Race to Terra (Book 10 of The Empire of Bones Saga)

by Terry Mixon

  “What if they get suspicious?”

  He smiled at her. “What are they going to think? That we’re needing a cargo of drones to pull a scam on the Lords? No. Drones in that quantity are unusual, but not exactly illegal or suspicious. We’ll tell them they’re for crop monitoring on one of the less inhabited worlds or something like that.”

  She nodded. “And once we have them, how do we get Fielding’s guards out of the ship without raising some kind of alarm? They monitor who goes in and out of the cargo bays. If we just let them walk out, one of them might feel inclined to make trouble. We have to leave them unmonitored while we leave the system. If they decide to stick a knife in our backs, we can’t stop them.”

  “Olivia gave them the same story about the bombs in their heads as she did Fielding. They think that if they mention us to anyone, or even hint at the mission, their heads will pop off.”

  That made her chuckle. “She plays rough. Make a note not to get on her bad side.”

  “Already done. That should keep them quiet for a long time. Probably the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, we get to Terra and get what we came for.”

  “What about getting back?” she asked. “I’ve heard lots of plans for getting to Terra, but not one about the trip back to Avalon. I realize Mertz… Jared has a fleet sneaking around to meet us, but there’s a war on, even if the people here don’t know it yet.

  “And that doesn’t even count the System Lord at Terra and its defenses. Once we walk into its reach, it might not exactly be inclined to let us leave again. If it decides to kill us, we don’t exactly have the forces on hand to stop it. If it gets word out, we’ll have a fight we can’t win, even if we do make it out and head for Avalon at full speed.”

  “If Kelsey One can get into Terra through a multi-flip point or a far flip point, we can leave the same way. Hopefully without letting the System Lord know about it. If not, we improvise.”

  They’d come up to a table with several men and women checking things on computer screens as merchants bargained. One of the men gestured for them to step up. “Welcome to Calico Station. You selling, buying, or transshipping?”

  “Buying,” Sean said. “We need six crates of reconnaissance drones for detailed mapping of a planetary surface. I think there are about a thousand per crate. It needs to be six crates so we can drop them in six areas.”

  The man blinked. “That’s a lot of drones. I don’t even have to check to know we don’t have anything like that on the station. I can probably find enough on the planet, but it’ll take a while to get them up here and consolidated. What do you need so many drones for?”

  “Crop and wildlife management on one of the less inhabited worlds,” Kelsey said, as casually as she could. “They’ve got a problem with a nonindigenous species eating the food.”

  The man considered that for a moment. “Huh. Never heard of anything like that. Well, let me see if I can locate something that’ll work for you. If you could give me a few minutes, I’ll wave you back over when I’m done.”

  They stepped away and watched the crowd as the man worked. The merchants were a different kind of people than Kelsey was used to. As a princess, she’d dealt mostly with people in the high civil government. Once she’d gone of the expedition, she’d worked almost exclusively with Fleet personnel and marines.

  The merchants were a boisterous, pushy lot. In a way, they acted a bit like strutting birds, showing off their ruffles to the other birds. In this case, the other merchants. She wasn’t quite sure why they were doing it, but it was entertaining.

  It also made it easy to spot an outsider in the group. Like oh, say, themselves.

  A tall, gaunt man with the look of a used grav car salesman came over to them. “Welcome to Calico Station. Is this your first time here? I pass through quite often and don’t recognize you.”

  The man’s voice had a slick, kind of oily tone. When he extended his hand to them, Kelsey found it unpleasantly moist.

  She smiled brightly as she slid the soiled appendage behind her and wiped it on her pants. “First time,” she confirmed. “How did you know?”

  “I have an eye for that sort of thing,” the man confided in her. “I can always spot the new people. What ship are you with?”

  “I’m sorry, but I didn’t catch your name,” Sean said. “I’m Sean and this is Kelsey.”

  “Daniel Goldman, captain of Grey Doom,” the man said, his smile widening. “You probably saw her on the way in. She’s the fastest packet in the sector.”

  Kelsey tried not to frown as she wondered what a packet was. Her implant database wasn’t helping.

  Sean, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what the man meant. “So, you specialize in getting small, high-value cargos from place to place in the shortest time.”

  “And with the fewest… entanglements,” the man smugly confirmed.

  In other words, he was a smuggler. Interesting, but it made her wonder why the man was engaging them. Didn’t he have some illegal cargo to be slipping past customs?

  “And that brings me back around to you,” the man said. “To the best of my very good memory, you’ve never been here before. What ship did you say you were with again?”

  Kelsey saw that Sean wasn’t going to have a good answer, but she didn’t either. Then she spotted a solution to their problem: a pair of security officers that had just come into the bay.

  Normally, she’d have been terrified they were going to spot her or Sean, but in this one particular case, they’re timely arrival had given them an out to the awkward situation.

  “Don’t look now, Captain Goldman, but I think someone is looking for you,” she said in a low voice, looking pointedly at the security officers.

  To her amusement, the new arrivals actually did seem interested in the smuggler. One of them nudged the other, and they both altered course toward Goldman.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I forgot another pressing engagement,” the smuggler said. “I’m sure we’ll meet again at some point. Good day.”

