by Daniel Gibbs
“I do, thanks. I’ve got a new one to send up to you. Let’s run a compare and contrast. I think we’ve got a repeat of the same code.”
“That would be good news. Standing by.”
Brant slipped the new recording into a packet that, if another party managed by some miracle to break his encryption and spot, would make the recording appear as a glut of personal photos, most of which Brant had generated using a sophisticated program for making fake identities. “On its way.”
A few minutes later, Eldred let out a low whistle. “Looks like we have a match, Echo Home. If this pans out, those extra rosaries I’ve been praying will have been worth it.”
“I’ll second that, Warrant. I can only do so much on this end. I’m counting on Oxford’s hardware being able to crack it.”
“I wouldn’t sell yourself short. From what we’ve seen up here, you’ve been busy getting a peek at finances and personal records galore.”
Brant grinned. “Let’s call it a decent partnership, then. If you guys can find a way through this encryption, it’ll be like having our ears pressed to the door of their secret meeting room, and maybe we can make some headway before anybody else gets hurt in this mess.”
“Sounds good to me. We’ll let you know when we get results. Base One out."
Brant cut the connection. He leaned back in his chair and stretched his arm. How long had it been since he’d eaten? It was 1630 hours. He’d forgotten all about both meals, and he couldn’t care less.
“This is great.” Brant slapped his hands on the tablet, sending a rattle through his monitors. “Our first big score of the mission. I need to celebrate. How about we get—”
Sev snapped his fingers. When Brant looked up, Sev was shushing him.
Fine. Let him eat the freeze-dried ration. Brant was going out to get a sandwich or two.
“Captain?” Eldred tapped her screen. “Take a look at this.”
“Is this the side by side of Lieutenant Guinto’s intercept with TFC 7791’s?” Tamir bent over her station. “Yes, the similarities are there. I’d bet the probability match at ninety percent or greater.”
“Ninety-seven point eight. Good eye, sir. I’ve had it through the first three filters, and it wasn’t until the third that this showed up.”
Tamir frowned. “Is it—I’m looking at a Typhoon encrypt.”
“A fragment of it, yes. But I’ve never seen it used this way. Typhoon is one of the newer League ciphers, from the last six months of the war. We cracked it, didn’t we?”
“Partially. We never had great success because, even when we did decipher the contents, they were garbled. This, though…” Tamir drummed his fingers on the console. “This looks like a mutation I’ve seen before. Pull up the Mode Four algorithms we’ve been running drills with. Send both through, and put a comparison to Typhoon in the mix. I’m willing to bet that will do the trick.”
“Bet? Care to make it interesting, Major?”
“Warrant, I don’t draw enough pay. But it’s been a while since anyone pulled a good prank on the colonel, so loser is next up.”
Eldred smirked. “I’ll take that action, Captain.” She queued up both transmissions for the next round of decrypt attempts.
Dusk painted the sky over Kolossi orange and pink. Spacecraft lights glittered among the few stars making their appearance. Jackson sank back against the cabinet of tools mounted on the wall. Another day, another credit—and plenty of intel from Brant he could review. Nothing yet from Gina, though she tended to stay comms dark until communication was absolutely necessary.
“Hey! Food’s here, ale too. On the house! Everybody grab somethin’ before we knock off. Been a helluva sales day, boys.”
The mechanics made their way up front, ragging on each other about their work, whether it was any good or not. Jackson got a thumbs-up from a few about the hotrod bike.
“Jack?” Euke stopped by his corner. “I’m sorry but… I can’t. Here.” He offered up his battered tablet.
“Hey, don’t worry about it. Keep the money.” Jackson’s mind raced for his next option. “Maybe you’ll change your mind later. C’mon, let’s grab dinner.”
They joined the rest, grabbing for containers from a pasta grill down the street. Jackson reached for a can of ale, and as he did, he let one of the tiny packets fall from his hand onto an open box. The thin film around the packet dissolved on contact. Within seconds, the contents would spread into the meal. Thirty hours later, the person who consumed the meal would be at the upper end of awful symptoms—loss of energy, vomiting, disorientation, fluctuating fever. He would be in no condition to ride.
