Smith's Monthly #5

by Smith, Dean Wesley

  Red nodded, not looking up. “Lovell is making sure his people are clean and everyone else on the station is clean and safe as well.”

  She finished putting on her shoes, then grabbed her data pad and went over and joined Red at the table.

  For some reason she felt they were going about this all wrong.

  But at the moment they weren’t doing anything because neither of them had an idea of what to do.

  “Chief Lovell has also done an intensive scan of everyone on board the last passenger liner to dock,” Red said. “He is holding five in custody on board. None seemed to be involved, but he again isn’t taking any chances. And he had the liner swept for explosives and it’s clean.”

  “Ruining a few people’s vacations, huh?” Mattie said.

  Red nodded and kept working on his data pad.

  Then it dawned on her what he had said. The interstellar passenger liners. Of course!

  Over twenty major companies and who knew how many minor organizations and companies ran passenger liners regularly between all the major systems and a bunch of the minor systems. It was the major form of transportation from system to system for most everyone. There had to be thousands and thousands of the passenger liners out there in all sizes and shapes.

  A major port for docking liners was in a stationary orbit right over the Sector Force Headquarters. From there an attack would be easy.

  “Liners!” Mattie said, working to link up to Sector Force Headquarters as fast as she could.

  Red looked up at her, puzzled.

  As she waited for the connection to link, she explained what she was thinking to Red.

  “Jarvis wouldn’t use his own ships and risk an attack that far into this sector. His goal is to just cripple the Sector Force, make sure no one at the Sector Force knows he’s behind it, and then retake power here on this edge of space where he will be safe. And the Sector Force would fall apart or be too busy rebuilding to even notice him.”

  “Exactly,” Red said, nodding, but still looking puzzled.

  “So what better way to attack the Sector Force without chance of being traced than send bombs and suicide bombers who are acting because their families are in danger. He would put them on passenger liners destined to be in orbit right over Sector Force Headquarters.”

  Suddenly Red was following her. “The bombers could come in from fifty different directions, maybe even take over a liner and dive it straight in.”

  “Exactly,” Mattie said. “Jarvis doesn’t care how many people he kills. This fits his method of operation.”

  Red went back to his data link pad, working to contact those at Innocence Inc. to get them started on searching the liners headed for Sector Force headquarters.

  Mattie finally got through to the Sector Force headquarters and in less than thirty seconds was talking with the head of the Sector Force.

  Mattie took less than one minute to summarize what she was thinking and why General Jarvis might attack the Sector Force in such a fashion, using bombs on the passenger liners. She explained quickly what Chief Lovell had told her over lunch about the eight men they had killed and how their families were now all dead as well for the failure.

  “Innocence Inc. is helping on the search for possible bombers on the liners as well,” Mattie said.

  Across the table Red nodded and gave her a quick thumbs-up signal.

  “I would suggest you work with them on this,” Mattie said.

  Her boss agreed and cut the link.

  Mattie sat back, staring at the blank screen on her data pad. “I sure hope I’m right about this.”

  “I think you are,” Red said. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  Mattie sat there staring at the blank screen. Jarvis might have three people heading for the Sector Force, or three hundred.

  And they had to stop them all.

  She might have just saved the Sector Force, but sitting here completely safe in a suite in a resort on the edge of the second sector, she felt completely helpless. She wanted to be helping find the bombers, stop them.

  And of all the things in the world she hated feeling, it was helpless.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  RED SNAPPED OFF his data pad and looked at the sour face of the woman he was falling for.

  “Oh, oh,” he said. “A dangerous enforcer with grumpy face.”

  His joke didn’t even make a smile reach her eyes. It was never a good idea to have the most dangerous woman he had ever met in a sour mood. But he knew exactly what she was feeling. He was feeling it as well.

  He too wanted to be in on the massive hunt for bombers that was going on right now. But they had another assignment, and that was to stop General Jarvis, so if Mattie’s idea was correct and that’s how Jarvis was going to attack the Sector Force, he couldn’t do it again.

  “You ready for a hop out into The Emptiness?” he asked.

  She looked up at him.

  “Oh, so jokes don’t get your attention, but a trip does.”

  She just motioned for him to get on with it, so he did.

  “Someone’s got to get some intelligence on General Jarvis and what he’s doing out there. I figure we’re the best two for the job. See if we can find a way to stop him before he sends even more attackers.”

  “Can your ship cloak?” she asked, leaning forward.

  “Completely,” he said, smiling. “And it’s the fastest private ship built. We could go chasing after the Seeders into Andromeda if we wanted to spend a lot of time on it.”

  She took her pad, walked over to the large vid screen on the wall in the living room. He followed her and with a few clicks she had a map of the edge of this Sector and the emptiness on the big screen.

  She highlighted the Bodie Resort in green, highlighted the rough shadow where the nebula curtain was, and then put a red spot where the abandoned station was.

