“I copy,” someone said; it sounded like Doc.
Nathen tucked the comm away and jogged off down the corridor until he reached the lift. Then he kept going past it and took one of the less-used chutes. He opened the hatch with a grind of metal and grabbed the ladder, looking up and down to make sure it wasn't in use. The chute spanned five decks, with corresponding platforms for dismounting. Nathen swung out onto the rungs and started climbing. He'd rather deal with a little exercise than wait for the slow lift. Two levels later, Nathen popped the hatch, and then he was treading on Deck 15.
Nathen turned a corner and found himself on the outermost pathway of the deck. Rounded, blast-resistant windows ran the length of the outer wall, allowing anyone to gaze out on the extensive star shield glistening in locked orbit with the like-named Orbit Angel. Waiting for his backup to arrive, Nathen allowed himself to walk slowly along the window, looking out at the dancing canvas of stars, ships and solar panels.
The battle-group looked oddly tranquil for such a deadly assortment of ships. Maybe that had to do with the fact that this was a waystation, not a port or battlestation. Or a fortress world, like Navpoint. The Vetrus System had practically zero use for the Yew, and the War Hive hadn’t ventured quite this far into the Galaxy yet. Nathen wasn’t even sure they knew it existed, or if they even cared. It made the Orbit Angel a prime location for tired crews to rest, refuel their ships, or just stop by on their way out. It was practically a resort, in comparison to what likely awaited them.
The commander was impressed with the extent to which the HSN had gone to repair and upgrade the Orbit Angel, even if it still looked like a cobbled wreck in places. Nathen noticed some of the walls had been either spot welded or bolted down. The ceiling was cleaner than the walls or floor, which in some places showed signs of wear. Patched pipe work running along the ceiling told Nathen that this part of the station housed the heating system that kept the Orbit Angel and her crew from literally freezing.
“Yo!”
Nathen turned back the way he’d come and saw Doc jogging down the corridor toward him in his black and white mercenary uniform. His sidearm was plainly visible at his side, holstered within easy reach. Nathen waited until Doc reached him, then started slowly walking again.
“Enjoying your stay here, Doc?” asked Nathen. The medic matched pace with his commander and shrugged.
“It’s like a luxury hotel without the luxury, but it’s not bad, I guess. If you complain less, you enjoy more.”
Nathen ran Doc’s words through his head, repeated them under his breath, and grinned.
“Jason Denver,” he chuckled.
Doc nodded. “Correct. I wondered if you’d pick up on that.”
“Well, he is my commanding officer. I’m required at some point to listen to what he says.”
Doc smiled at Nathen’s words. Nathen was glad that his team could remember how to smile. War sometimes grew too taxing on a person, and emotions were often deadened, turning a man into a machine. Nathen mentally shrugged off his morbid thoughts.
“So what's going on, sir?” the medic asked. Nathen focused ahead, counting the numbers above the doors and searching for the right one.
“Just a lead. First one we've had.”
“Spit,” Doc said. “So there really is a leak. Think it’s a mole?”
Nathen looked sideways at his medic. “Someone's sending encrypted messages. If they were innocent they wouldn't be encrypted.”
Doc frowned and looked at the deck. “Good point.”
Nathen sighed in frustration. “There's just something that doesn't make sense.”
Doc pried for an explanation. “What are you thinking?”
“As far as this subterfuge goes, everything makes sense but for the one detail. These transmissions are boosting through Haven Alpha's distance transmitter, but how? Nobody but the ESCs have even been on Haven Alpha.”
After a few seconds, Doc spoke.
“Maybe, Knight, its time to accept the possibility that the traitor is an ESC.”
Nathen stopped walking. Doc took a few more steps before stopping and looking back.
“You can't say it hasn't occurred to you.”
Nathen looked at the floor. “I can't, no.”
Doc walked back to Nathen, sticking his hands in his uniform's pockets.
“Sorry,” he said, genuinely. “It’s a hard fact to face when you can’t trust your own judgment anymore.”
Nathen looked up. “Maybe, but I still…”
Boom.