Jackson popped open a can of ale. If Salvatore wouldn’t put him on the courier route, and Euke hesitated to give him a spot, he would have to make his own.
11
CSV Tuscon
Aphendrika System—Terran Coalition
22 July 2464
Major Nathan Mancini kept his eye to the tactical board mounted above his command chair. He shifted his elbow so he could reach his coffee, taking care not to bump into his executive officer, Captain Patrick Godat. People thought of CDF ships as monstrous battlewagons with acres of room for weapons, fighters, and engines. Publicity offices didn’t give out snapshots of the claustrophobic interiors of boats like Mancini’s stealth raider.
Still, the cramped quarters meant room for little more than the basics, which in turn meant fewer distractions. Mancini figured it forced everyone to sharpen their focus.
That said, it was much better to focus when not hiding from the enemy for fear of being blown out of space.
“Conn, Sensor Room.”
“Conn here.” Mancini leaned toward the mic mounted to his chair. “Go ahead.”
“Scans coming back on target vessel, Skipper. She’s full up with spare parts for farming bots. Got a few null spaces where there shouldn’t be any. Should we go active and get a detailed read?”
“Negative. I don’t want to tip them off that they’re being followed. Stay trained on them, though. Anyone so much as flushes the toilet aboard, I want to know.”
“Aye, aye, sir. Sensor Room out.”
Mancini glanced at Godat. “Any aspect change on Sierra One?”
“None, Skipper. Target is staying on course, taking a wide parabola up and over the ecliptic plane of the system. Their CO must not want to do a repeat of the last smuggler tub TCFE let blow up.”
“That’s what I want to not repeat.” Mancini peered over the shoulder of the enlisted rating squeezed into an auxiliary engineering station next to him. “And it looks like their reactor’s steady. No fluctuations indicating a forced overload.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll catch them before they can punch the red button.”
“Master Chief MacDonald’s people?”
“Ready and raring to board.” Godat chuckled. “I think they’ve been ready since Oxford jumped into the system, frankly.”
Mancini nodded but didn’t answer—too many variables to keep track of. He took in the displays and consoles packed into the small, rectangular compartment. No excess chatter from the crew, just then, not as Tuscon was sliding through space with her engines shut down. Their initial acceleration at twenty percent of maximum put them a few dozen kilometers behind the smuggler, identified on the tactical board as Sierra One—a new contact, not hostile. Mancini’s board showed Tuscon would intercept in twenty minutes unless Sierra One increased or decreased its speed. Then they would have to go to Plan B.
“Conn, TAO.” Lieutenant Scott Olesen, the tactical action officer, called out his alert. “Sierra One change in aspect—cutting velocity.”
“Nav, report range to target,” Mancini ordered.
“Conn, Nav. One eight klicks and falling, sir.”
Mancini squinted at his miniature tactical board. Whatever sensors the smuggler fielded, they didn’t match a Growler-class stealth boat, which sported the most sensitive and powerful units in the galaxy. Still, Colonel Sinclair wanted it do
ne quietly. Tuscon was drifting along at one hundred fifty meters per second to keep their originally timed rendezvous.
“Pilot, slow to one ten meters per second and recalculate.”
“Conn, pilot, slowing to one ten, eye,” answered the young enlisted man who controlled the boat.
“Conn, Nav. Intercept now in thirty-two minutes.”
“They’ve slowed a bunch,” Godat murmured.
“Not showing any indication they’ve seen us,” Mancini said. “Otherwise they’d try to make a run for it.” He tapped the control for his mic. “Mancini to MacDonald.”
“MacDonald here. Bad news, Major?”
“Afraid I’m going to make you late for your date, Master Chief.”
“Not a problem, sir, I’m a married man anyway, so I’d rather not give my wife the wrong idea. We’re packed into the shuttle and ready to bounce whenever you give us the green light.”
