated. “What’s the situation?” she said, falling in next to Quentin, who was in his battle dress uniform and with empty holsters like she was.
“Walk and I’ll tell you,” Cilas said, already stepping onto the bridge. Helga thought it was too beautiful a morning for anything to go wrong, with the red flowers blooming within their green and aqua-colored plants. Above them the sun was beaming, bright and unobstructed as it radiated warmth.
They walked in silence across the bridge, past the transport station to where nature ended, replaced by metal and stone. There he pulled them up short at the foot of a ramp leading up into the Centuri Commerce Center.
“Listen up. This is serious. Someone has stolen our cargo. This morning I went up there to make sure that things were good. Problem is that when I went down to the dock, the stasis-pod was missing and there were obvious signs of a breach.”
“What?” Helga said, stunned, “Someone got onto our ship unchecked with time to remove our cargo? How does that happen? After Hope and all that schtill about weapons and decontamination?” She was practically fuming; the violation was just too much. “Want to bet that Sundown or whatever-the-thype he’s called, was just keeping an eye on us while his mates pulled that off?”
“What about Hope?” Raileo said, “Isn’t she the A.I. in charge of security for our ship? Does she not alert a crew when someone tries to board?”
“Look into it,” Cilas said. “Get her back by any means. I’ll stall the admiral for as long as I can, but we can’t lose that stasis-pod; there is no excuse they will understand. We talked about this, Nighthawks, you know the danger this presents. Do what you’re good at and get her back. I don’t care if you have to shut this whole system down. You find her.” With that he took the ramp and started his way up into the center while the three Nighthawks exchanged puzzled glances.
When he was through the doors and gone, Helga let out a frustrated scream. “I just want one thing, one thyping thing, to go the way we planned. Is that too much to ask?” She was so angry she was literally shaking. “It was a bit of a joke at first, our bad luck, but this is a jump too far. I tell you, boys, we’re going to have to tighten up. For Nighthawks, this is sloppy.”
“Sloppy is right,” Quentin said. “They caught us sleeping. We didn’t secure the stasis-pod. Schtill, did we bother to lock down anything?”
“Hope has everything to do with this, if you ask me,” Raileo said. “She ambushed us with all that protocol, so we assumed Alliance HQ would secure their thyping starport. What I don’t understand is the pressure the commander is putting on us to solve this within a few hours. It’s a tall order, isn’t it? Did Cilas forget that he was right there with us when we got on that elevator, leaving the ship?”
“He didn’t forget, but we need to solve this,” Quentin said. “They’ve opened access to Sanctuary for us to deliver the pod. It’s the only reason we’ve been allowed to come here. Do you really expect our commander to walk into that meeting with nothing to show but our incompetence? Think, Ray, we need solutions, not complaints or blame, because trust me when that thing gets loose, no one will care that we were misled. I say thype Hope and that so-called Jumper. For all I know, they were a part of this scheme and we let them rob us blind.”
As Quentin spoke, Helga had a moment when she thought about the Jumper, Lamia Brafa. Like Bira, he had been corrupted by the Geralos and had set out to eliminate the Nighthawks. She couldn’t imagine what he would have done had Cilas not shot him while he turned his blade on the team.
A Jumper was a god of war, an unparalleled combatant for any species, and wearing Lamia Brafa’s skin, it would have found a way on the Rendron to destroy them from within. The man from last night named Sundown had claimed to be a Jumper agent. If he was behind this, what could they do to find him, and even if they did, could they take him without any of their weapons?
Then there was the mission, their names, the starship they came from; all things this stranger had known. Jumpers were masters of intelligence, knowing more than the council itself, and the Alliance relied on their network to stay ahead of the Geralos threat. It wasn’t Sundown, but he had warned them, and they’d shrugged it off to drink and wait for the morning. No, it was someone else, but who else would have known what they had?
Everything about this mission had been classified, even on the Rendron, where the corruption of Bira had never been revealed. The only outside correspondence was between the captain and the Alliance council. She ruled out Sundown for now, which meant that Hope had been programmed to mislead them. Then there were other things observed, like the lack of urgency from the admiral to collect the Geralos captive.
The whole thing stunk and she was tired of it; here they were on yet another disastrous mission. The longer she served, the more it became apparent that honor was a rare commodity in the Alliance. Treachery was on every level, and the ambitious, like the late Tyrell Lang, had no qualms with breaking their oaths for credits. This had been their reality since she joined up with the Nighthawks, and now a part of her wondered if the captain was behind it.
