by Terry Mixon
She shifted her gaze to Falcone. “I need to verify this story is true. One doesn’t commit mercenary companies without being absolutely sure. No offense to you or Captain Madrid, but I have to make some calls.
“I know someone in the Commonwealth Investigative Agency that should be able to confirm you’re with them. And I’ll contact Captain Fields on Freedom. If they both confirm your story, then I’ll start setting things up to help.”
“You can have your friend verify ‘Agent Falcon is in flight.’ That code phrase will get him the confirmation that I’m active on Ganymede and that this is a valid request for help from the agency.”
“Be discreet,” Brad said softly. “These bastards have people everywhere. Make your lines of communication as secure as possible, and be completely sure you trust the people you tell this to.”
Kernsky smiled and shook her head. “I’ve been at this a long time, Captain. You don’t have to tell me how to do my job. Besides, my contact in the agency is beyond reproach. Arbiter Blaze, do you have a secure com screen I could use?”
“You can use mine. We’ll step out and give you some privacy.”
“No need.”
The two women switched places and Kernsky entered a number. Someone they couldn’t see picked up and Kernsky smiled. “Angie, I need you to check on something for me.”
“Sure,” the unseen woman said. “Hit me.”
“I need you to verify someone is working on Ganymede and that a request for help is valid. I was told to tell you that ‘Agent Falcon is in flight.’”
The silence from the other end was profound. “I don’t need to check. That’s valid. Sara, what’s going on?”
“I can’t say right now. We’ll talk later. Thanks.”
Kernsky disconnected and stared at Falcone. “When my sister vouches for someone, that carries a lot of weight. She’s been in your local office for ten years. Time to confirm the rest.”
The factor called Freedom. That wasn’t as simple as it sounded, but it wasn’t overly complex. The time delay due to the distance was enough to be noticeable, but not too bad.
“Captain Fields,” she said after a few minutes. “Sara Kernsky with the Mercenary Guild.”
“Ah, Factor Kernsky,” Fields said. “I was just talking about you with a mutual friend a few days ago. He should be on Ganymede.”
“He is. I’m just confirming he has your confidence.”
“To the hilt. Fleet is backing his play.”
She smiled. “That couldn’t be clearer. Thank you.”
The factor ended the call and stared at Brad. “You really think you can get the location of the slavers’ base?”
“Let me make a call and see what the progress is.”
Brad brought up his wrist-comp and made the connection to Marie Curie. It was closer than Freedom, so the transmission lag was noticeably shorter.
“Keller,” the scientist said a few minutes later.
“Doctor, let’s not mention names, just in case. How goes the project?”
The older man smiled. “Much more simply than we’d anticipated, actually. That old saw about possession being nine tenths of the law applies in the case of bypassing security, too. We cracked the encryption ten minutes ago. Without going into specifics, we have the data you wanted. How do we get it to you?”
Brad grinned. “I want you and my ship to head out into deep space. Call Captain Fields and arrange an out-of-the-way location where we can all meet. Have him send it to me as a secure message. He can use the last name of the man he assigned as my tour guide when we first met as the key.”
The older man smiled widely. “All this skulking about makes me feel like a spy. I’ll do that right away. Just in case, I’ll have him send the coordinates we found along with it. One can never be too careful.”
Brad ended the call and looked at everyone else. “That’s the final link in the chain. If we can gather enough force before Mader can warn them, we should be able to smash the slavers where they live. If we can crush their leadership, we can get the handle we need to end them as an organization.”
Kernsky nodded. “Their base will have formidable defenses. We’ll want to strike before they have a chance to use them. I’ll begin contacting companies I trust and issuing overriding contracts.
“I can get enough trustworthy mercenary companies without giving them any details. So long as we head into space to join up and they lock down communications, we should be secure from leaks.”
The factor smiled harshly. “Make this work and you’ll have earned a reputation no one can ever take away from you, Captain. Well done.”
He nodded. “Now all we have to do is strike them hard and fast. Time is of the essence, with Mader in the wind and Breen off Ganymede. It wouldn’t surprise me if they both ended up at this base. I want to make sure they don’t slip away again or we’ll have to do this all over again someday.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
An astonishingly short for interplanetary travel but nerve-wrackingly painful four days later, Brad sat in Freedom’s wardroom with Captain Fields, Sara Kernsky, Dr. Keller, and a dozen mercenary leaders commanding almost three dozen ships. He’d just finished running through the full story again.
Commander William Branson of Heimdall’s Raiders spoke up first. “Well, I’ll be damned. And this is all confirmed?”
Fields made a noncommittal gesture. “We know the information is potentially good, but we can’t verify it without poking our heads into the hornet’s nest. I have no reason to suspect it’s some kind of elaborate trap, if that’s what you’re asking.”
The big mercenary nodded, his expression dark. “They’d pull back a stump if they came after us. Worse than when they sent those little ships after your cruiser. That doesn’t worry me. My concern is that we avoid jumping an innocent mining station.”