“You’re taking it pretty well considering you and your boys haven’t had any Leaguers to hunt for a long spell.”
“No complaints, Major. We’ll bring back a shipload of prisoners for you to question.”
“Roger that, Master Chief. I’ll keep you apprised. Mancini out.”
The smuggler vessel was a battered scow converted to run illegal goods by the addition of four engine exhausts where there used to be two. At the moment, it was running under the transponder Lucy Lee, with a false registry code scavenged from the wreckage of a freighter destroyed by pirates thirty-five years before. Its captain, a man named Akai, chewed on the corner of his lip as he watched the red lights milling on his sensor display. “Shit, Carlos. When they said Border had this place sealed up, I didn’t think they meant like an airlock.”
“Relax, Skipper.” Carlos had been Lucy Lee’s helmsman for most of his adult life. When he moved his hands, she responded in increments so minimal he swore he could feel the exact amount of thruster propellent expended. “I’m slowing us so we can find the best way in. We knew there would be a pile of TCFE ships when we got here.”
“The buyer didn’t say a damned thing about this many.” Captain Akai pulled up the last transmission he’d received from their client. “Comms, I’m forwarding you a confirmation code. Bounce it off the weather satellite at the attached coordinates.”
“Weather satellite, Captain?”
“Did I stutter, or do you have our cargo stuffed in your ears? Read and transmit.”
“Aye, Skipper.”
“Conn, Sensor Room.”
“Give me good news, Sensor Room,” Mancini said.
“We’ve got a tight-beam transmission from Sierra One. Looks like they’re querying a weather satellite, but there’s a whole lot of bandwidth behind the request.”
“Run it past the filters from Oxford. Let’s see what the spooks came up with.”
Holy Father, bless their work so we can get one step closer to ending this mess. He held the prayer in his mind as he reread the reports he’d received of youths being trafficked. Whatever the League was up to, Mancini had no problem classifying it as the devil’s work.
“That’s an affirmative, Skipper!” the sensor tech called back through the intercom. “Signal match is eighty-nine percent.”
“Nothing like getting a positive read on a catch before we reel it in,” Godat said.
Mancini smiled. “Pilot, shadow Sierra One and wait for my mark. XO, send word to jam their communications and sensors. Activate the EMP beam. The instant they’re dumb and blind, I want us on their roof. Have the stealth assault lander prep for launch.”
“Aye, sir.” Godat relayed Mancini’s orders. The flurry of responses indicated every crew member, plus MacDonald’s six-man team, was ready for action.
We’ll nail this one so fast no one’ll see it coming. Mancini tapped his coffee mug, his fingernail driving a faint click. No aspect change from the target.
“Conn, Comms,” sang out the petty officer at communications. “They’re taking an incoming transmission. Reply is being bounced off the weather satellite.”
“Roger, Comms. Sensor Room, commence jamming. Pilot, accelerate to intercept. XO—”
Godat looked up from his station. “Master Chief says the shuttle’s engines are hot and ready to launch.”
“Close the net,” Mancini murmured.
“What is that? What the hell is that?”
Captain Akai’s spittle sprayed the back of Carlos’s head.
Carlos grimaced but didn’t dare move his hands from the console. “I see it.”
“Contact bearing two four zero, mark three oh five!” the navigator snapped. “Where’d it come from?”
“Your scanners must have missed it.”
“No way! I just ran diagnostics last night!”
“Shut up, you two,” Akai growled. “Carlos, get us out of here!”
Lucy Lee couldn’t bolt like a corvette, but Carlos spun her on her axis as she hurtled along in a wide orbit of Aphendrika. Thruster indicators lit up until he had her aimed on a vector ninety degrees to their original orientation.
“Getting us out of here.”
He pushed the scow to her maximum acceleration, all six drive engines sending a tremor through the hull. It rattled up through his feet and set his teeth chattering until the vibration fell off.
