“Should we tell the bridge?” Harry asked.
“I need to identify which station’s been sending them first. I don’t want an altercation spinning out of control,” Reeve said. She wished Brax was there on the bridge, because she had a feeling things were about to escalate. Captain Baldwin had been speaking about a possible Assembly spy on board, and all signs were indicating they did indeed have one in the midst. “Harry, why can’t we tell which console it’s coming from?”
He was the specialist on their internal network, where she was far more familiar with the drive and everything that came out of the boiler room. “Because they’re all connected from the main bridge server. We’d have to be on the bridge to isolate the proper one.”
Reeve smiled. “Get me the portable device I need.” She watched the binary code for the incoming messages, and they saw a glitch appear again. “And hurry. They just sent another communication.”
____________
Zare had held it together well so far, but she felt her time here was coming to an end. It was unfortunate. She’d been instructed to stay put, but there were too many calculating eyes and ears on her at all times on Constantine. She couldn’t grow complacent, because she was confident she’d be caught.
And if the Assembly’s plan failed, they’d attempt to destroy Constantine. Zare was happy to offer the Assembly her good years, but not her life. Not yet. The others had left the bridge already, Ven and Brax along with the Vralon. She assumed the Vralon miners had likely been killed, and she found no emotion linked to the act.
This was war. Not in the same way as the great War with the Statu; that wasn’t the Assembly’s way. No, this was subtle, in the shadows, where bloodshed was rare but necessary at times. Her orders were clear. She stretched at the rear of the bridge, using an empty console to send the message.
Her communication was clear and concise: Lure them in now.
She glanced at Baldwin, who was staring hard out the viewer, his hand pressed to the side of his face as he waited for something to happen out there.
“Try them again, Zare,” Baldwin said, and she nodded, heading to her seat.
“Still no communication with them, Captain.” Zare grinned to herself. There was no communication because she’d blocked Cleo’s transmitter last night.
A flash of light erupted from beyond the asteroid field, so bright they each had to cover their eyes. Zare knew it was coming, and she turned a second before the others.
“What in the Vastness was that?” Baldwin asked.
The lieutenant beside Zare was the first to reply. “No idea, sir. I’m reading some high levels of radiation from the sensor probes, but other than that…”
“Our people are over there. Set course for the Belt,” Baldwin said.
The image on the viewer changed, showing the Ugna ship’s captain. “Baldwin, what are we waiting for? We sense life inside the Belt. We shouldn’t dally any longer.”
“I appreciate your concern, Captain Wan, but we’ve decided our strategy. Follow my lead, and we’ll go side by side.”
“Very well. Proceed.” The image of the imposing albino captain vanished, replaced by the image of the field stretching in a long line through the space in front of them.
Sweat dripped down Zare’s back; she had to play this right. “Captain, may I be relieved? I’m not feeling well.”
His gaze drifted to meet hers briefly, and he waved a dismissive hand. “Fine. But send a replacement.” He muttered something about his main crew disappearing, but she hardly heard him as she headed away from the bridge, trying not to run.
She didn’t have much time; maybe five minutes before Andron and the others arrived. Just long enough to steal the ship and escape from Constantine. The owner of the smuggling cruiser had conveniently died; she hadn’t even had to do it herself. Changing the code on it yesterday during her off time had been as simple as modifying Cleo’s transmitter.
The guard at the door didn’t even try to stop her as she walked into the hangar, and she’d tensed as she passed him, ready to pull rank if necessary. He might have bought it, until he realized a junior officer held little more authority than he did.
This was all going too easily. She reached the keypad on the dark cruiser and tapped in her new code, the ramp dropping from the side of the ship. She hurried onto it, wondering how long it would be before the old Concord fleet arrived to disable Constantine.
Her footsteps rang out on the metal surface as she entered the vessel, only pausing to close the door. She ran to the front of the ship, using the portable key to start the engines. The vessel rumbled to life, the dash lighting up in a bright yellow glow. She was running out of time.
