“Keep me apprised,” said Santani. “If the readings were accurate, Fleet Command will want to know about it. Something huge prowling about out here; that’s going to have them worried.”
“Yes Ma’am.”
“And I’d like to be ready in case it comes back.” She leaned towards him and lowered her voice. “The last thing anyone on the command deck needs to see is me shitting myself.”
• • •
Resting on the landing pad of Gemen Station, the shuttle was poised gracefully, as if ready for flight at a moment’s notice. Eilentes remained in the cockpit, scanning dutifully for any signs of opposition and ensuring the engines remained on standby.
Caden and Throam emerged from the rear of the shuttle, rifles raised, sweeping the landscape around the landing pad as they stepped off the ramp. As soon as they were clear, the ramp folded up neatly into the shuttle.
They made their way across the pad, still sweeping the area, advancing cautiously on a secondary entrance to the station which allowed access to the landing area. They arrived at a wide trapezoidal doorway, sealed by huge metal doors, and Throam stood off while Caden popped the cover protecting the entry controls.
“We’ve got power,” he said. “That’s reassuring.”
He tapped the largest button, the one that would normally operate the doors. The imposing portal remained stubbornly inert. The edges of the button illuminated, now fringed with red light.
“Lock-down,” he said.
Throam shifted his weight between his feet and scanned the horizon, waiting while Caden used a holo to bring up codes for the station systems. The mission pack he had been given prior to joining Throam and Eilentes at Fort Kosling was, for a change, very comprehensive.
“Got it,” he said, and tapped a series of numbers into the keypad.
The glow at the edges of the main button changed to green, and he jabbed it once before stepping back to raise his rifle. An opening mechanism rumbled behind thick walls, the two overlapping doors separated, and escaping gases blew dust outward. The short length of corridor beyond the opening began to glow as wall-mounted light panels came to life.
“Euryce, you copy?” Said Throam.
“Lima Charlie,” she said. “Go ahead.”
“We’re about to enter the station. Sensors couldn’t get anything back, so chances are you’re going to lose us when these doors close.”
“Acknowledged. I’ll leave a light on for you.”
They stepped inside, and Caden easily found the controls that corresponded with those on the exterior. The doors closed behind them, sliding into place and sinking into their locking grooves with a resounding thud. Whoever had designed this facility had certainly known how to protect an entrance.
A brief flicker of light bounced around the chamber as internal sensors swept the entryway. The two men were registered, and a holo appeared on the wall: Air Exchange Procedure, Please Stand By.
Moments later, the atmosphere of Herros had been pumped out of the room and replaced with processed station air. Caden’s armour confirmed it was breathable, and he gladly broke the seal on his helmet visor.
“One door down,” he said.
“There could be anything outside this airlock.”
“I suspect we’ve missed the action, otherwise I wouldn’t have had Eilentes bring the shuttle in so close. And she’d be with us.”
“You sure about that?”
“Whatever happened here, it’s resulted in an entire task force going MIA. Whoever did it is probably long gone. We’d have seen something by now if they were still around.”
Throam looked unconvinced. “Unless they’re all behind this door.”
“They’d have sentries at the very least, whether that means guards on the outer doors or vessels in orbit. You don’t knock out a fleet to get to your prize, then completely ignore everything else while you play with it.”
“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” said Throam. He angled himself towards the inner door and hefted his rifle.
“Actually, there are two.”
Caden swiped his fingers across the holo that had appeared in the airlock moments before. He invoked a security interface, used another code from the mission pack, and brought up the station logs.
“Okay,” he said, a little disappointed. “Security holos have been wiped, transit logs, communication logs… everything.”
“So we’ll be doing it my way then.” Throam was still facing the inner hatch, holding his stance patiently.
“I suppose that will make a change.”
• • •
Eilentes monitored the holos vigilantly while she waited in the shuttle cockpit, listening out for the occasional bursts of audio that somehow managed to escape the station’s shielding.
“One door… anything… lock” — the words came in fits and starts, punctuated by crisp bursts of static — “entire battle… something… prize.”
She was far from concerned. Even in those meagre fragments, she could hear that the tone of their speech was conversational with no hint of alarm. Whatever they were saying it was most likely an assessment of what they had found or expected to find. She knew that very soon, as they ventured deeper into the station, the fragments of audio would stop.
She keyed the controls for ship-to-ship comms. “Ground party to Hammer, come in.”
“Go ahead ground party,” came the reply.
“We’re on the surface; no opposition. Your path is clear. Feel free to drop in any time.”
“Acknowledged, ground party. We are inbound to a distant orbital. Hammer out.”
She watched a holo as passive sensors picked up the intense energy burst of a flaring wormhole, and the heavy battleship registered immediately. Hammer had dropped into the system interior, a safe distance from Herros but close enough to lend assistance should the need arise.
