by Ryk Brown
“Most impressive,” she repeated as she removed the chip and placed it in her ident card wallet, which went into the pocket of her long, flowing overcoat.
“Thank you. You are too kind.”
“I will be sure to commit the details to memory before we arrive on Ancot,” she promised. “You know, you would have made an excellent Karuzari, Mister Dumar,” she added.
“Too dangerous a line of work for my tastes, I’m afraid.”
“Yet here you are, in equal danger,” Jalea added.
“Perhaps,” Dumar admitted. “A safe journey to you, Miss Devonshire,” he added with a wry smile.
“To us all, Mister Dumar,” Jalea answered as she turned and headed for the shuttle.
Dumar watched Jalea exit. It was ironic that only a few weeks ago, he not only would have killed her on the spot without hesitation, but he would have been greatly honored for doing so.
Having confirmed Tug’s location, Dumar made a discrete withdrawal from his vantage point, making his way back toward the front of the hangar bay. After a few moments, he was through the starboard hatch and was making his way down the corridor. He followed it around to the front of the main hangar bay, where the center hatchway leading into the bay was usually secured for security reasons and was rarely used. Fortunately, there were no guards in the short section of corridor that led from the starboard side of the hangar bay to the center corridor where the ramps were located. As soon as he turned the corner and was out of sight of the guards, he stepped quickly through an open hatch and into a darkened compartment. From there, tucked discretely behind a counter, he would be able to see when Tug rounded the same corner on his way to the bridge. Satisfied with his position, he settled in to wait.
* * *
Tug stepped away from the shuttles as their boarding ramps retracted and the warning lights on their undersides began to flash. The first shuttle rolled out into the over-sized center transfer airlock, pulling to its left to make room for the second shuttle following behind it. Tug watched as the second shuttle pulled in carefully to the right of the first and pulled to a stop. No sooner had it done so than the massive airlock door began to lower into its closed position.
After several days of repeated drills, Tug was satisfied that the volunteers were as convincing as Takaran soldiers as he could make them. At this point, he felt they would benefit more by a short break before their mission began than by continued practice. Soon enough they would receive their launch orders and their dangerous masquerade would begin.
As he stepped through the starboard hatch from the main hangar bay to the starboard corridor, he couldn’t help but worry. However, he felt confident that they would fool the idiots at the garrison. A posting at the Ancot garrison in Savoy was not exactly a prestigious assignment for any noble. Hence, it was reasonable to assume that the officer in charge of the garrison would not be the most efficient commander in the empire. Additionally, Jalea’s business suit was tight enough and sufficiently revealing in all the right places as to adequately distract the officer in charge at the spaceport on Ancot. Jalea had always been quite good at utilizing her charms in such a manner. It was one of the reasons she was such an effective field operative. Unfortunately, it also made her a dangerous ally, and Tug had come close to being cut by that double-edged sword on more than one occasion.
Tug turned the corner from the starboard corridor into the short passageway that led inward to the main central corridor. It was at that moment that he silently cursed himself for letting his own thoughts distract him to the extent that he hadn’t noticed the movement behind him until it was too late; there was already a weapon pressing against his right flank.
“Step into the next compartment, Mister Tugwell… and do not make a sound,” Dumar whispered from behind.
* * *
Jessica continued examining the sensor logs from the series of recon jumps the Aurora had nearly completed. So far, the interplanetary traffic within the system had been just as Ensign Willard had expected, all within the orbit of the Savoy system’s most distant planet, Deikon. As he had indicated, it was a super-massive gas giant that would easily hide their jump flash upon arrival in the system.
Jessica looked at her watch again. She had about fifteen minutes until the Aurora reached her parking spot at one of Deikon’s gravity points, and although there was not really much for her to do on the bridge when they did arrive, she still felt that she should be there, especially since Tug was going to be making a radio call to the garrison on Ancot.