Zare pulled her tablet from the pocket on her uniform and accessed the hangar exit. The sides of Constantine spread wide open, and she smiled as she lifted the ship from the hangar floor.
She thought she heard something behind her, but it was drowned out by Constantine’s alarm ringing out around the hangar. “Come on, Zare.” She urged it forward, bumping into the wall before finding the hang of it. She was trained to fly ships, but she was so nervous, her hands were sweaty and shaking as adrenaline filled her.
Zare raced away, realizing there was no turning back. Part of her was saddened by that, but she had never truly been part of their team.
____________
Tarlen pressed his body against the wall and tried to breathe softly. It wasn’t easy. “I guess that’s why we couldn’t escape off the ship,” Treena’s voice said through the glasses’ earpiece he continued to wear. The commander would have been able to see everything he’d witnessed.
“Was that Zare?” he asked quietly.
“It sure was. What a little…” Treena was clearly angry, but she wasn’t the one trapped on a ship with a traitor.
“What do I do?” Tarlen asked.
“She has to be with them. With the Assembly I keep hearing about,” Treena said.
Tarlen had heard the name whispered but wasn’t overly familiar with them. If she was with the enemy, he was catching a free ride into their lair. He felt angry at Treena for making him show her the ship, but it wasn’t really her fault. She’d only wanted to escape the trapped feeling she was plagued with.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Stay hidden. Find a better position,” she said. “But first, try to show me the cockpit.”
Tarlen swallowed hard. The cockpit. That would mean risking exposure. Zare was only one person. He might be able to take her, but she was bigger than him, trained for years to be in the Concord Fleet. He suspected it was a fight he couldn’t win, not without some tricks.
He glanced around, searching for a weapon, but didn’t see anything right away. “What are you doing, Tarlen?” Treena asked.
“Looking for something to hit her with,” he answered.
“Don’t do that. We might be able to use this. If Zare escaped, it wouldn’t go unnoticed. We can assist Constantine.” Treena spoke like a commander again, giving Tarlen an air of confidence he didn’t truly feel. “When faced with impossible odds, choose to play a different game.” She used the old Code saying Tarlen had heard more than once.
“If you say so. I’ll show you the cockpit. Are you ready?” he asked.
“Ready.” Her voice was quiet in his ear.
He removed the glasses, holding them in front of him, and he crept slowly down the short corridor leading to the cruiser’s cockpit. He stayed in the dimly lit hall, stretching his arm out. His hand shook slightly as he pointed the glasses toward Zare, as she piloted the dead man’s ship away from Constantine. He lingered a minute and stepped away lightly, retreating the way he’d come.
Once he placed the glasses back on and pressed in the earpiece, he whispered to Treena, “What did you see?”
“Not much. Zare is heading toward her friends. There were four ships,” she said.
“Four? Who are they?” he asked.
&n
bsp; “Ghosts, Tarlen. They’re ghosts.” Treena’s voice grew heavy. “And one of them was there when my life was ruined.”
Tarlen searched for a compartment to stow away in and found one unlocked near the ramp. He climbed in and shut the door, pulling on the handle from the inside. “What do you mean, ghosts? I don’t understand,” he said.
“The Concord ship that killed my entire crew… it’s here.”
Fourteen
Reeve raced through the ship, the elevator opening, advising her she was on the bridge’s level. She moved with purpose past the stationed Tekol guard, and she came to a stop when she heard the alarms ringing and saw the red flash of lights.
“What happened?” she asked, the tracking device in her hand.
Tom was standing near the viewer, his hands placed on his hips. “Reeve, thank the Vastness. We’ve been deceived.”
Reeve glanced to the viewer, seeing the incoming ships.
“Sir, we seem to be having an impulse engine failure,” Lieutenant Darl said from Ven’s helm position.