Now she could relax. The battleship’s many sensor palettes were far more sensitive than those on the shuttle; if anything hostile turned up uninvited, Hammer would be training her guns on it before Eilentes was even prompted for a reaction. She stretched as best she could in the contoured pilot’s seat, ran her fingers through her hair, and thought of Rendir Throam.
Ten Solars it had been, more or less, since they went their separate ways. They had spent almost a year together on the Embolden by the time Throam’s long-awaited notice had come, when he was finally released from his battalion to fill a freshly vacated counterpart role. He had seemed almost indifferent to the end of their relationship, and for a while she had told herself he had waited so very long to become a counterpart that he could hardly have thought about anything else at the time.
More fool me, she thought.
There had been precious little contact after he left. She realised she was not alone in that — worlds knew he was hardly the most sociable person she had ever met — but it still cut deep, even though all his old squad mates on the Embolden had complained about exactly the same thing. He’s like this with everyone, they had assured her.
But that was just it: she had hoped she would mean more than that to Throam. Being a part of ‘everyone’ was exactly the same as being just anyone. And even though she knew it wasn’t true, a part of her associated being ‘just anyone’ with being no-one at all.
The worst part though had been the moment they were reunited, just a few days ago. He had spoken to her as if she were nothing more than an old drinking buddy.
“How the fuck are you?”
Yes there had been a hug, one of those amazing hugs she had always looked forward to at the end of a hard duty shift on the Embolden, but that was basically it.
She had truly loved him by the end.
In some ways it was perhaps a blessing that he had been approved for pairing with Caden. She and Throam had been drifting apart in the final couple of months; her completely infatuated, and him seeming to not really notice that their casual relationship was changing into something else. The man could be
so dense sometimes. If it had not been for the sex, she would probably have ended it to spare herself some pain. The sex had almost been worth it on its own.
Before she retrained for the Navy, Eilentes had piloted commercial ships. There had never been many people she was in regular contact with, and none who could be relied upon for a long term commitment, so like most people in that career she had sought physical comfort when and where the chance presented itself. Not that such opportunities were frequent; she would hardly say she had slept around.
Rendir Throam was the first soldier she had bedded. He was better than everyone who had gone before, men and women alike. Well, woman. There had only been one, so maybe it was not a proper comparison. Eilentes had given it a fair try, and although she did not really see what all the fuss was about there was always the possibility she had just bunked up with the wrong girl.
No woman would ever come close to Throam though, that much she could say for certain. Even though she was reasonably tall herself, his chin had only just started where her head left off. He would lift her with one hand and toss her on the bunk, sometimes growling playfully while she had fits of giggles. His skin was always burning hot, and the medi-training cycles favoured by his MAGA unit meant he usually had more testosterone than his body knew what to do with. She had never objected to him sticking those needles in his buttocks when he stayed in her quarters.
So yes, the sex had almost been worth it. Almost, but not quite. It was fair to say that Eilentes had grown very attached to Throam, and she had wanted much more from the relationship. But whatever she did, whatever she said, it never seemed to sink into his big, daft head. It was as if he had reached a point where he had what he wanted, and then stopped thinking about what else he might have had. What else they might have had.
And then there was Caden. She had been warned that Shards could appear aloof and disinterested, but even so his attempts to get to know her over the past few days had been anaemic at best. He and Throam, on the other hand, had what looked like an easy and well-practised partnership going on. It was entirely possible Rendir was getting it from the Shard these days. It would not have surprised her one bit; judging by the size he had put on in the past decade he was definitely still on the gear, and that had always made him so horny he would try to knock boots with anyone too slow to escape.
Paranoid much, Euryce? Maybe it’s simpler than that, she thought glumly. Maybe he really did get over me that quickly.
Even though she had told herself years ago — in no uncertain terms — that she was done with being upset, she had to wipe away a tear.
• • •
“Quiet as the grave,” Throam muttered. “I don’t like it.”
“It’s not just you. Something is very wrong here.”
For several minutes now, the two of them had stalked cautiously through empty white corridors, passing deserted laboratories and work spaces. Everywhere they went was the same: minimal power, pale blue emergency lighting, holos on standby, tools and personal effects laid aside as if their owners had just walked away for a moment.
“Why is it not all torn up?”
“I have no idea.” Caden said. “I have no idea, and I don’t like that at all.”
The deeper they got into the station, the less comfortable Throam became. He saw no bodies, and no signs that weapons had been fired. There was no damage whatsoever, in fact, and nothing that would indicate a struggle had taken place or a siege had been mounted. Not even a single barricade. He had anticipated so many scenarios, and this had not been one of them.
“Where are we now?”
Caden checked his holo. “Auxiliary research level. Everything interesting looks like it should be down below.”
“Control room?”
“Right in the middle of the level beneath us.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking we secure this level first, since it’s part of our exit route. Then we make a beeline for control and use internal security to check out as much of this place as possible. While we’re there, see if there are any backup security holos.”