  Goldman adroitly moved into the crowd of merchants, and the security men split up to follow him from different directions, trying to get an angle on cornering him, no doubt.

  “I never thought I’d be happy to see Rebel Empire security,” Sean said. “I couldn’t very well tell him we were in a Fleet destroyer.”

  “No, and with any luck at all, we’ll be loaded up and gone before he gets back around to looking for us,” she said. “The clerk is waving. He has a smile, so I think he found us something that will get him a good commission. Let’s go see how fast we can get the drones up here and be on our way.”

  Talbot waited until the marines had Theo 309 in his chair before he sat on the other side of the table. “This must be awkward,” he commiserated. “Having someone outside the Singularity gain access to all that data. Puts you in something of a bind when it comes to dodging my questions.”

  The other man smiled wanly. “It is inconvenient, but I see no reason to make this any easier for you. We all have our duties to perform.”

  “And yours revolve around Operation Brutus.”

  The prisoner froze for just a moment and then smiled. “I’m sorry. What’s that?”

  Talbot grinned. “That would be the operation you’re working with the Clans. You know, the one where you help them get set up to attack the Empire and then use the distraction to try and roll it over and beat them both. Makes me wonder if you have something in their ships as a Trojan horse to make them easy to take out when the time comes.

  “Anyway, it looks like they got started a few decades ahead of schedule. That has to suck. Your people don’t even know it’s happening yet, I bet. You’re not ready to attack, but now you have no choice, or your secret weapon is gone forever.”

  Theo 309 licked his lips. “You’ve gotten far more access to that computer than I would have wished, and in far too quick a fashion. Let me remind you that you initiated the hostilities with the Clans. My hands are clean, and I
still consider myself to be a diplomatic envoy from my nation. One you must eventually release me or risk war with my people.”

  Talbot leaned back in his chair. “I’ve been doing some reading on the relations between our people. It seems like we’ve been at war for far longer than either of us has been alive. Oh, I’ll admit that’s mostly low-level conflict at the border, but it’s never really died down, has it?

  “Further, as you’ve probably already guessed since you’re a smart man, the person that attacked the Clans was a prisoner of ours that escaped. It won’t make a difference in the end, I suppose, but I want to be clear that we did not attack your people or your allies in this mess. We simply defended ourselves when we had no choice. Our leaders asked to talk before the Clans started shooting.”

  The Singularity envoy chuckled. “Oh, what a complicated web of deceit diplomacy is. Everyone pretends innocence but has a well-honed knife just out of sight. There’s no way to prove that. I presume you are claiming membership in the resistance.”

  The man’s smile widened. “I have heard of them, you see. Oh, they keep their heads down and make trouble when they can, but we also have people inside the Empire to be certain of our own security. Your superiors will be very displeased when they discover you’ve started this conflict.”

  Talbot pursed his lips. “But did we? I suspect not, at least not when one really gets down to the truth. Tell me, when the AIs took over the Empire, why didn’t they also conquer the Singularity? They had to have had the strength, and they didn’t give squat about the people they enslaved and killed. Why stop at your border?”

  “Perhaps I can ask one if we ever have tea.”

  Talbot nodded, letting the idea that had been simmering in his head percolate up to the top. “I wonder if it really an accident that the Master AI went rogue. Manipulating someone—or something—else to fight your enemies seems exactly like a course of action that the Singularity would approve of.”

  The man’s smile faltered just the least little bit before becoming noticeably brighter. “You do have quite the imagination! The only problem with it is that my people are not bloody-handed monsters. When you get right down to it, we’re not that different than you and your people. We sprang from the same home world, after all.”

  Talbot tsked softly. “You talk a good game, but we both know that your people are each engineered for the role you play in society. Your DNA, while it might have many things in common with humanity, was designed and engineered from the ground up.

  “And you spoke of your people, not your leaders. That’s a specific caste, is it not? The tattoos you sport mark you as one of them. Not a worker but a leader.

  “As one leader to another, you can tell me the truth. The Singularity and the Empire were at war, and this was a ploy. Perhaps one that went far more wrong than your ancestors had intended, I’m willing to grant, but the Singularity or its agents manipulated the Master AI and turned it against its creators.”

  Talbot smiled coldly when he saw just a hint of perspiration on the other man’s forehead. He was onto something.

  “What went wrong? Did the part of the code you put in about sticking to the Imperial borders work, but the part where they were supposed to turn control over to you failed? Did the general military fighting you wanted turn into virtual genocide? That’s bad, and now you’re stuck fighting the computers you helped suborn to get what you really want: control of all humanity.”

  “We’re done here,” Theo 309 said, his voice a little hoarse. “I want to return to my quarters.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Talbot said, rising slowly. “We’ll discuss this in more detail later. You’re not going anywhere for a very long time.”

  32

  Jared watched Olivia give the four guards their last pep talk and send them on their way with a large amount of money and warnings about ever mentioning anything about meeting them to anyone. He was pretty sure she used the words “explosive revelation” at least once.