That was valid, Brad thought. The coordinates in the recovered device had pointed them at an isolated mining base serving the asteroids Jupiter dragged behind itself in orbit. Pretty far off the beaten path, but a place that would have a fair number of miners.
If the place was legitimate, those would be innocent civilians. If it was a slaver installation where the work was done by prisoners, they’d have to be even more cautious. As everyone knew, slavers had no qualms about executing their slaves to prevent wagging tongues.
Since Brad knew the slavers or the Cadre had Mandrake’s Heart, the stakes were even higher. His uncle and old crewmates might be in the firing line too.
“Perhaps that’s where I and my fellow scientists might be of assistance,” Dr. Keller said. “Marie Curie is outfitted with probes designed to tease secrets from deep inside Jupiter. To say its sensors are…well, sensitive is something of an understatement.
“I propose we modify them to disable the active sensor bands and use them to passively gather data around the mining facility. If it’s a normal civilian outpost, no one will even see them. If it’s more, there is a risk, but much less than sending in a ship to do the same.”
That set off a lively debate among the mercenary captains. Some of them wanted to go right in and bring the hammer down if there was any sign this facility belonged to the slavers. The woman running the Pythons was the strongest advocate of that approach.
Captain Fields took the opposite side of the coin. He wanted to get a complete layout of potential forces and facilities before they committed any ships at all.
Brad knew he had the least experience of any of these people, so he let them argue for a bit before he ventured an opinion.
“Both plans have their plusses and minuses,” he said. “I propose we split the difference. Most of the ships wait and come in hot. They don’t have to attack until we’re certain what we’re dealing with.
“Still, the slavers will kill their prisoners if they think an attack is likely. We need to get strike teams in to quietly infiltrate the base. Then we can stand between the slavers and their victims while the cavalry comes screaming
in.”
Kernsky cleared her throat. “I think that’s a good idea, but forgive me if I suggest someone with a bit more experience lead that mission. No offense, Captain Madrid, but you’re new to the game. A rising star, perhaps, but we need a steady hand at the controls for this.”
Commander Branson grinned. “I know the perfect man for the job: me! In fact, Captain Madrid owes Heimdall’s Raiders a favor. I’m calling it due.”
Brad didn’t mind. “Please. I suggest we take a very large team to infiltrate the base. We can leave just about everyone on their small craft and have them grapple with Heart on the way in. The acceleration will be low unless we’re spotted and someone starts shooting.
“We can communicate via low-powered coms and settle on a final boarding plan once we get into position and see what we’re dealing with.”
“We’re talking basically putting this intrusion team up front and using the ships to take out the fixed defenses in a second wave,” Fields said. “We land enough men to swamp the defenders while your lead elements keep the innocent people safe. I like it.
“The first thing we need to do is verify we’re in the right place. I say we send probes in without any transmitters at all. Let them collect data, and one of us picks them up on the far side. We’ll need to have ships coming in on multiple vectors to be sure we stop anyone from running.”
Kernsky nodded slowly. “If we’re sure this this isn’t the place, a tight beam to warn us off won’t hurt. No signal means we’re good to go and we kick off phase two on a preset schedule. Heart of Vengeance will slip in, carrying the strike teams. Once Heart detects all hell breaking loose on the mining station, they call us all in for phase three.”
“I’ll take a few of the smaller ships around to the other side,” Fields said. “With Freedom at hand, that should help balance things out. I figure we should all be in position in about twelve hours, if we stay clear of detection range.”
“We have to assume they have listening posts out to detect incoming ships so that they have time to run,” Falcone objected. “Take twice that long and go way out. Then we come in slowly and be careful to avoid any sentries. Better safe than sorry.”
The Fleet officer considered that. “Agreed.”
They spent the next three hours wrangling the details, but the big picture was settled. Brad let the older professionals make sure they didn’t miss anything while he started planning the raid itself in his head.
The demon deep inside him was raring to go, and that made him even more determined to keep it on a tight leash. His uncle’s life might ride on his maintaining control. And there would be more victims down there. He just knew it.
He had to locate the prisoners first. If they screwed that up, he’d never be able to live with himself. Revenge was fine and good, but much sweeter if he took everything away from the bastards first—and didn’t get any innocents killed along the way!
So Brad and his people would have the best data, they’d gone around the mining station with Freedom. Waiting for the probes was nerve-wracking, but the tiny devices came up on them exactly on schedule.
Boats from the Fleet cruiser retrieved them while the strike team leaders waited in the wardroom to see if this was going to pay off. It only took a few moments for Brad to relax a little.
“No way this is a mining facility,” Fields said as he examined the first images. “Look at all these ships parked out here. Sure, a few freighters would be appropriate, but there’s more than two dozen vessels. I see a few freighters, but at least half are fighting craft.”
Brad tapped one section of the large display. “Can you enhance this any?”
The image was surprisingly high-resolution, and it enlarged with plenty of detail for him to make a positive identification. “This is the freighter Mandrake’s Heart. I know for a fact the Cadre took her a few months back.”