Since having the dream where she killed him, she had felt guilty for imagining such a thing. It wasn’t the type of nightmare you could share. To spacers on the Rendron, Retzo Sho was second only to the maker, yet it had been so oddly specific.
They gave their credentials at the starport, and were made to walk through several checkpoints before reaching the elevator leading
to the ship. This annoyed Helga more, and she turned on the attendant—who was an older Vestalian—and angrily inquired if he had done the same for the thieves. The man looked frightened, but stood his ground and assured her in so many words that he would not have allowed thieves on her ship.
“I don’t get it,” Raileo said once they were riding the elevator up.
“What don’t you get, Ray?” Helga said, staring out at the rooftops, thinking how not twenty hours ago she had been sure this trip would be pleasant.
“I know that you’re angry, Ate, but look at this place. It would be impossible for anyone to get to a ship without the proper credentials. I’m pretty sure that attendant was being sincere. Did you see his face? He had no clue that we’d been robbed; he even offered to contact security. When we get back, I think we should take him up on his offer to view yesterday’s surveillance, and if we can alert the council, we probably should. Why waste time searching blindly when they could get us answers immediately? They know the criminal element here, and would have a clue as to—”
“Which part of ‘don’t embarrass Retzo Sho by admitting what we lost’ did you not understand, Ray?” Helga said. She was beyond talking and the silly suppositions. All she wanted was answers, and the identity of the person that was behind this.
When they reached the lobby leading to the airlock, she marched over to the console and made a query for Hope. The computer rejected that name and after several more questions, informed Helga that a program named Hope didn’t exist.
“Well, there you have it,” Helga said. “This is an inside job by someone with the ability to take control of the starport’s computer systems. Hope was a lie, planted to make us feel safe while they snuck onboard the Ursula. I doubt there’ll be much footage of the thieves, since they would have shut down our surveillance as well. When we get onboard, Nighthawks, we’re going to need to get deadly. I’m talking small arms and knives, with whatever else we’ll need for an enemy hiding deep inside the districts.”
“They won’t let us down there armed with our weapons, Ate,” Quentin reminded her.
“You saw the starport’s security, Tutt. They wore P-X25 pistols,” she said. “If they can tote those weapons around, then we as Alliance Navy shouldn’t be blocked from having protection. At this point, with time ticking away, I have no care for rules that they can’t enforce. If they want my weapons, they’re going to have to take them, and explain to me why they sent for Nighthawks just to have us exposed.”
They stepped inside the tube and sealed the airlock shut behind them, then popped the main hatch to gain the ship. Helga had expected it to be tossed, but nothing seemed out of place on the bridge. They took the lift down to the dock, and there they saw the evidence. Not only was the stasis pod missing from its cage, but all the weapons that Quentin had worked on had been cleaned out from the range. Helga felt a sinking feeling in her stomach as Quentin scrambled around desperately looking for their guns.
“I hate to say it, but we’re thyped,” he said. “If they have our guns down there, then we’re in for a world of hurt.”
“How did they manage to get in?” Helga said, stopping to study them both. “Come on, Tutt, this is your area, isn’t it? Hunting down evil schtills that don’t want to be found.”
Taking the cue, Quentin Tutt went to work, scouring the deck for any mistakes made by the thieves. It took him five minutes to find something, a scuff mark where the pod’s hover mechanism had slipped while being dragged. It led him to a hatch that sat beneath the R60 Thundercat’s wing.
“All this time I’ve been down here and I miss an obvious exit point, dead center in this space,” he mumbled ruefully. “They parked a vessel below the Ursula, then found a way inside this hatch. That was how they were able to get in and steal everything stored inside this dock. I’m willing to bet they don’t know what’s inside that pod, since this would be a routine theft for a gangster.”
“Which means that someone down there knows who they are,” Raileo said. “Also, let me remind you that we have an active A.I. living on our ship—”
“Oh, that’s right,” Helga said, feeling foolish for not remembering, “And I doubt the invaders would have known about her since Vestalian ships don’t normally come with that kind of tech. As you know, the Ursula is modified, and they wouldn’t expect to be tracked outside of our standard surveillance.”
“That’s right, and if it were up to me, I would have disabled the overhead cameras,” Quentin said. He pointed at the high overhead where there was a black, burnt-out area from where something had exploded.
