"I do not think we should linger here in a group this large," Lucky said, turning abruptly and walking out.
"I don't think this is going well for him," Crusher said, holding Jason back as the others filed out. "I understand what you're doing, but maybe it isn't all that helpful allowing him to chase ghosts like this."
"I hear what you're saying, but I'll fly around in circles chasing ghosts if it's something he feels he needs to do," Jason said. "He's given so much for each of us and never asks for anything for himself … until now." Crusher's eyes fell and he nodded, looking a bit shamefaced.
While Jason walked back to the ship alone he thought about what Crusher said. He agreed that it probably wasn't healthy to allow Lucky to build an obsession over something so amorphous based solely on the fact his homeworld and creators might be involved. But on the other hand, he had no proof to offer his friend as to why he should let it go. They'd been hired by Mok to poke around Khepri and see if there was any truth to the rumors that they were starting a military buildup. Even though they didn't find any direct evidence that Khepri was preparing for war, he couldn't deny that something was going on there and Lucky's former builder—he was loathe to use the term "Master"—seemed to have been in the thick of it.
The truth was that he considered his contract with Mok fulfilled and he'd file a report with the crime boss as soon as he got back to the ship. Whatever they did past this would be out of loyalty to his friend. Given some of the things that they'd been dragged into because of his and Crusher's personal problems, he didn't think he had the right to tell the battlesynth they were calling it quits just because they didn't find anything in the first two places they'd looked.
"SECURITY BREACH … condition two-alpha."
The words came over the intercom in Jason's quarters and made him jump in his seat. It was the middle of night hours on the Phoenix and he had been sitting at the small desk composing a detailed report to Saditava Mok about what they'd found so they could secure the rest of their fee. The upgraded systems Twingo had installed had included new internal security protocols that allowed Jason more flexibility in how he employed them. A condition two alert meant that someone had opened a hatch from the inside; the alpha qualifier meant it was someone from his crew.
"Damnit, Lucky," Jason groaned, knowing exactly who would be sneaking off the ship in the middle of the night. He now cursed his decision to stay docked to the station until the next day. He quickly tossed his shirt and boots back on, grabbed a weapon off the wall rack by the door, and left his quarters.
He didn't bother rushing after Lucky since he knew exactly where he would be going. In fact, it would be better if he wasn't spotted. He had to assume there was a reason he wasn't invited to go along so he would just follow at a discreet distance and watch Lucky's six.
After he navigated through the docking tubes and made it onto the main station, he took a right and tried to look as casual as he could. With a station as expansive as Pinnacle there were no real night hours, so the galleries were just as bustling as the last time they'd come through. When he passed down one of the connecting corridors to another of the wide-open galleries he saw that he wasn't the only one who seemed to be moving with a purpose. Ahead of him a trio of aliens in mismatched clothing were cutting through the crowd without slowing and without even a cursory look around at the shops and booths they were maneuvering through.
Jason let himself drift further to the right, hugging the edge of the corridor and slowing a bit to gain some distance. The group didn't speak to each other or to anyone else, just powered ahead with the leader even pushing a bystander from its path. Jason pulled his com unit out and saw with dismay that Lucky's wasn't appearing as an active address on the menu. The battlesynth must have left it on the Phoenix.
After passing the third gallery, Jason felt his instincts were correct that this group was tracking his friend for some reason. He also had to assume that if only three of them were moving on a battlesynth they must have something with them that allowed them the confidence to face off against him without being slaughtered. Even as he thought this he realized he'd screwed up himself and had been focusing on the three far too intently.
"Damnit!" he muttered and ducked off down the nearest side corridor, breaking into a sprint the moment he did and taking the next corridor he found. It was a dead end to the left that had a doublewide security door, probably rear access to the stores along the right side of the gallery he'd been in.
It was only a moment before he could hear the thudding of feet and pulled his weapon. He should have known immediately that it wouldn't just be three people bunched up and tracking Lucky. They'd done the exact same thing he would do: have a second team lagging back to see if the battlesynth had any backup.