Carlos grinned. Let’s see whoever’s out there catch up with us now.
“Who are they? Pirates? Leaguer privateers?” Akai paced the tight confines of the bridge.
“I can’t get a read on them. Just a ship, coming up on us fast. Intercept in five minutes.”
“Five?” The moron had to have faulty gear. Carlos glanced at the nav readout. Holy cow. That vessel made Lucy Lee seem like she was parked in orbit. Carlos gave the drive everything the reactor could spare, but his display shuddered, winked, then went dark. So did all the rest of their tracking and navigation screens. “What?”
“Major interference coming off our pursuer,” Nav said. “At least, it was, but I can’t get a read on anything. Navigation, long-range scans, close sensors—they’re all toast.”
“I can’t see our course either,” Carlos added. “I’ll have to run by calculations to get an accurate read.”
“Shields!” Akai cried.
“They’re not responding, Captain. Some kind of EMP beam. I thought only the League has those.”
“Dammit! It’s not the League, idiot, and definitely not pirates. They would have demanded our cargo or fired warning shots. Bring our point-defense turrets online.”
“Weapons not responding, Captain. We’ve got air, lights, and gravity, but that’s about it.” Carlos urged Lucy Lee to keep accelerating. “And the engines are burning as long as—”
The lights went out.
Master Chief Gordan MacDonald leveled his battle rifle at the blank corridor. Behind them, steam hissed from the still-glowing edges of the hatch Petty Officer First Class Esmail Rostami had burned through—no resistance so far. “Okay, people, you know the drill. Secure the reactor so these shits don’t blow the deck from underneath us. Mancini’s techies bought us some time interrupting shipwide systems, but it isn’t going to last.”
“Reactor’s one deck down and five sections back,” Rostami said.
“You heard the comms geek with the map. Move out!”
The squad proceeded with caution down the corridor. Emergency lighting cast an orange pall over the hatches and corners, making shadows sharper and disorienting. Their visors’ sensors made up the difference, stripping away the odd tones and replacing them with a more realistic representation of their route.
MacDonald froze at the first closed hatch in their way, fist raised. The rest of the team spread out in the corridor, some crouched, some standing, their lines of fire clear. Chief Petty Officer Amacio Mata brought up the rear, guarding the way they’d come.
“Unlocked.” MacDonald grunted.
“We draw straws to see who goes first,” Senior Chief Dennis Harrell muttered.
“I
am willing if you Terrans have not the spine,” Rucuk, the Saurian warrior filling the sixth slot on their team, growled.
“Nah. I think Master Chief punches the go button, and we shove your ass through,” Mata said from behind them.
“Cut it. What’ve we got, Rostami?”
Rostami let a tiny insectoid drone take flight from his belt. It buzzed up into a nearby air vent, following its orders to get into the next compartment.
“One sec, Master Chief. Punching up visual.”
The drone’s miniscule cameras fed live imagery of Engineering to their visors. MacDonald scowled. Four people—two hunkered behind consoles, two working feverishly at the shielded access point to the reactor controls.
“Give them the chance to surrender. Knock them down if unarmed. Any signs of explosives?”
“Drone isn’t picking anything up,” Rostami said. “But these guys are smugglers, Master Chief. They’re not big on ideology unless you’re talking money.”
“They sure blew the shit out of the other smuggler ship, money or not,” Harrell said.
“Stand by to breach.” MacDonald slowed his breathing. Civilians or not, smugglers or more, they were unknown hostiles. He’d treat them as such to protect his men. “Ahmad…”
Chief Petty Officer Ibrahim Ahmad positioned his hand over the hatch release. He nodded.
“Go,” MacDonald rasped.
The doors snapped open. MacDonald and his men poured through, fanning out to contain the four crewmen.
“Show us your hands! Hands! Now!”
Protocol was to stun anyone they found, but Colonel Sinclair wanted lucid prisoners who could answer questions. Surrender was Option One for these guys if they didn’t want to wake up hours from then with the galaxy’s worst hangover.