Throam nodded. “Works for me.”
They resumed, working their way stealthily and systematically through the corridors and labs, offices and meeting rooms. Throughout the entire level, everything was the same. Other than the lack of people, there was no sign that anything was particularly amiss.
Throam was unnerved by the silence. Give him the clamour of a battlefield, and he would be perfectly happy: he knew where he was with gunfire and explosions. But this, this was almost forbidding. Something about the quiet and the stillness and the absence of any life… it screamed out at him that they should not be there, they ought to leave immediately. Whatever had happened to the people living and working here, it could easily come for them next. He felt a knot tightening in his stomach; it was a foreign sensation to him. He had charged across burning earth before, directly into enemy ranks. He had leapt across chasms and ‘chuted straight through storm systems. He could not remember the last time he had been this nervous; but then the threat had always been visible before. Clear danger he could deal with. It was usually just an opportunity for him to make something much less threatening.
After what seemed like an age, Caden stopped in his tracks. Throam realised they had come full circle. Satisfied that the whole level was clear, they returned to an elevator station they had come across earlier. Throam prised the doors open, and in the dimly lit shaft they could see an emergency access ladder was built into the wall. He reached out to grab a rung.
“Don’t trust the lift?” Caden said.
“If there’s anyone down there, the noise would give them a heads up.”
“You’re starting to think like me.”
“I agree, I’ve been around you far too long.”
“Not quite what I meant.”
Throam climbed down into the murky shadows, followed by Caden, and before long they found themselves on the level below. It looked essentially the same as the one they had just left; all sloping white walls, pale blue emergency lighting, and grilled flooring.
Caden consulted his holo. “This way.”
Minutes later they were in the main control room, a large circular chamber containing two concentric rings of work stations and holos. The walls were given over largely to glass panels; from virtually any angle, they allowed a direct view out into the adjacent corridors. In the centre of the room was a large, round console, designed to allow several users to work together.
Caden moved to the central station. “I’ll hook in.”
Throam waited patiently while Caden worked at the console, moving around the room quietly and visually scanning each window in turn. Despite the lack of any presence so far at Gemen Station, he did not intend to allow anyone to get the drop on them.
“I’m bringing up the cameras.”
Holos around the room began to display the feeds from cameras all over the station. They showed yet more corridors, tech bays, labs, offices, storage spaces; all of them devoid of life. Not one chair was overturned or glass partition cracked.
“This is starting to weird me out,” said Throam.
“Stay frosty, these cameras don’t cover every corner of the station.”
“If someone jumps out at me, I am going to shoot first.”
“Good.” Caden tapped a corner of the console holo, and the display flipped from the camera feed to a security interface.
“It’s the same here,” he said eventually. “Logs have been wiped clean, security holos are also gone. There’s nothing of any use. All we have is the live camera feed.”
“What about project files?” Throam asked. “Can you see what they were working on here?”
“I don’t have access,” Caden said. “That’s outside the mission profile.”
“You don’t have access?” Throam could hardly believe it. He was accustomed to the Shard having authority to act at will, being capable of going anywhere, seeing
all manner of information, and knowing everything that mattered.
“Apparently not.”
“Then how are you supposed to know what assets to recover?”
“I expect it’ll be obvious. We’ll need to search the rest of the station.”
“We pretty much need to do that anyway. Last time I checked, personnel took priority over ‘assets’.”
“Here, this looks like it might qualify.”
Throam looked at the holo Caden pointed to, and saw an immense room which appeared to be a storage area. From end to end, it held row after row of plasteel containers, each twice Throam’s height. On the side of each container he saw an emblem he did not recognise: three concentric five-pointed stars, sharing a common centre, each one smaller than the one it sat upon. The middle star was inverted, so that the points of each fell into the interstices of the one behind it.
“Gear adrift,” Throam said.
Caden pushed his personal holo into the camera feed display, intersecting them. With his finger he flicked at the text labelling the camera location. The legend slid across from one holo to the other, and snapped into place automatically on the map his own displayed.
“Let’s go and see what we’ve got.”
— 05 —
Gear Adrift
Castigon had been a free man for just over a day when he arrived on Maidre Shalleon. Just setting foot on the class one planet, a minor crime in itself for someone of his particular status, felt so very good. If only the probation services could see him now, they would have fits. They would be particularly annoyed by his current activity; relaxing in the warm sunshine on one of the plazas which were dotted around the outside of the main transit hub, he sipped an ice-cold drink casually and watched the world go by.
So many people coming and going. Hurrying and bustling this way and that, striding across the plaza as they went scurrying about their lives. Important meetings, connections to make. Racing to the appointment, to the starport, to get back home. Oh such urgent scurryings.
Books One to Three Omnibus (Armada Wars) Page 6