Nathen and Doc both looked up at the sound of an explosion from somewhere down the hall. Nathen’s arm went instinctively to his sidearm, hidden in the holster under his arm.
“Doc?”
“I heard it.”
“Let’s move.”
Nathen pushed his uniform open and pulled his Denchura free of its holster. Behind him, Doc had already drawn his Sachlar. The two ESC’s moved quickly down the hallway, following the dying echoes of the explosion. Suddenly, Nathen stopped.
“Here. This room here. This is the one.”
Doc eyed the blank door warily. “How can you be sure?”
Nathen went to the door controls. “Because it’s the one I was looking for.”
The commander touched the door controls, but the panel was dark, and unpowered. Nathen nudged the bottom of the door with the toe of his boot, with no response.
“It looks like its contact-controls are offline. Whatever caused the explosion likely disabled the contact controls too. I'll run a manual bypass.” Nathen jerked his head to the side. “Stack up.”
Doc stepped across to the opposite side and waited while Nathen popped the door and hooked his fingertips on the edge. The door resisted, and Nathen planted his feet and hauled, hard, finally wrenching the door back. A large billow of smoke spewed out into the hallway. Nathen and Doc both knelt to one knee to get below the smoke and leveled their gun barrels into the room. Voices inside the smoke cried and coughed harshly as electronics sparked and smoldered. Figures inside milled about in the smoke as the telltale dancing of orange flames reflected off the billowing burnoff. Nathen pulled back out of view of the room and scowled against the stinging in his eyes. When he was sure his aim was clear, he shouted a challenge into the room.
“White Sun: Friend or Foe!?”
A confused and angry voice snapped back from inside the dark room.
“Eh, what!? Who's there?”
Nathen calmly repeated himself. “Private security, armed and dangerous. You have five seconds to identify yourself alive before we identify you dead!”
“I’m the red bomber and I invited my next of kin over for a party. What’s it to you?”
Nathen tried not to groan. “Slide your Guardian I.D. out the door so we don’t have to shoot you. No funny stuff.”
For a moment, the smoke continued to pour out of the door, then a battered leather ID badge skidded out into the hallway. Doc swept his foot out and stopped the thing, pulling it toward him out of view of the doorway. He checked it, then nodded to Nathen. Nathen snapped the safety back on his Denchura and put it back into its holster.
“We’re coming in,” he said, nodding to Doc.
“Be sure you wipe your feet,” came the wheezing answer.
Nathen slowly stepped into the room. The majority of smoke was beginning to clear. The far wall continued to smolder acridly, poisoning the room with burning electronics. Nathen swept two fingers at Doc, drawing a line to the fire. The medic took charge, grabbing the extinguisher from the wall. The next second, Doc squirted off several bursts of foam onto the afflicted areas, smothering the flame. With the room secured from the most apparent danger, Nathen turned to the occupants.
There were three men, all dressed in maintenance uniforms, which were covered in soot and scorches. The maintenance team Sergeant Donal had mentioned. Two were leaning heavily against the far wall, while the third—an older, graying space dog with a hairbrush mustache—continued to sw
at at the air with a flathead wrench. Nathen looked at all three, then turned his attention to the smoldering piece of blackened metal that somewhat resembled a thermal generator.
“I thought your job was to fix these things,” he said.
“Well, that’s what we set out to do,” said the one who had slid his ID out. “Sometimes, though, these things are just ready to go nova on us. On occasion we even get a makeover. Like Jim there, who is leaning against the wall, clutching his face in agony.”
Nathen looked at the man who had what looked like a sulfur burn on his face. It was mostly hidden by his massive, gloved hand, but Nathen could tell that “Jim” was in major pain by the mewling whimpers escaping through his fingers. Nathen motioned to Doc, who tossed the worker’s ID back to its owner before walking over to look at the man’s burns.
The worker who’d so far done the talking caught his ID and turned to Nathen once more. “Daniel Cyren. I’m head of the maintenance division of Orbit Angel.”
Nathen held a hand out. “Thomas Bracken, White Sun. Joint operations.”