Jessica tapped her comm-set to make a call. “Dumar, Nash.” She waited a moment but got no response. “Dumar, Nash. Do you copy?”
One of the technicians noticed Jessica checking her watch for the third time in just as many minutes. “Worried about the mission, sir?”
“Hell no,” Jessica responded without hesitation. “I just want my sandwich.”
Her response was not one of bravado at all. In fact, she was not worried. She had been born into a large family filled with sons, eight of them in fact. She had been the only daughter, and the youngest of them all. They had lived in the everglades along the coast of the Floridian peninsula. As a child, it seemed that not a day had gone by that one of her brothers hadn’t come home with some kind of injury. She had always been surprised that her mother hadn’t worried more about what her brothers were up to that always seemed to result in injury. She remembered her mother once saying that if the day ever came that none of her boys came home injured, that would be the day that she would start to worry. ‘Worrying’ was simply something that a ‘Nash’ did not do.
Patience was also something that didn’t come naturally to a Nash; at least not to Jessica. “Where the hell is that guy?” she mumbled as she looked at her watch a fourth time. She leaned forward and logged onto the workstation in front of her. As soon as she was online, she called up the crew tracking interface and requested the location of Travon Dumar. Much to her surprise, the system showed him not in the galley, but in one of the pilot’s ready rooms—the very same room where Doctor Chen had nearly died during the attempt to capture the Aurora by the command staff of the Yamaro. “What the hell?” She noticed someone else in the room with Dumar and tapped on the other person’s icon to display their identity. It was Tug… She suddenly had a bad feeling.
Jessica quickly logged out and rose to leave. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she announced on her way out.
“What do we do if we discover something in the scans?” the technician asked.
“That’s what comm-sets are for,” she answered as she stepped quickly through the hatchway.
* * *
Travon Dumar closed the hatch behind him, keeping his weapon trained on Tug the entire time.
“What is this about?” Tug asked. “Where did you get that weapon?”
“Security aboard this ship is not as tight as everyone seems to believe,” Dumar explained as he relieved Tug of his sidearm. “But that is not germane to the matter at hand.”
Tug circled to his right, maintaining his distance from Dumar as the man with the weapon moved to Tug’s left, deeper into the dimly lit compartment. “What matter might that be?” Tug asked, trying to buy time. Sooner or later, someone would notice than one or both of them were not where they were supposed to be. If he could survive until then, he had a chance. He considered attacking the man, but Dumar was armed, and his movements spoke of considerably more training than his original resume had revealed.
“The matter of your true identity,” Dumar explained.
“My true identity?” Tug repeated. “You mean the one that I announced to the entire population of Darvano? That is hardly a secret any longer.”
“Remove your shirt,” Dumar ordered.
“My shirt?” Tug asked, confused.
“Your shirt,” Dumar repeated, “remove it, slowly if you please.”
“I possess no other weapons, I assure you.”
“Many years ago,” Dumar began, gestu
ring for Tug to do as he asked, “there was a training flight. The lead pilot made an abrupt course change directly in front of his wingman. The two ships collided and both pilots had to eject.”
“I’m afraid you have mistaken me for someone else,” Tug said. He did not know the identity of this man, this Travon Dumar. Until he did, he dared not reveal anything more about his own past than necessary.
“It was a reckless, irresponsible maneuver on the lead pilot’s part,” Dumar continued, ignoring Tug’s words, “but he was young and arrogant back then. His wingman suffered serious chest trauma that required emergency surgery. The lead pilot felt so guilty that he cut his own chest with his father’s blade, the one that he carried with him for luck, so that he would never forget his arrogance.”
Tug opened his shirt and revealed his chest. There, buried under the graying chest hair of an old man, was a thick scar that went from below his left clavicle down across his chest.
Dumar’s eyes widened, his mouth falling agape at the sight of the scar.
“How do you know this?” Tug answered. “Do we know each other?”