“What do you mean, engine failure?” Tom asked.
Reeve settled to the helm seat beside him, kicking out the open-mouthed human who’d replaced Zare. “Captain, he’s right. The engines… they’re dropping to sixty, fifty percent,” she told him.
“This shouldn’t be happening. Zoom on the incoming,” Captain Baldwin ordered, and Darl obeyed.
“I knew it. Nomin, you better tell me the Vralon had nothing to do with this,” Baldwin said, and Reeve saw the lizard-like woman there for the first time, almost hiding at the far edge of the bridge.
“No, Captain. I fear we’ve all been had,” Nomin said.
Reeve was trying to understand why their power was draining, and couldn’t. She tapped her communicator. “Harry, can you explain this?” she asked her second in command, deep in the boiler room.
His voice echoed frustrated and thin. “No, I can’t… wait, there’s a Terontiun displacer in here. I’m picking it up on the sensor.”
“What do you mean, in here?” Reeve asked. How could the device possibly have made it through the boiler room and into the drive components?
“No, it’s not inside the ship. It’s pressed to the hull,” Harry said.
Reeve dropped her chin to her chest, her dreads falling in her face as she breathed out stale air. That was how they’d done it. It must have been while they were parked at the station outside Nolix. “Captain, we found the issue. Terontiun displacer on the hull.”
“How in the Vastness did we overlook that?” he asked.
“You can blame me, sir,” Reeve said. There were no sensors checking the hull for such a device, and even though there was no process in place to search for such a thing, she reasoned it was her fault for letting them leave with a potential deadly device strapped to their ship.
“I’m not going to have to blame you, Reeve, because you’re going to remove it before they arrive,” Baldwin said.
“Yes, sir,” she said, aware of what she needed to do. She checked the ETA of the incoming vessels and saw that she had eighteen minutes. They’d have been expecting the ship to drain of power by the moment they arrived, but Reeve was going to attempt to remedy that. Seeing the inbound fleet, she doubted there was anything she could do in such little time.
“Get it done, Reeve, or we’re sitting targets,” Tom said, his voice carrying as Reeve ran from the bridge. The trip to the maintenance facility on Deck Five took three minutes, and she was rushing through, suiting up as fast as she could. She barked orders at the crew inside, them deferring to her frantic commands.
When she reached the hatch near the outer hull, she was confident ten minutes had passed. Reeve glanced at her HUD right before stepping through the energy barrier that separated her from the vacuum of space, and saw the green light wasn’t on.
She clutched hold of a rail on the wall, stopping her forward momentum. It wasn’t going to do any good to leave the ship without a sealed suit. She’d nearly killed herself for rushing too much. She clasped her helmet in place, twisting the tube at her chest, and the green icon flashed, indicating she was secured.
“Is there anything we can do?” Olu asked. She remembered his face from the inquisition following Yur Shen’s death.
“Wait for me here,” she said, flipping her magnetic boots on. She grabbed the pack by her feet and clipped it to her belt before heading outside of Constantine.
She passed through the energy barrier, and gravity vanished. She’d spent a lot of hours during the years after the Academy outside of cruise ships, fixing things in order to obtain her two hundred standard hours of space walking for her designation. Those times had felt simple, not stressful, but here she was in a race against time for the lives of hundreds of her crewmates, and she sweated like an Eganian tourist as she began the trek across the hull of Constantine.
Reeve moved toward the rear belly of the platform, where the Terontiun device was sucking the energy from their cruise ship. She glanced in the direction of the Tingor Belt, squinting as she saw four approaching dots in the distance.
____________
Brax stopped as he arrived at the mining camp building. It was basic: only two stories tall, with metal panel walls and a thick door. It was long, and he assumed this was where the miners resided on the surface of the asteroid. This was essentially his nightmare: being on a rock hurling through space, with little gravity, and nothing but the thinnest of atmospheres lining the planetoid. There was no sky to speak of, only the brilliance of the distant stars threatening to throw him into a fit of vertigo.