"Didn't think this through, did you?" a burly Taukkir said as he stepped around the corner. He held a length of alloy bar stock in his hand with a knurled ball on one end that he was smacking into his hand as he approached. He saw what Jason held and laughed, a sound somewhere between a cough and a bark. "Not all that smart either, I see. You know that any weapon discharge will immediately set off the station's sensors and security will flood this place."
"You'll still be dead," Jason shrugged. "So what do you want?"
"I just need to know if you're tracking that battlesynth or our friends," the Taukkir said. "You're either its backup or our competition. Either way they won't find your bloody corpse for some time, so it won't hurt to tell me."
Jason frowned at that. Competition? "Why are you tracking a battlesynth?" he asked. "I'm just a simple opportunist and your friends aren't all that subtle. I figured I'd jump them after they found a mark."
"This is taking too long!" a harsh whisper came from beyond the corridor opening. The Taukkir had someone watching the main entrance from the gallery.
"Hold on and I'll set it straight," the Taukkir said, approaching Jason. "I'll make this as quick and painless as I can, little fella. Don't want—" He got no further as Jason lashed out with lightning quickness and ripped the cudgel from his hands. The much smaller human wheeled around, dropping to the floor as the shocked Taukkir made a grab for him.
Jason swung the weapon in an overhead blow, smashing it into the alien's unprotected foot. The bones splintered, and before the Taukkir could suck in a breath to scream in pain, Jason grabbed the weapon with both hands, his left holding it just below the ball, and drove it into the bottom of his opponent’s jaw.
"Keep it down!" the lookout hissed. Jason looked down at the now-pleading eyes of the Taukkir and hit him in the forehead with a half-assed blow from the weapon that may or may not have killed him.
"You'll want to see this," Jason said conversationally. He'd found that even professionals tended to not pay close attention to who was actually speaking when they were hurried and stressed, they merely reacted to the words. Thankfully these idiots were far from pros. Just as another Taukkir stepped around the corner, this one with the more typical tall, willowy build, he grabbed a handful of shirt and flung him down the side corridor.
"Sorry, champ … I've wasted too much time on you guys already."
"Wait!" the alien wailed as Jason approached. "I have—" Jason hit this one just hard enough to knock him out. He had no qualms about killing the two hired thugs, but dead bodies piled up in front of doors on Pinnacle Station usually kicked off unwelcome investigations, at least up on the gallery levels.
Jason quickly rooted through all their pockets and kept anything that looked semi-useful. There were some data cards and a few printed documents he'd have Kage look through later. He wanted to be well away from the scene of the crime, not to mention the horrific smell.
"Damn! What the hell do they have for blood … piss and bile?" Jason coughed as he propped them up to look like they were sleeping. Despite the multiple fractures, the big guy was still breathing so Jason made sure he tilted the head so that the blood from his broken lower and upper jaw wouldn't drain back and drown him.
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"Well, that was pointless," he griped, resisting the urge to sprint after the aliens that were almost certainly closing in on Lucky by that point.
LUCKY PAUSED at the intersection and listened again. They were still back there. His sensors had easily picked up the three oafs tailing him and he had led them on a more circuitous route to his destination to try and find out what it was they wanted. Were they tracking him because of Omega Force, or because of what they might have inadvertently found? Not enough time had passed since the incident on Khepri for a team to have been activated and waiting for him here.
The three aliens were moving much more cautiously now that they'd lost track of him again. Lucky could clearly hear their panicked whispers to each other as they argued about how to proceed. There was some slight risk as Lucky knew he could not use his own energy weapons and then make it back to the Phoenix before security caught up with him, so it would be either surrender himself or leave a bloody swath of destruction in his escape. Besides, it didn't seem like the three tailing him were up to the job of subduing him.
It took them nearly five minutes to get near where Lucky stood concealed among a column of waste water pipes. The battlesynth's sensors could easily detect the nine rapidly beating hearts of the three Taukkir, a people he'd had no interaction with before but recognized. When they were within two meters he stepped out, his left foot landing with a thud against the alloy deck plates.