  Once the cutter left to take the guards to the orbital station, where they were supposed to catch other ships and disperse, he tried to convince himself that it was all going to work out. Somehow, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong.

  “Relax,” Olivia said as she stepped over to him. “They won’t tell a soul, especially now. They’re worried that Fielding will be after them the moment he gets loose, and they want to be as far away from him as they can get. They’re focused on running for their lives for the moment.”

  “And when they get somewhere they feel safe? They’ll eventually do or say something that makes them suspect the bombs aren’t active. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “We can only control what we can,” she admitted. “We need to get to Terra, get what we need, and get back out again. Frankly, the Clans and the AIs are far bigger threats than the guards.”

  “Let’s just hope that Kelsey and Sean get things worked out quickly and we can be on our way. We’ll make it into Terra before word of the Clans reaches this area, but we might not be clear if we take too much time getting the override.”

  His implants pinged with an incoming message from the bridge. Kelsey’s cutter was on the way back, ETA fifteen minutes.

  Jared accessed the destroyer’s scanners and was pleased to see that the cutter was moving sedately rather than rushing back to the ship. That probably meant no one was chasing them.

  “Kelsey and Sean are inbound,” he said. “We should wait for them.”

  Right on schedule, the cutter docked. Kelsey and Sean came out, looking relaxed.

  “Everything go okay?” Jared asked.

  “We had a few bumps,” Kelsey admitted, “but we got the drones and didn’t tip anyone off that we were any different than the rest of the merchants. The drones will be here in about an hour. We had to pay significantly more than they’d normally be worth, but it’s not my money.”

  “Excellent. The guards are on their way to the station. The marines will hold them in the cutter until we’re ready to leave orbit. Once they turn them loose, they’ll come back to this ship, and we’ll boost for the flip point.

  “The next system is empty of human habitation, so we’ll make a quick crossing and get to the last populated system before the buffer around Terra. Then we’ll do the same with Fielding.”

  “I think we should be more careful with Fielding,” Sean said. “If anyone is going to betray us, it’ll be him.”

  Olivia smiled. “Rest assured that I have a plan. We’ll release him as we agreed, but I intend to see that he’s unconscious for as long as possible and then locked into his cutter on a timer.”

  “He’ll be pissed,” Sean said with a grin. “Probably worse than he would’ve already been.”

  The four of them adjourned for lunch and returned to the cargo hold to oversee the unloading and inspection of the crates. Thankfully, they were outwardly very similar to the ones that had contained the drones with the Omega Plague.

  The delivery went smoothly enough, and in short order Jared was back on the bridge and Athena was on her way out of the system.

  “Admiral, there’s a ship trailing us,” Commander Hall said from the helm console. “He’s staying way back, but he’s heading for the same flip point.”

  He frowned. “Is it a warship?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe a message courier or something made to carry smaller amounts of cargo quickly.”

  “It’s a fast packet,” Kelsey said with a sigh. “We ran into a smuggler on the station that was curious about us and our ship. He ran off when security showed up looking for him, but I’ll bet anything that’s him.”

  “Do you think he’ll cause us any trouble?” Sean asked. “Or is this him satisfying his curiosity while making a hasty retreat from Imperial entanglements?”

  Jared had to smile at that, even though this Kelsey wouldn’t get the old Terran movie reference. His Kelsey had made him watch a space adventure where a smuggler very much wanted to
avoid that very thing. From the gleam in his eye, Sean had made the reference intentionally.

  “Who knows?” Kelsey asked with a shrug, the interplay going over her head. “He’s a criminal, so there’s no telling what he’ll do.”

  “Make transition as if we haven’t noticed him,” Jared ordered. “Then pull back from the flip point, and we’ll say hello when he pops out.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hall said.

  A few hours later, they transitioned right on schedule, with the other ship following at the same rate of speed as earlier. They had to wait for two hours for the other ship to flip, and by that time, they were powered down and silent.

  Their apparent absence sparked a reaction from the smuggler. He boosted speed to well above what even Athena could manage and raced toward the next flip point on a course that took him around in an unexpected arc. Perhaps that was to avoid running headlong into an ambush.

  Jared was happy to let him rabbit away. He wasn’t looking for a fight.

  They’d already launched a stealthed probe toward the other flip point, so they’d know when he made transit. They’d follow at a slower pace and steer clear of his scanners. It would put them a little behind schedule, but it wasn’t as if they were going to blow up this time.

  With any luck, the smuggler would give up on his curiosity and move into the next system. Hell, even if he were curious still, he’d do that. It was much less likely that anyone would shoot at him in an occupied system, after all.

  “Let’s let him build up some more distance, Commander Hall, then half speed. Move up only enough to keep us off his scanners. Let’s assume he’s got good ones.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  With that, he leaned back in his seat and waited. One more occupied system and they’d be to Terra. It felt like they’d been on the way to it forever, but the journey was just about over. Then the real fight would begin.

  Kelsey watched Sara Gatewood wake up abruptly as soon as Sommerville turned the somatic stimulator off. The woman was in a modern medical center, lying on a bed, but fully clothed as she’d been when they’d taken her down.