Daniel Cyren shook Nathen's hand and then violently coughed into his elbow. When he looked up, he'd collected himself.
“Didn’t mean to come off as rude just now, but having a generator blow up in your face can make a man irritable.”
Nathen crossed his arms and looked at the ruined machine. “These things just explode?”
“No, not often. These older model thermal generators can overload. Usually when it happens, someone’s been messing with it when they shouldn’t be and don’t bother telling the rest of us.”
“You mean sabotage.”
“No, I mean laziness and carelessness. This is all sensitive equipment as it is, but it doesn’t help when the whole system is buggy.”
Nathen nodded at the steaming and foam-dripping wreck. “What was wrong with this one?”
Daniel looked down at the exploded generator and sighed. “It surged out and blew a fuse at the start of the hour. We gotta keep these outer decks heated, because the windows aren't always the best insulated when facing away from the sun. Jim opened the access panel and BOOM! No more generator.”
The head tech’s last words caught Nathen’s ears. “It blew when you opened the panel?”
Daniel blinked at Nathen, some last whiffs of smoke catching him in the eye. “Er, yeah. Like I said, it doesn’t happen very often. Usually we get a chance to…”
Nathen didn’t listen to the rest. He reached down and carefully pushed around some still smoldering ashes. Suddenly, Nathen’s fingers came across something other than burned metal and ashes. Nathen used his fingertips to pull a small piece of charred wiring out of the ruins of the machine. It was short, barely a full two inches, and the ends were sharp and jagged from the explosion. It seemed insignificant, but Nathen recognized it as a key bit of information.
The assistant tech frowned at the piece of wire. “That’s not a power line I recognize.”
“It isn’t,” said Nathen. “It’s a crude tripwire. My guess is it was hooked onto the access panel, and then in turn hooked onto the pin of some sort of small charge.”
Daniel looked over Nathen’s shoulder at the wire. “But… why would anyone do that?”
Nathen tossed the wire back into the ashes. “Probably to eliminate traces of a router.”
The head tech blinked. “A router? Why would anyone put a router in a thermal generator?”
“To hide it. Watch what you mess with on this station. I get the feeling whoever did this is playing for keeps.” Nathen stood up and dusted his hands off. “How bad is he?”
Doc looked up from the injured tech’s swollen face. “He’ll be fine. Flash burn and a few cuts from shrapnel, but nothing deadly. The sulfur gas caused severe surface skin irritation, but it’ll go down in a few hours, even if it hurts like hell. Still, I’d report to the med station. If he doesn't get treatment, eventually it could get worse; as in, blindness.”
The tech moaned and slumped against the wall.
Daniel walked over and helped the man up. “I’ll escort him there. Hell, I doubt we’ll have this generator running anytime soon. Burl, while I take Jim to the med station, I want you to get a team and clean this mess up. And save that wire as evidence.”
Burl grumbled in response as he headed out the door after his boss, leaving Nathen alone with Doc.
“Things are escalating,” said Nathen. “Now people are getting hurt. I get the feeling the next step is finding a body stuffed in the ventilation system with a knife in its back.”
Doc ground his teeth together. “I don’t like it any more than you do. It's the kind of situation where you feel helpless, even though there’s nothing you know you could be doing, or could have done.”
Nathen crossed his arms and tapped a finger against his bicep. “Well, there went our one lead. I should have known whoever we’re chasing would have covered their tracks.”
“Right,” Doc said, dusting soot off his messed white and black uniform. “For all we know the other routers could be blowing up around the station, right now.”
Nathen stopped suddenly.
“Plasmatics,” he said.
Doc didn’t follow right away. “What?”
Nathen held his hand under his chin, thoughtfully. “You said that tech suffered from a sulfur burn. What kind of demolition would cause sulfurous gasses?”
Doc closed his eyes and dug into his memory. “I count seven different types of Human-created explosives that are notorious for sulfur gas outburn. If there’s one in particular then I’d have to pick…” Doc opened his eyes. “Plasma putty.”