Everyone looked at him closely, but no one asked how he knew.
Fields nodded slowly, understanding in his eyes. “Then we’re in the right place. I’m hereby greenlighting phase two. Let’s look at the facility itself.”
Brad didn’t know who’d built the original mining facility, but it looked as if the core was a real operation. Someone had stabilized a large asteroid at some point and placed a smelting unit on the surface. Heat exchange was probably a bitch.
That explained a lot of the domes and external facilities he saw, but not all of them. Not even most of them. It seemed as if the slavers had honeycombed the asteroid with tunnels and placed domes all over it.
What could they use them all for? And one towered over the rest. What did they do there?
Branson provided the answer. “Look at this ship floating nearby. It looks as if they’re stripping it. The valuable parts will probably be sold on the black market, and the hull will end up getting melted down. No evidence left.
“They could also use some of the parts to modify the other ships, and sell some of them to people who aren’t concerned with a legal history for their purchase. Sort of like a chop shop on a grand scale.”
“What about the big dome?” Brad asked. “What do they use it for?”
Fields smiled without the least bit of humor. “Prisoners, I suspect. See the big hatches on the outside at surface level? Ones like that are normally used on ships as bay doors for small craft. Those are too close to surface passages for that. I’ll wager they plan on using them to vent the atmosphere if there’s trouble.”
“How do we stop that?”
Branson smiled coldly. “We land people on the surface and weld the hatches closed from the outside. If they can’t open them, they’ll have to go to plan B. See the personnel hatches next to the big ones? Once we send the main strike teams in, we have the welders go in and watch over the prisoners.”
“And where do we send in the main teams?”
The mercenary tapped several locations on the asteroid. “These locks don’t look as well used as the others. See how the surface dust is so heavy on them? Odds are good these lead to less-traveled areas of the base. We pick some that are fairly close to the prison dome, just in case, and send in teams to start interdicting the slavers.”
“I have a few more suggestions,” Fields said. “Have Heart of Vengeance use her Gatlings to put mass driver slugs into the tunnels around the smaller domes. That’ll keep the slavers from getting reinforcements to the big dome for a bit.
“Also, I think you need to get into the larger dome faster. What if they have explosive charges? You’ll want to make sure there aren’t any other self-destruct mechanisms. Get it wrong and hundreds—potentially thousands—of people will die.”
That made Branson nod. “I like the way you think, Captain. The teams can verify where the majority of the prisoners are, too. That makes using mass driver slugs on the other domes a little less risky.”
“But not completely so,” Brad said. “We’ll never be sure where the slaves are when we go in. We can’t possibly do that without having better intelligence.”
“What if someone could tap into all their communications?” Wandry asked. The scientist had come along in case there was a problem with the probes, and had been sitting quietly in the back of the wardroom.
Fields gave her his full attention. “What are you thinking?”
“It should be possible to get taps into the com system. Then we could potentially see everything in the rest of the base. At the very least, we could do something up front to be sure no one knew we had people in the big dome before we’re ready.”
Brad frowned. “How do you do that?”
“See where the dome connects to the rest of the base? Those are power and com junctions right there. If I can get into them on the outside, I can record the data. Once I have enough for a loop, I can overwrite the information going to the security systems. They wouldn’t even know we’d gone in until the main attack gets under way.”
Branson grinned. “Now, that’s what I’m talking about! How long would you need?”
The woman shrugged. “It depends on the level of protective security in the system. Anywhere between five and thirty minutes to get access. Say fifteen minutes of recorded data.”
“So, if we allow for an hour, you think that’s enough time?”
“It should be, unless these people are far more paranoid than I expect.”
“They’re slavers,” Brad said. “Paranoid doesn’t even begin to describe them.”
“That’s not what I mean,” the scientist said with a shake of her head. “How likely do they think it is someone will hack them from right out on the surface? If I jack into their system right under their noses, they’d have to have prepared for insiders doing that all along.”
“I wouldn’t count against that,” he warned. “They might very well worry about someone in their own ranks betraying them.”
“That’s why I gave us half an hour to get in,” the scientist said smugly. “I’m a pro at this kind of thing. Look how fast I got into their encrypted navigation device. Something that they had to worry would fall into the wrong hands.”
Fields inclined his head. “Point taken. Still, that means you’d be in a very hostile environment. People might end up shooting at you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the woman said. “I’d stay out on the surface. If someone comes looking for a fight, I’ll run back to the shuttle like a good little noncombatant.”
That evoked general laughter.
“I think that plan has the greatest possibility of success,” Fields said. “We’ll divide up the landing areas and start making contingency plans. We have another twelve hours to get into position, so I want to get Heart moving in eight.”
“I’m taking the dome,” Brad said, leaving no room for argument. “I’ll have some of the others with me, but I’m in charge of that aspect of the strike.”
No one argued, which was good. If his uncle was alive, it was his responsibility to keep him that way. The final act of this little play was about to get underway.