"Do it! Do it!" the smallest of the Taukkir insisted as the leader held up a small device with two antennas coming from it and, with a confident smile, pressed a button on it. Lucky's primary subprocessor fired off an alert that he'd never seen before, but he understood whatever the Taukkir was holding was a threat.
He launched himself forwards and grabbed the offending wrist, crushing it in the iron-hard grasp of his right hand as the left delicately plucked the device away now that the hand was no longer obeying the commands of its owner. The smaller Taukkir that had been egging on the leader fainted, collapsing to the deck in an awkward position, his eyes still half-open. The third took off running back the way he came.
"Not so fast!" Lucky looked up in time to see Jason Burke grab the fleeing Taukkir and, with an overly dramatic display in his opinion, lift him off the ground and hold him far above his head before slamming the alien into the ground so hard ribs could be heard breaking.
"Please don't kill us," the leader gasped, cradling his ruined wrist to his chest.
"Then tell me what this was supposed to do," Lucky said.
"They said it would immobilize you," the Taukkir groaned.
"Him specifically or one like him?" Jason asked.
"I don't know who you are!" the alien insisted. "We were approached by someone who paid untraceable credit chits and given a bunch of these boxes. They said if we saw a battlesynth to get close and hit the button and it would shut 'em down. For every one we collected we would get another five million credits. Five million! You're the first one we've seen since we agreed."
"Interesting," Lucky said. He handed the box to Jason. "We will doubtlessly want Twingo to analyze this."
"No shit." Jason stuffed the box angrily into a cargo pocket. "What the hell are you doing sneaking off the ship and roaming around down here by yourself?"
"I have a … hunch," Lucky said calmly.
"Then by all means … proceed." Jason's retort dripped with sarcasm.
They left the group of would-be abductors in the maintenance access corridor, writhing in pain and moaning. At least two of the three were doing that, the third still hadn't regained consciousness. They retraced their steps from earlier and ended up back in the small memorial chamber that Jason assumed was a mausoleum of sorts. Odd since on almost every spacecraft he'd been on, including large orbital platforms and stations, biological remains were never stored past the autopsy once someone died.
"We already looked over this crap, Lucky," Jason said. "What do you hope to accomplish?"
Lucky didn't answer. He walked over to the plaque memorializing Noyut Vulban and drove a fist through the engraved metal.
"Holy shit! This was your master plan? Petty vandalism?"
"Must you fill every moment with words?" Lucky asked sharply.
Jason opened his mouth and closed it a few times, stunned at the tone. "You don't have to be a dick about it," he sulked. "Just ask me to—"
"Captain!"
"Sorry."
Lucky gingerly peeled away the remains of the plaque and reached inside. He pulled out the expected small, sealed receptacle of what they assumed were Vulban's corporeal remains. He reached in again and tapped against the rear wall of the chamber before straightening his index finger and jabbing it through the thin metal, tearing and pulling it free. Behind the false wall was a small stack of data cards, a glossy black puck-shaped object, and a single handwritten note on a sheet.
"We should leave immediately," Lucky said, handing over the objects to Jason so he could carry them in his pockets. "We will not be able to hide the fact we've opened the cell." The battlesynth walked out quickly, and as Jason turned to follow his boot nudged something. He looked down and saw the vessel containing the remains of Vulban and stopped to put them back in the cell. After a moment's thought, however, he carefully slid the sealed metal container into his remaining empty pocket and followed Lucky back to the ship.
12
"Incoming transmission," Kage said as the Phoenix tore across space towards her mesh-out point. "It's to you specifically … it's from the Endurance."
"Shit. They must have spread the Phoenix's description around the fleet and now every cruiser or trawler will be accosting any Jepsen ship they come across," Jason cursed.
"I don't think so," Kage said. "The message is a compressed data packet with the header, 'To Captain Jason Burke, with regards.' That doesn't sound like they want us to stand by for boarding or to turn ourselves in."