Nathen kicked at the ashes with the toe of his boot. “Just what I was thinking. Frag? Too obvious. Fuel cell? Too clean. It can’t be C-8; not this close to the hull.”
“Which pretty much narrows it down to plasmatics. It’s a reach, but it would definitely explain the high level of sulfur and the fast, dirty burn rate.”
Nathen nodded, half listening at the moment. Weaponizing plasma energy was mainly a War Hive thing, but Humans had managed to use the technology for demolition purposes. When combined with years of plastic explosive research, plasma energy became even more deadly. Hence, plasmatic putty. It didn’t take much. Plasma fire burned hot and fast, causing the damage a regular fire would, but in mere seconds. It also tended to only burn the area of origin, so containing the occasional accidental plasma fire wasn’t a serious problem. It fit in perfectly with the mess Nathen was looking at.
“Plasmatic blast cap,” said Nathen, coming to his conclusion. “I’ll bet one would cause this kind of damage. Wire snaps, blast cap explodes, detonates generator. This can only mean the suspect we’re dealing with is all the more resourceful and clever. But at least I know my next stop.”
Doc nodded, knowing just what Nathen was thinking. “The Orbit Angel armory.”
“Where else are you going to find that level of weapon's grade explosives? Let's get moving, before-”
Nathen's comm chimed. Doc blinked at his commander. Nathen sighed, stalled yet again, and clicked his comm unit on after breifly checking the hallway for listeners.
“Knight here.”
“Daytana there,” Phillip Norsehill came back with his best telemarketer impression. “Whether here or there, none can compare. Best prices for five systems; shop Daytana!”
Nathen squinted his eyes shut. “What do you want?”
Phillip cleared his throat. “Sir, have I got a deal for you-”
“I'm cutting this transmission in three... two...”
“Okay, okay!” Phillip insisted, quickly. “Look, I think I found something.”
Nathen pinched the bridge of his nose. “Like what?”
Phillip spoke uncertainly. “Well, I don't want to brag, but I think I found the source of our problems.”
Nathen arched an eyebrow. “Really,” was his first reaction. “How?” was his second.
“I tapped into the station’s main computer.”
“How did the station overseer let you do that? Access is locked from the control room.”
“Eh, there’s a way around that.”
Nathen’s silence matched his blank expression.
“Daytana, are you inside the core?”
“Ehhh, kinda.”
“Is there any atmosphere where you are?”
“Nnnot really.”
Nathen glanced briefly at Doc. “What did you find?”
Phillip responded, smugly. “Why don’t you come find out?”
Nathen sighed and switched the comm. unit off before turning to Doc.
“I want you to get ahold of an officer. Sergeant Donal. He'll help us with getting into the armory.”
Doc nodded. “You’re going to see Daytana?”
“Might as well. He may be overly fond of his own accomplishments, but he’s rarely wrong. If he says he’s found something, he’s found something. I’ll be back in an hour.”
Doc saluted and ducked out the door. “Roger that.”
Nathen exited the damaged room and turned the other way. Things were accelerating, and he needed to catch up.
Chapter 33
In the Orbit Angel’s central core, Nathen floated weightlessly in his zero-G suit, waiting while one of the station’s techs fumbled a keyboard with his thick, gloved hands. The screen in front of him flashed information that was all Greek to Nathen. Phillip, clipped onto a lifeline next to the station tech, watched the man’s every move as he went through files of information. Phillip had already scoured through the super computer mainframe for whatever program was causing the pirated signal.
The Orbit Angel’s most important structures were at the very center of the establishment, protected from hostile fire by virtually the entire station. Power generator, transmitter relays, data banks, and computer mainframe were all compiled around each other. The only things they hadn't included in the design were atmospheric and gravitational generators. Lifelines spider-webbed everywhere, leading to the various crucial sections of the core. Nathen used to be uncomfortable in zero-G, but he didn’t mind it as much as he used to. Nathen recalled several times as a Marine when he’d ask, bribe, or trick another crewmember to do a particular zero-G duty that he didn’t want to perform because of the sick feeling he’d have.
Prime Alpha (Planetary Powers Book 1) Page 40