Getting out of the remains of his clothes was easy, struggling against the pain to slip on the uniform was a chore but he managed. He pulled his sabre out next, activated it to make sure it had not been tampered with, then deactivated it and slipped it into its designated pocket of his returned jacket. He felt the lump in the inner pocket and checked it. The crystal feline was still there where he’d put it before leaving the Tempest.
He closed the pocket up and checked the bag’s side pouch to confirm that Harmool had actually dropped the data chip in, and he found it there. He didn’t trust the man at all. Whether or not it actually contained the information he claimed was on it, there was no way to know until he could access it with a reader.
As he checked the time, he knew that, in the end, it really didn’t matter if that information was there or not. He’d gotten what he’d come for. He moved his tongue against a certain tooth, pushed hard on it until he heard a crack, then bit down hard until he heard a crunch.
He reached in and tugged out the fake tooth. Not everything he smuggled always needed to be stored in a cargo hold. At this time, the tooth held a recording device that contained a complete record of everything that had happened, or had been said to him, since the moment he’d walked into Jaq’s bar on Arkon.
He had the full confessions of both Iodocus, or Arthureal if that part of the story were actually true, and of Harmool. Now, all he had to do was transmit it to the one person who could use it to put an end to this. He carefully placed the tooth in the same pouch with Harmool’s data chip and sealed it.
At the appointed time, he slipped out of his cell with the bag slung over his shoulder, closed the door, and retrieved the lone torch. An old wooden door was cut into the stone wall, and it opened easily. He stepped inside the passage beyond and closed that door behind him. He lost track of time as he slowly made his way through the dark, damp passage until he came upon a metal door.
He opened it cautiously and found himself looking out at a ship yard, just as Harmool had promised, with no one in sight at this late hour of the night. He extinguished the torch, closed the metal door so as not to give away his manner of escape, and walked out onto the tarmac. There were only six small ships on the ground, the Talon being the closest to him.
It was probably carrying a tracking device, and he should steal one of the other five if he truly wanted to get away. But that had never been part of his plan, hatched on his last night on the Tempest while Rhea slept in his arms. No, he needed to be tracked, as much as they needed to track him. So he walked straight to the Talon, an ugly looking half-crescent shaped ship, boarded her, and immediately took off.
“Flight control to Talon, we do not show authorization for take-off,” a voice called over the speaker. “Identify yourself at once!”
Well, I suppose it was too much to ask Harmool to arrange to have this flight pre-cleared, he thought silently. He ignored the follow-up call for identification and punched the engine to full-throttle before they could decide to open fire on him.
He kept expecting to be shot at by someone, but no such fire was directed at him. It could be pure luck, he supposed, or perhaps Harmool had arranged for the right people to be looking the other way at the right time. But he was almost certain that he was being allowed to escape so the order to stand down had probably gone out before he’d even left his cell.
As he broke free of Salacia’s gravitational well, the way to Sanctuary—along with most of the known galaxy—lay directly behind him. He had no intention of going that way and leading them to her. Where he was actually leading them to was another discovery he’d kept to himself, though for not nearly as long as he’d kept Sanctuary a secret.
He only hoped they’d send most of their fleet after him. He wasn’t much for praying in general but this time he was praying. He was praying they’d come after him with every ship they could muster.
* * * * *
“Well, Harmool?” Iodocus said as he walked into Flight Control.
“The Talon is away and has cleared orbit, sire,” Harmool reported. “Just like we wanted.”
“And the tracking device?”
“We are receiving its signal loud and clear. We’ll give him a comfortable head start, wait until he is beyond the Talon’s sensor range but not our ships’ and then begin pursuit. He’ll lead us straight to her, sire, just as we planned.”
“Good,” Iodocus replied. “I want you back at Taygeta with this little matter concluded before the special session is gaveled in. I don’t want Napat to miss his appointment with the hangman.”
“I’ll be there, sire,” Harmool promised, looking down at the communications officer. “Inform my ship to be ready for departure in five minutes and send word to the fleet to be ready to break orbit in three hours.”
“Are you sure he wasn’t bluffing about that base?” Iodocus asked.
“It’s probably some relic from the forgotten times,” Harmool replied. “Even if it’s operational, how could it possibly have the capability to threaten our modern ships? When we show up with as many ships as we’re bringing, he won’t dare try to bluff his way out. He’ll see he’s outgunned and hand over the Princess without a fight. He can’t even use the Talon against us. We disabled the weapons platform on the ship before he stole it.”
“You seem to have everything well in hand, Harmool,” Iodocus replied, pleased. “I won’t detain you any longer. Good hunting!”
“Thank you, sire,” he replied and left the room. He quickly made his way out to the tarmac and boarded his shuttle for a nice, leisurely fifteen minute ride up to orbit where the Fleet’s flagship, a heavy cruiser, awaited his arrival. Once on board, he went directly to the bridge.
“Admiral, is the fleet ready?”
“Yes, sir, we will depart with sixteen ships and be joined en route tomorrow but at least another dozen or so.”