"Maybe," Jason said. "Send no reply and put the message in my personal buffer without opening it to look first."
They had left Pinnacle in a hurry given all the broken and bloody Taukkir bodies Jason and Lucky had left behind. Crusher, after finding out what had happened, was not speaking to either of them. Without any real destination in mind, they had set a course for a slow slip-space flight back towards the ConFed core worlds. Jason wanted to give Lucky and Kage time to go through the items pulled out of Vulban's crypt cell, and he also needed to see if he could shake any more information out of Saditava Mok. Since he was normally a long-winded gasbag, Jason had to assume the uncharacteristically brief conversations meant he was holding something back.
"I'll be in the com room," Jason announced after the ship meshed-out and the slip-drive had stabilized. There were a few grunted, disinterested replies as he walked the short distance down the command deck to the cramped room that always smelled like hot electronics. He pulled up the packet that the human ship had transmitted with some trepidation, selecting the first message that said it was from the captain of the Endurance.
"Greetings, Captain Burke. My name is Jonathan Swank. I'm the commanding officer of the USS Endurance, the latest Pathfinder-class cruiser to enter Earth's fleet." The man speaking on the video was everything Jason remembered of field grade officers about to get that first star from his time in the Air Force. He had to admit he was probably a cynic and wasn't giving Captain Swank a fair shake.
"Your vessel appeared on our sensors and all of our COs have an unofficial order to pass onto you the data packet attached to this message. I also wanted to reach out to you personally and let you know that despite the former President of the United States declaring you a fugitive to the public, the upper echelon of our new unified Earth military know the truth. Captain Marcus Webb, formerly Commander Webb, has made sure we know of your selfless actions and sacrifices made on our behalf. Despite anything you may hear otherwise, you may consider any human vessel you encounter in space a friend.
"I hope one day to meet you and thank you
in person. My son was a young enlisted man aboard one of the Terranovus cruisers that you allowed to surrender and withdraw. I, for one, will never forget that act of mercy. Safe travels, Captain."
"I wasn't expecting that." Jason shook his head as the message closed out. He selected the next in order without seeing whom it might be from.
"Jason! I hope this message finds you well." The smiling face of former Commander Marcus Webb appeared on the screen. Despite himself, Jason smiled also. When they'd first met he'd have gladly tossed Webb out an airlock, but by the end of the Ull mission he considered the SEAL commander a true friend even if he was a filthy squid.
"If you're looking at my ugly mug it's safe to say you've come across one of our new Pathfinder-class ships. Not bad, huh? These 4th generation starships are thanks to what you gave that CIA spook—yeah, I was put on the need to know list for that—and it wasn't just ship designs. Science, practical engineering, the works … I won't pretend there aren't some growing pains by dumping this in our laps all at once, but I think we'll be okay. If you will, take a gander at my shiny new eagles, Sergeant"—Webb shifted so the camera got a view of the Naval Captain's insignia pinned on his shoulder—"which means, sadly, I'm no longer on the operational side of things. So unless you come back home within my lifetime we won't be able to split that bottle of Crown Royal we talked about.
"Anyway … Russ is fine, still working with the military as a civilian contractor. You probably hear more from Abiyah than we do, though I hear he and Carolyn haven't killed each other yet, so that's good. I've been discreetly looking after Jacob and his grandparents like you asked; not much to report other than he graduated high school with decent grades.
"Talk to you whenever I get near a slip-com node, you worthless Air Force puke."
Jason sat back as the second video flicked off and breathed a sigh of relief. When he'd accessed the archived data from the Machine and put together an interactive quasi-AI program that would help Earth quickly catch up in science and technology, he knew there was a chance he was handing over a virtual Pandora's Box that would only hasten their demise. Power that wasn't earned was more often than not abused. It was far too early to know for sure, but it at least seemed like humanity was making a real effort to get its collective shit together as they stepped out onto the galactic stage.
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