“This is impossible,” Dumar exclaimed in disbelief. “I saw your ship explode. You took a direct hit from a nuclear-tipped missile. No one could’ve escaped that.”
Tug began to become concerned. There were only two people present all those decades ago when that mysterious spacecraft had appeared out of nowhere and killed his wingman and very nearly killed Tug. His wingman, who had himself just taken a devastating hit, and the pilot of the attacking craft, the one that had been waiting in ambush, the one that had known exactly when and where he and his wingman were to be…
The assassin.
Tug instinctively began to move to attack, but Dumar’s hand was too quick, bringing his weapon up high and ready to fire. There was too much distance between them and there was no way Tug could close the gap and strike before Dumar could cut him down. There would be no escape for this assassin, but Tug was sure that his opponent was already aware of that. Such men were about the mission, nothing more.
“So, after more than thirty years,” Tug stated, “you have finally come to finish the job.”
Dumar ripped open his shirt. “I have come,” Dumar began, emotion filling his voice, “to fulfill my obligation to protect my leader.”
Tug looked in Dumar’s eyes. They were full of emotion, of years of regret and torment. Then Tug’s own eyes wandered down to Dumar’s open shirt, where he found a surgical scar leading from the base of his neck down to his belly. Tug’s mouth dropped open in disbelief. “Max?”
“Commander,” Dumar responded, his weapon slowly lowering, “is it really you?”
“Yes, Maxwell, it is,” Tug answered. He could not believe what he was hearing. The man standing before him had the eyes of his old friend and wingman, but not the face. “But you… your face…”
“But how, how could you possibly have survived?”
“I jumped into FTL at the last moment,” Tug explained.
“But you never returned.”
“I was injured, my ship damaged and adrift. To this very day I still do not know for how long. I ended up stranded on Haven. By the time I learned the truth about what had happened, it was too late. The empire had already conquered the core and most of the surrounding systems. There was nothing I could do,” Tug pleaded.
“You could have contacted me,” Dumar insisted. “I could have helped you.”
“I thought you were dead as well,” Tug explained. “As far as I knew, the only man I could trust was dead. All others had betrayed me.”
“But you lead the Karuzari…”
“Eventually I could no longer stand idly by and watch the empire subjugate the galaxy one system at a time.”
“All this time, I thought I had failed you,” Dumar confessed.
“You did not fail me, my friend. You were as equally betrayed as I,” Tug insisted. “Surely you came to the same conclusions.”
“Over time, yes,” Dumar admitted, “but it was difficult to believe, and by then it was too late. I had already fought in so many campaigns in the name of Caius. They very though of it sickens me now.” Dumar paused, looking at Tug. “There is something you should know, Commander.”
“Do not call me that,” Tug warned. “My name is Redmond Tugwell.”
“Hardly a name befitting a nobleman of your…”
“Enough!” Tug urged sternly. “The walls might have ears.”
“Of course,” Dumar promised, realizing his stupidity.
“What was it you wished to tell me?” Tug asked in a low voice.
“I was the leader of the Anti-Insurgency forces on Corinair. I was responsible for the attacks against this ship. But when I realized who you were, I aborted the attack and I destroyed all…”
“Do not speak further of it,” Tug warned. “Not yet. There will come a time.”
Dumar’s gun hand fell to his side. Tug placed his left hand on Dumar’s shoulder. “The time has come for us to fight together once again.” Tug looked Dumar in the eyes. “Are you with me, my old friend?”
“Need you ask?” Dumar responded.
“Drop the gun,” Jessica’s voice came from the half-opened hatch. “Do it now.”
Neither man moved.
“Drop it… I’ll drop you both if I have to.”
“Do as she says,” Tug whispered.
Dumar dropped the weapon to the deck.
“Hands behind your head and two steps backward,” Jessica ordered. “You too, Tug.”
“But…” Tug started to protest.
“I’m not asking twice,” Jessica warned.