  The nebula curtain clouds and all their beauty and deadly radiation were directly between the two space stations.

  “How long?” she asked, turning to him.

  “If we skirt the edge of the nebula curtain, eighteen hours at my ship’s top speed. But leave that on the screen. I want to show you something.”

  He turned and headed for the door to the pool.

  On the deck he switched off all lights so the bright oranges and blues and reds of the nebula came up bright over him.

  When she stopped beside him without a word, he pointed to a dark area with some distant stars showing through. It lay between a large green area of the curtain and swirled over into a red cloud.

  “I see it,” she said. It looked exactly like someone had punched a small hole in the very center of the curtain. “Can we get through there with the nebula radiation?”

  “My shields are the best,” he said. “I had my people running calculations on that path last night just in case we needed to do this. They think we can make it with minimal risk with my shields on full. It would cut off almost seven hours of flight time. Jarvis would never think anything would come at him through that hole so he would never be scanning for anything in that direction.”

  “And the nebula radiation would cover our approach,” she said.

  He glanced down at her wonderful face. She was nodding and again smiling.

  And he could clearly hear the excitement in her voice again.

  “You game?” he asked.

  “Not a damn thing we can do here but make love,” she said, smiling up at him. “So we might as well.”

  “On second thought, maybe we should stay.”

  “Get packed mister,” she said, turning and heading back for the bedroom and her stuff. “But keep this room reserved, would you? I want some more laps in that pool once we get rid of Jarvis for good.”

  “Deal,” he said, following her, glad that they both felt once again they had something to do.

  And besides, a happy Sector Justice enforcer was always a good enforcer. And there was no doubt in his mind that Mattie Silks was very, very
good at many things.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  MATTIE AND RED stopped by the Head of Security, Chief Lovell’s, office to talk with him and update him. They both had their packed suitcases with them, plus all their equipment.

  Their guns set off the monitoring alarms in three areas on the way down to the security area, but at each area they were waved through by the guards on duty looking terrified to even confront the two of them.

  Mattie found that both funny and worrisome. If the Chief’s men couldn’t even stop the two of them for a moment, how were they going to deal with an attack force if it started at the space station.

  More than likely they wouldn’t. At least not well.

  She and Red reached the bustling security office area and the chief met them near the door.

  “I heard you were both headed this way,” he said, laughing slightly. “You two can sure put a scare in young officers.”

  “We don’t mean to,” Mattie said.

  “Yeah, I bet,” the Chief said, shaking his head.

  “We have a few updates is all,” Red said and the chief motioned that they should join him back in his office.

  Mattie wasn’t surprised by the Chief’s office. It was a fairly sparse and standard office, with a large black metal desk that seemed slightly cluttered with paper and tablets, a dark couch that looked like it had seen better days, and two chairs in front of the desk.

  Some awards and citations and pictures were the only things on the wall behind the desk. It fit what Mattie thought of the chief’s personality. Sparse, blunt, and dedicated to his work. But there was something wrong with the room and she couldn’t place it exactly.

  The Chief indicated they should take the two chairs and he dropped into his chair behind the desk, leaned back and sighed deeply. Chances are this was the first break he had taken in hours.

  Without telling the Chief, Red turned on a sound-blocking device to make sure that nothing would be overheard or recorded. Then he asked the chief if there was any news.

  “Nothing,” he said. “Just tightening this place down like a loose bolt on an engine.”

  Mattie just sat and tried to figure out what had bothered her about the office, letting Red do the talking at the moment.

  Red nodded. “If any more attackers are found, if there is time, Innocence Inc. is going to work with local authorities on each planet to swoop in and make sure the families are safe.”

  “I like the sounds of that,” Chief Lovell said, nodding. “Better than what happened to those poor families before.”

  Mattie glanced at Red. He hadn’t told her he had that set up. But it made sense. It was the kind of thing they did, and it made her smile. She killed people who were guilty of horrid crimes, such as General Jarvis. Red saved those who were innocent.

  They clearly made a great pair.

  She pushed that thought from her mind and turned back to the task at hand. “We’re headed out to see if we can discover if the General is out there in the abandoned station and scout out what we can.”

  “That’s going to take some time,” Chief Lovell said, frowning as if he wasn’t sure about the idea. He started to say something and then shut his mouth.

  “It will,” Red said, not mentioning the shortcut they were thinking of taking or the speed of his ship. Or the fact that they suspected bombers on passenger liners heading toward Sector Justice Headquarters. Clearly Red didn’t want that information out and Mattie was glad he was keeping it close to his chest like that.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw Red reach down and click off the blocking device. He had clearly seen what she was missing and knew something was going on and he wanted whoever the Chief thought was listening to hear the next part.

  “You have this place wrapped up tight and defended,” Red said. “We just need to see what’s coming at us. And see if we can get a shot at Jarvis in the process. So it’s worth the long journey out into The Emptiness to find out.”