“Splendid,” Harmool replied. “That should be more than enough to deal with this matter. I do not want us following him too closely. If he detects us, he’ll break away, and we’ll never recover the Princess.”
“Not to worry, sir,” the Admiral replied easily. “We will not go to his full speed after we break orbit for at least two hours. That should put him at his destination roughly six hours before we arrive. If we need to close that gap for any reason, we have plenty of speed from which to draw on so that we can arrive much sooner.”
“Very good, Admiral, I will be going to my quarters now. Let me know when we get underway and keep me apprised on a regular basis.”
“Of course, sir,” the Admiral replied smartly as Harmool left the bridge.
* * * * *
“What is it, Corrina?” Ellaneiri asked as he aide entered his office.
“I wish I knew,” she replied in confusion. “We are receiving reports…that make no sense to me.”
“What is going on?”
“A Bata’van fleet has just departed Taygeta bound for Salacia,” she replied.
“Is Napat mad?” Ellaneiri erupted. “The Senate leadership won’t wait for the Senate to convene to hang him from the nearest tree if he attacks Salacia now.”
“Salacia has launched a fleet of its own,” she continued. “It will include nearly every warship Salacia has, approximately thirty to thirty-five ships.”
“To meet the Bata’van fleet?”
“No, sir, the Salacians are heading in the opposite direction in pursuit of a small one-man scout ship,” she replied. “According to our spy ship that is trailing the fleet, they aren’t making any attempt to catch it either. They seem content to follow it about a quarter of a day behind.”
“Sending three dozen ships after a lone scout seems a bit of overkill,” Ellaneiri remarked. “Where is this scout ship going?”
“As far as our ship can determine it is simply heading out into unexplored space.”
“What in the seventh hell is going on out there?”
“I would almost suspect Dwyn is in that scout ship if they we
re actually trying to catch it,” she offered. “We did get that report that they’d captured him at Arkon and brought him to Salacia. But if it was him escaping, surely they’d run him down sooner rather than later?”
“In normal times you’d be right,” Ellaneiri remarked. “But these have been anything but normal times.”
Another aide entered the room and handed her a note.
“No, they certainly are not, sir,” she said when she looked up.
“Do I want to know?”
“We’re receiving a transmission from the Tempest,” she replied.
“Dwyn’s ship?”
“The same. A man named Lir Fiachra is in command. He’s requested asylum for both himself and the Princess Rhiannon and asks that you come to the aid of Galen Dwyn and Chancellor Napat. They will arrive here at Caletos in five hours.”
The entire galaxy has collectively gone mad, he thought as he leaned back in his chair.
“Signal the Tempest that asylum is granted for them both,” he ordered. “As soon as that ship lands, I want both of them brought to me. Maybe they can tell me what in the fourth hell is going on.”
TWENTY-ONE
Despite all the millennia of Hominid space travel, there were still massive areas of unexplored space easily within reach. What these mysterious systems held within was anyone’s guess. But for those that practiced the smuggling trade, these areas first and foremost provided a safe haven to hide in when the heat was on. Most smugglers seldom looked around these systems, anxious to be on their way at the earliest possible moment.
Galen occasionally took the time to explore though, an artifact of being a pupil of Lir Fiachra. It was during one such recent exploration, while letting his pursuers search for him in vain three systems away, that he came upon something he’d once thought was just an old man’s fantasy.
He’d found one of the Armageddon Spheres.
It orbited a dying star, swollen and red, that no one had even bothered to name. On the star charts, it was merely listed as UE-19571201. The space-black sphere had no running lights, nor did any interior lights show through viewports. There were no viewports anywhere on the sphere for the light to escape out through. Whatever material it was constructed from, it did not show up on any scans.
Galen had only spotted the thing by mere chance, seeing a large, dark shape transiting the dull red face of the star behind it.
He had been on his way to pick up Fiachra and surprise him with the find, after first filing a claim on the system—and officially naming the star, Fiachra—with the Alliance Bureau of Star System Management & Development on Taygeta, of course, when the Nammu job had landed in his lap.
He’d just have to hope Lir would forgive him for what he was about to do with the relic.
The Talon jumped into the system three days after he’d ‘escaped’ from Salacia. He set the ship’s automatics to bring it in to dock with the device. While the ship glided in, he finally pulled the data chip Harmool had provided and plugged it into the reader.
It was, unsurprisingly, blank.
“Harmool, you are a real piece of work,” he muttered as he shook his head. At least now, he had confirmation that he couldn’t trust the man, despite his ‘story’ back in the pit. There had been a moment back there, enough of the story making sense, when he wondered if he’d misjudged the man.
That doubt no longer existed.
Galen was certain now that the hundred million bar chip he’d snapped in half was just as empty of content. He tossed the bogus evidence chip back into the bag and extracted the tooth recorder. His reader had a special slot for the device, once pried free of the outer enamel shell, and he slipped it in and download its contents.
He checked his long-range scans again. So far, there was no sign of another ship. But he figured pursuit was hanging back just outside the scout ship’s range. That gave him roughly five to six hours to get ready before they did arrive.