The three of them hurried to CIC, where Helga powered on the console. She ordered Ursula to replay all surveillance recorded while they were gone. The starmap that seemed to be a permanent fixture in the center of the space began to fade, then transformed into a translucent blue holographic outline of the ship. Helga manipulated the hologram to zoom in on the dock, then sped up the minutes on the timeline, looking for anything out of the ordinary.
It was at the two-hour mark that she finally saw it, the hatch below the dock coming open. A figure in an EVA suit climbed inside, crouched below the wing of the Thundercat, speaking on his comms.
Helga froze it in time and rotated it for Quentin to see, then expanded the visual so they could examine the intruder’s profile. When they found nothing discerning, Ursula on command played more of the footage. Helga froze it again when the figure stood up and took aim at the camera with their pistol.
“That’s an old EVA suit, and it has seen better days,” Raileo said. “See that discoloration on the arm? This one has been damaged, and we all know you can’t just patch an EVA using tape or whatever. This intruder had to patch his, which is so thyping insane it defies all logic. I’m wondering why he didn’t bother grabbing one of ours, since they’re all hanging right there.”
“Not to mention they’re worth a fortune on the black market,” Helga said. “If this is for credits, I’m at a loss. All they managed to take was the pod and a few random weapons.”
“Could be a professional,” Quentin mused, and Helga realized that he thought it was Sundown. She was about to object, when he walked over to adjust the hologram. Thype! The feed is damaged. Could you inform us on what transpired with this intruder after surveillance went down?”
“Tutt, Ursula’s a computer, not a Cel-toc, limited by simple queries and commands,” Helga reminded him. She then started gesturing at the console, ordering the ship to give inventory of what was checked in on departure versus what was present now. Not only were the weapons missing and the stasis-pod, but Quentin’s las-sword and Helga’s prized pistol gifted to her by the captain were gone, too. “I think this makes it personal,” she said, seeing the look on his face.
“You’re damned right it does,” he growled, visibly angry. “I’m willing to bet that las-sword was the goal of our wannabe Jumper pirate. It’s probably being fenced right now for maker knows how many credits. But that is how we’re going to catch him, and whoever hired him to do it.”
31
After investigating the Ursula and collecting all the evidence that they could, the Nighthawks came up with a plan. Helga would continue questioning the starport’s workers, using the weight of her rank and position in the Navy to force them to divulge any information.
Raileo Lei, who ran with gangs as a child on a hub, was to find out what he could about the black market. Helga disliked this idea, since it would leave the young Nighthawk vulnerable, but once he changed clothes to look every part the hoodlum, she was convinced that he would be compelling.
Quentin would use his recon expertise to look for evidence of the pod and las-sword. They were contraband, not easily hidden from prying eyes, and someone somewhere was bound to have seen them.
These not-so-legal actions were necessary for speed, but would take more than a day for them to get answers. When Helga tried to contact Cilas to inform him of their plans, he wasn’t picking up his comms. She left him a mes
sage, keeping it as cryptic as she could, then took the matter into her own hands—she was Lieutenant Helga Ate, after all.
At the starport, the attendants continued to protest their innocence, one even having the nerve to tell her that she was mistaken about the theft. Seeing that this was going nowhere, Helga raised her voice and asked everyone in the vicinity if they knew about the dockhands allowing pirates to sneak aboard their ships. When more than a few travelers began to inquire about security, a heavyset dockmaster rushed over to Helga, suddenly willing to help.
He told her it was better to speak about it privately before whisking her away towards his junky office. Inside, he offered her a metal chair from a set stacked against the wall, and then took one for himself as well as a tablet, which he placed on his lap. Helga watched him pretend to flip through some records as she struggled to keep her anger in check.
“Aside from those towers out there, how else could a citizen get access to our ships?” she said.
“There are more than one starport, Miss, but we are all managed and overseen by the Alliance council. We do have security, you see, Navy personnel like yourself. Many are former soldiers. This is why it is difficult to imagine someone doing this. It defies all logic—”
“How about this?” Helga said, touching an area of her wrist-comms, then holding it up to his face, which caused him to flinch and nearly topple out of his seat. A holographic projection of the Ursula’s feed appeared, showing the thief in his EVA suit, climbing out of the hatch. She passed him a chip that had the recorded feed from the Ursula.
“This is embarrassing,” he said after the thief destroyed the camera. “Lieutenant—”
“Stow it! Tell me what you know or the council is where I’m going next. Do you know whose ship was robbed inside that port of yours? Extraplanetary Spatial Operators, sir. That is who we are, and either you help me understand how this was done, or I promise you that the next person to show up won’t be as pleasant.”