  “Good luck on that one,” Lovell said, standing and extending his hand to them.

  They walked the entire distance to the ship without talking.

  Mattie felt very, very uncomfortable about that meeting with the Chief, but she just couldn’t put her finger on what was wrong. On the surface it had seemed completely normal. But over the years she had learned to trust her voice and right now that voice was shouting. Something had changed with the Chief in just the last hour.

  And clearly Red had seen it.

  When Red had the ship scanned for tampering and found none, then had all the sound dampening equipment up and working so they couldn’t be heard at all, she finally turned to him. “What did you see in that meeting with Lovell that I missed?”

  “His family pictures were missing.”

  She knew instantly he was right. In her mind she saw it as well. A picture on his desk was gone, a blank area where it had been, and there were three other blank spots on the walls.

  “Damn it,” she said. “You are right.”

  She had no idea how she had missed something that obvious. Clearly the Chief was trying to tell them, give them that message without ever saying anything, hoping they could do something.

  Ten minutes later they were pulling away from the station and moving off toward the nebula.

  The first thing Red did once they were clear of the station was get some of his people on Chief Lovell’s family. If the Chief was going to be any good to them in the coming fight, they had to first rescue his family, wherever they were being held.

  And do it in a way that General Jarvis wouldn’t know about the rescue.

  What worried Mattie the most was that Jarvis seemed to have thought of just about everything. He seemed way ahead of them and that worried her a great deal.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  RED SET THE COURSE of the ship on the standard route around the nebula and kept the speed down to normal speeds of most privately owned ships until they left the immediate scanning range of the station.

  Mattie sat beside him in the control room, working back and forth with the Sector Justice Headquarters. She hadn’t said a word for twenty minutes.

  Once they were clear of the station, Red first ran diagnostics on his shields to make sure they would have no issue going through the nebula radiation fields. They were fine.

  Then he ran a diagnostic on the cloaking device and once he determined it was working at all efficiency, he turned it on.

  To anyone watching on sensors, the ship just vanished from the screens.

  He then altered course, aiming for the hole in the nebula curtain and kicked up the speed.

  “Four hours and twenty minutes to the nebula opening,” he said, satisfied everything was working.

  Mattie nodded. “They found six bombers already on three liners inbound for Sector Justice headquarters.” She looked up from the communications equipment at Red. “Your people are on the families of the bombers, working to get them secure where they can.”

  “Great job,” he said to Mattie, smiling. “You just saved thousands and thousands of lives on those liners.”

  “I’m sure there are more bombers and attackers out there,” she said, clearly still very worried.

  “And the Sector Justice will find them. Your organization is very, very good at finding people, remember?”

  She laughed, but the laughter did not reach her eyes. “They are, but not for these reasons.”

  “Trust them,” he said.

  “Do I have a choice way out here?”

  “No,” Red said, knowing exactly how she was feeling. She was a control person, just as he was. If he couldn’t do it himself, he was always afraid it wouldn’t get done right.

  He picked up his communication pad and indicated she should do the same. Then he stood.

  “We need food,” he said. “It’s been too long since that small lunch and my stomach has been telling me that for the last hour.”

  She nodded, her mind clearly a long ways away at
the moment as she stood and walked with him down the wide corridor toward the kitchen.

  His mind wasn’t exactly on cooking at the moment either. He just hoped his people could get to the families before it was discovered they had been caught. Otherwise, General Jarvis would discover that his plan wasn’t going well and set another into motion.

  And that would be a very bad thing for a lot of people.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  MATTIE HELPED RED in silence make sandwiches from some sort of spiced red meat and a wonderful-tasting white cheese. He used a white bread that seemed to soften and gain a wonderful fresh smell the longer it was out of its package.

  “Drink?” he asked her as she took the sandwiches to the table.

  “Same fruit juice as this morning,” she said. “If you have more.”

  “I have plenty,” he said.

  “And was that only this morning?” She couldn’t believe that had only been this morning.

  He laughed softly. “Long day so far, that’s for sure.”

  “And I have a hunch it’s a long ways from over,” she said.

  He just nodded, poured them both some of the fruit juice and sat down across from her.

  Then they both checked status from their two organizations while working slowly on the sandwiches.

  She really, really needed to stay close to the fight to save the Sector Justice. She needed to know what was happening, even though it was a long distance away.

  And she liked the news.

  Local authorities from four planets were helping as well as dozens of Sector Justice members. The researchers at the Sector Justice said that spotting the bombers was like looking for a red light in a dark room. They were sure they had the immediate threat stopped, but it had been close. All the explosions were set to go off in just twenty hours.

  “They stopped two more on the liners,” she said, finally closing her tablet and looking over at Red. “They are still searching others due into the planets near Sector Justice headquarters later today.”