He placed a glove on the door and waited for the other two to catch up. He peered at his feet, rather than up, and tested the entrance. It was sealed tight. He located the keypad and found it unfamiliar.
“Allow me,” Oquid said, pressing a series of digits into the keypad. The door slid open, revealing an airlock, and hissing erupted behind him as it decompressed.
Oquid went first, opening the entrance into the residence. There were no lights on, and Ven flicked his suit’s diodes to life, Brax doing the same.
They entered into an open room: seating along the walls, a few desks with long expired consoles on top. There was no sign of the figure they’d seen running into this building. Brax lowered his XRC-14 and scanned the room. “Oquid, what is this place?” It was only one of many structures around the camp.
“This is our research facility. Mostly offices, and out back is the …”
“What is it?” Brax asked, growing impatient.
“It’s our testing bay,” Oquid said, not expanding.
“Wait, testing? You were trying to harness the Nek out here on a rock?” Brax asked incredulously.
The man’s tight face sagged slightly through his helmet’s mask. He licked his thin lips with a forked tongue. “We thought it would be safer to be here to test the new jump drives. We didn’t think anyone would find us.”
“That has to be why you were attacked,” Brax said. “But if the Assembly knew the drive worked, and knew the value of the Nek, why is there so much unmined out here?”
“Good question, Brax Daak,” Ven said.
“Be wary. They may have left one of their people behind to keep an eye on things. I’m expecting a fight,” Brax said. “Oquid, is the testing bay at the end of the building?” He pointed deeper into the room.
“That’s correct,” the Vralon man said.
Ven was already at a console near the wall, and Brax saw him pull out a fist-sized device from his belt pouch. The Ugna glanced around the room, and the drone lifted into the air, floating through the space, a light flicking on to guide their way. It was designed to stay ten meters above and five ahead, and Brax was glad Ven had brought the tool.
The room was illuminated, making it easier to see clearly. There was no one around, and they walked past the desks and through a long hallway; offices lined the walkway, most of the doors open. The LightBot lowered in the cramped ceiling space, humming dir
ectly over them as they continued to the rear of the building.
The moment they exited the corridor and stepped into the testing bay, the LightBot rose higher, and Brax saw the hiding Vralon man, his helmet huddled under his arm.
“Stay where you are!” Brax shouted, lifting his XRC-14 to aim at the frightened man.
Oquid set a hand on Brax’s arm, urging him to lower his weapon. “I know this man. Please, no violence. Kaino, it’s me, Oquid.”
Kaino stepped away from the shadows, arms raised. “It is you. I thought it might be, but… there were so many of them, and so many races, I couldn’t tell who to trust, and my old eyes often deceive me.”
“What happened?” Oquid asked, and Brax scanned the room, checking to see if there was anyone else hidden in the shadows. It looked like they were alone.
Kaino was older, his skin pallid and gray. Where Oquid’s cheeks were tight, his were loose, wrinkled, his brow sagging over his eyes. His shoulders drooped, his voice growing thick with emotion. “They killed them. They killed them all.”
Brax tensed at the words. “Who did?”
“The Concord, that’s who.” Kaino stared at Ven, then Brax.
“It’s not them, my old friend. It’s another,” Oquid said.
“That doesn’t bring them back from the dead. All of them gone to the Vastness, just like that,” Kaino said flatly.
“I don’t mean to sound insensitive, but can you tell us exactly what occurred?” Ven asked.
Kaino shifted on his feet. “They came four hours after the last shift. We were tired. Mining Nek is like bashing your head against a rock at times. We’d made some headway on the southern sector, and we decided to end the shifts until the next day. Everyone had been working so hard loading the mining vessels with the fruits of our labor over the previous months. The first two vessels left, though I suspect they never made it home,” he said.
Baldwin's Legacy: The Complete Series Page 48