Tug knew better than to take a warning from Jessica Nash lightly. He had seen her in action on more than one occasion. He, too, raised his hands and placed them behind his head, stepping backward the same as Dumar.
Jessica stepped through the hatch, her gun held high, pushing the hatch closed with her foot afterward. “What the hell is going on here?”
“It is not what you think,” Tug insisted.
“I sure as fuck hope not,” she stated. “What do you have to say for yourself, Dumar?—which I’m pretty sure is not your real name.”
“His name is Ridley,” Tug stated. “Travon Ridley. He is a deep cover operative for the Karuzari.”
“A deep cover operative,” Jessica responded. “Bullshit.”
“It is true,” Dumar added.
“Then why didn’t Tug recognize you when you first came on board?”
“His identity was changed after he departed to ensure his cover.”
“I was waiting until the right moment to make contact,” Dumar explained.
“He has intimate knowledge of the operations of the Ta’Akar,” Tug insisted.
“Yeah? How is that?” Jessica asked, still not quite believing their story.
“My assignment was to infiltrate the Takaran Anti-Insurgency Command on Corinair. It was I that took them out and aborted the last missile moments before it would have destroyed your vessel,” Dumar explained.
“Really?” Jessica said. “And why should I believe either of you?”
“You do not have to,” Tug conceded. “You could simply shoot us both now. It would be the safest thing to do.”
“Maybe,” Jessica admitted. “But I actually do trust you,” she said to Tug as she lowered her weapon. “And besides, this asshole still owes me a sandwich,” she added, holstering her weapon.
* * *
“I’ve been looking at the scans, sir,” Jessica reported. Nathan quickly returned to her side in order to view her display. “Just as Ensign Willard stated, there doesn’t appear to be any traffic beyond Deikon. Not much reason for it, really. Nothing but ice and rock out there, and very little of that. However, Deikon’s current position puts it uncomfortably close to Ancot, which means any ship near it would be more easily imaged than usual.”
“What if we come in a little fast, right behind Deikon, and then shoot out past
it? We could slow down and settle into stellar orbit just beyond Deikon.”
“Captain,” Ensign Yosef interjected, “I would suggest an alignment that puts Deikon nearly between us and Ancot. If the alignment is just right, direct imaging of us would be nearly impossible due to interference from the gas giant.”
“What about communications?”
“They might be somewhat garbled, but still possible,” she answered. “Again the alignment must be just right.”
“It will probably look like the Yamaro’s navigator screwed up and came in off his mark,” Loki commented.
“I guess we’re going to have to ruin de Winter’s reputation,” Nathan joked. “Plot the course and prepare to jump.”
“Yes, sir,” Loki acknowledged.
“It makes it a bit farther for the shuttles to travel,” Tug observed. “They will require refueling on Ancot before returning.”
“Well, those shuttles look more the part than we do,” Nathan observed. “I think the risk is lower this way.”
“Agreed,” Tug said.
“Comms,” Nathan called, turning toward Naralena, “update the shuttle crews as to our change in plans, and make sure Ensign Willard knows they will have to refuel before returning.”
“Yes, sir,” Naralena answered.
“I have the course for a stellar orbit just beyond Deikon plotted and locked, Captain,” Loki reported.
“Helm, change course and take us in,” Nathan ordered.
“Altering course now, Captain,” Josh reported.
“Abby?”
“Thirty seconds to a plot, Captain.”
“Comms, activate the Yamaro’s transponder array,” Nathan ordered. “And ask Lieutenant Commander Kamenetskiy to double-check that thing to be sure it’s working properly before we jump.”
“Yes, sir.” Naralena called up the Yamaro’s transponder array that had been recently installed by Ensign Willard and Lieutenant Commander Kamenetskiy.
“Jump plotted,” Abby added.
“Cheng reports the transponder is working as expected,” Naralena reported. “I also checked with the shuttle crews as well, Captain, and they are picking up the Yamaro’s transponder signal.