Time enough to prep the device, send off a final message and finish what he’d set out to accomplish when he boarded the shuttle on Dimor. He rummaged around the sleeping compartment of the Talon, found a basic coverall in a compartment, and stripped off the Salacian uniform. The coverall was tan and plain. More importantly to him, it was free of any Salacian insignia. He grabbed a light meal and was back in the pilot’s seat when the Talon glided in slowly to dock with the sphere.
The scout’s universal docking collar magnetically sealed itself around the sphere’s only visible hatch. When he’d boarded the sphere the last time, it had a breathable atmosphere and was warm enough for him to explore it without needing a spacesuit, though he could find no clue of anyone having been in or near the thing for hundreds if not thousands of cycles. Possibly, be began to suspect, it might have even been much, much longer.
Light seemed to emanate from the walls and ceilings, though he could not discern how this was done. Nor could he find a crew compartment or even an engine to move the thing about, much less the power source that kept its systems up and running.
All he could access was a passage that ran from the hatch to a control pod with one chair. There were only a few controls and panels, which lit up when he sat in the chair and immediately shut off as soon as he stood back up. The wall in front of the chair became a viewscreen of the area outside, with a scan overlay showing the location of every object larger than a child’s ball within the system, including at that time, the Tempest keeping station nearby.
He couldn’t read the strange alien markings under the various buttons and displays, but with a little work, and some trial and error, he figured out what each one’s function was.
Cassandra had located the device to the rear—pointed directed at the dying star—that was obviously a power collector. It was drawing in a very small amount of energy from the star to keep the sphere at minimal operation.
Only one button had a cover on it. That one had to be the one that set off the doomsday weapon, requiring the extra level of protection against an accidental triggering of the device. That one he’d kept his hand far away from during his first visit.
Now securely docked with the sphere, Galen collected the only items he would want or need when he boarded. His sabre, the crystal from his jacket pocket, and his reader. He secured the crystal in the coverall’s lone pocket. He left the Talon running at full power with all of her running lights on. He wanted to make sure the Salacians could find him when they finally arrived.
The sphere was pleasantly warm and comfortable when he entered, just as it had been lunes ago when he’d first encountered it. He made his way into the control pod and took the lone seat. Once the panels and screens had activated, he checked the sphere’s status, then adjusted the rear intake to begin drawing more power from the star gradually, so as not to alarm the approaching ships.
He spent some time accessing the sphere’s communications, rigging up a way to download the data from his reader so that he could transmit it. Adjusting the system to the frequencies he’d need to access proved a more difficult task than he’d anticipated, but, eventually, he had it set it up the way he wanted.
An alarm sounded suddenly. Looking up at the overlay, he spotted the Salacian fleet jumping in at the edge of the system, just beyond the orbit of the third and final dead planet. They’d be here in an hour.
He dialed in the frequencies he wanted his messages transmitted on and the coordinates they were to be sent to. Sanctuary, Caletos, Axaltier, Y’pslandi and Taygeta. Encrypted and sent on a tight directional beam, the incoming fleet would likely not be able to intercept them. Even if they did, there wouldn’t be enough time for them to break the encryption.
Galen drew in a deep breath, opened the channels, and dictated his messages.
TWENTY-TWO
“They’re here, sir.”
“Show them in,” Ellaneiri replied.
Two people, an older man and a younger woman were led in by two members of his security team.
“Please be seated,”
he said, then waved the two younger men out of the room. “That will be all, thank you.”
“I know who you are, Princess Rhiannon,” he began as the man exited the room. “And you are?”
“Lir Fiachra, sir,” Lir replied. “Professor of Ancient History and Mythology at Belisama.”
“And the mentor of one Galen Dwyn, I am told,” Ellaneiri added.
“That is true, yes.”
“Good,” he replied. “Then I trust the two of you can tell me what in the twelve hells is going on? You can start, your Highness, by telling me what that lunatic father of yours thinks he’s doing? This nonsense with Napat? Kidnapping my daughter and several others…”
“Including me, sir,” Rhiannon said evenly.
“Yes, including you,” Ellaneiri agreed, leaning forward. “Tell me now, child, everything you know about your father’s plans and what this mercenary friend of yours, this Dwyn, is up to? We have reason to believe he deliberately allowed himself to be captured by your father’s forces on Arkon. Why would he do such a thing?”
The princess drew a shaky breath before regaining her royal composure.
“He didn’t tell us what he was planning to do before he left,” she answered. “He said he was going to find a ship that we could use to try to reach Taygeta without being spotted. The next thing we knew, he’d been captured and had ordered the AI on his ship to get us out of the system.”
“Could it be he went to Salacia to arrange to sell you out?” Ellaneiri asked.
“Galen would never do something like that,” she snapped, anger flashing in her green eyes.
Galen! Ellaneiri considered the response and the heat behind it and knew the whole story in an instant. That put an entirely different spin on the matter, especially if the feelings she obviously had for the mercenary were reciprocated.
“Sir,” Lir stepped in, placing a reassuring hand on hers. “I’ve known Galen since he was a boy. A betrayal such as that which you are suggesting is simply not something he is capable of.”
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