Revenant

by Raymond Bayly

TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTYEIGHT

  Into the Breach

  Xera perched atop the scaffolding above the lift and saw when the team exited.

  She had been here when the teams of mercenaries had cleared out the corridor,

  hauling and pushing people using their guns to herd the frightened market keepers and customers into the passages.

  She had heard some shots and wasn’t sure what happened to the people, but she had her fears.

  The mercenaries had come out and argued for a few minutes,

  Xera guessed the leaders were asserting control or dominance over the others, sorting out the pecking order.

  But as the doors on the lift chimed telling them that one was on its way up,

  they quickly decided on whatever it was they were arguing about.

  Some took position behind kiosks farther down, and others went into the side corridors,

  two activated repulsors jumping up behind the big sign in the middle of the hall with larger caliber rifles.

  She assumed these were the snipers.

  All in all, though hasty,

  it was a nasty ambush that they had set up.

  Xera had no idea how they had gotten from the dock area where they had been sent back here so fast, or how they knew where the crew of the ship was going but they had moved with purpose after getting a few messages via comms allowing them to assemble and get organized rather quickly, someone very smart was pulling the strings.

  She didn’t know who it was, but he would be the real threat in this scenario.

  Xera pushed up the sleeve on her robe revealing a holographic computer attached to here forearm, common among Empire dominated worlds,

  it was a collection of nanites under the skin that banded together and using their bodies as light diodes displaying or projecting information on or above the user’s arm,

  much handier than a data-pad but not as versatile. Watching as a login screen resolved against her arm,

  she tapped the login icon and spoke her credentials allowing her to enter the secure communications channel that Kree had given her.

  “Kree, you there”? She whispered

  Kree responded immediately.

  “Yes, sweet cheeks, but a little busy right now what do you need?”

  Xera rolled her eyes,

  one day she was going to beat that little creature into a red pulp, but not today.

  “I need you to jam communications on this level. Someone is organizing the bands of mercs, and we need to ensure that they are cut off,

  or this might go very badly for our little team from the ship.”

  There was a pause, and then Kree was back on the line,

  the annoyance gone from his voice

  “You’re right, someone is using some serious encryption to host a small network and sending commands to a select set of coms in that area,

  I can’t track it.

  Damn this guy is using a military-grade scrambler, I mean the top of the line Empire stuff.

  Where the hell did he get that?” Kree mused.

  Xera muttered something about beating him with his hover chair and then took a calming breath. “Kree, I don’t care what it is, can you block it?” She barked at him

  He snorted into the com,

  “Of course, a-a-and done, no one will be talking to those guys for a while.” He said smiling with satisfaction.

  She thanked him and shut down her channel before he could reply.

  Now she would have to see how this played out. This was going to be a bad fight,

  though hastily put together the mercenaries had a decided advantage and the element of surprise.

  She would help if she could but didn’t think now would be a good time for introductions.

  Seafu had said help them and ensure they made it to him.

  She would,

  but not at risk to the ship or her own life.

  If they failed, she would take the ship and meet Seafu herself.

  The priority was on the box,

  not the potentials.

  Xera watched the entire exchange taking place before her.

  And then the most amazing thing happened.

  She wasn’t quite sure if what she was seeing was real.

  The whole team began running at the mercenaries, but that wasn’t it.

  It was the speed at which they ran and then they were in the midst of them,

  knives slashing with such force and speed.

  She watched in amazement as mercenaries began dropping and before one would fall another would be doing the same.

  Like a domino effect.

  It was a curtain of death falling

  over the enemy before them.

  But then the female caught her eye, she removed one of the retractable staffs,

  the same kind she had trained with at the temple and with the incredible speed and agility that the males had demonstrated with their knives.

  She began to disable and take down enemy after enemy the staff whirling and hitting with such speed and force that Xera couldn’t actually see it anymore.

  It was like a solid shield in her hands as it raked against the wall of mercenaries,

  shredding them and sending them flying in all directions.

  This is what the sheer power of the Boxes brought, this is what they had protected all this time.

  Now for the first time,

  she realized the awesome potential of such an instrument and what it would mean if it were used for evil.

  As all three worked through the massive crowd she spied a man standing at the far side of the battle assessing the situation,

  he paced as he watched the three tearing through the mercenaries.

  He was on a microphone talking into it, screaming into it,

  this was the man, she knew it,

  the one who had orchestrated it.

  Kree had been good to his word and had maintained the jamming.

  She could see the frustration and anger even from this distance.

  She had just found the leader.

  Watching intently as he assessed the battle as more of the mercenaries fell.

  He finally shook his head and walked away.

  Xera couldn’t cross the expanse,

  but she could call Kree,

  he could track him on the station.

  Speaking into the computer on her forearm she raised her conspirator

  “Kree you there?”

  A second later came Kree,

  “Honey, you are sexy as hell,

  but I am swamped, this better be important.” He said, the urgency and frustration coming across the device clearly.

  Xera rolled her eyes,

  “Cut the crap Kree, there is a guy here on the far side of the promenade who is moving away from the battle can you track him?”

  It took a minute, and when Kree came back on he sounded alarmed

  “Battle? What the hell are you talking about? Everything is green on my board,

  it says the cameras are out for maintenance on that level,

  and none of the sensors are coming back with weapons fire.”

  Xera thought that was interesting and her gaze went to the retreating back of the man.

  He had planned well,

  no help would be coming,

  they could be at this for a while still…

  then her thought trailed off,

  The ship!

  She didn’t see it before,

  oh it was perfect mire the crew down here and then go for the ship.

  She was moving instantly,

  she had to get to the dock,

  she had to get to the ship.

  Xera dropped to the deck and tried the button to call the lift, no one taking notice of her in the heat of battle,

  but the lift never came.

  She spoke into the computer again

  “Kree I need you to override the lifts, they are not coming to this floor.”

  It to
ok a second and then

  “Done, for some reason they were stuck in maintenance mode, but they are working now. What’s going on?” Kree asked.

  Xera thought about not telling him but then realized if she had gone this far,

  she was going to continue to need his help.

  “Can you sound general alarms on dock 12? I want every law enforcement and first responder down there as quickly as possible,

  military if you can get it.”

  The line was silent for a second then Kree came back sounding as if she was crazy

  “You WANT me to get everything in the station down to dock 12, right now?

  Why on earth would you want that,

  shouldn’t you want them at level 2 with you?”

  She rolled her eyes again

  “This is a distraction you idiot,

  they are moving on the ship,

  and if we don’t act, they might have a crack at her. So, get your ass in gear and get them down there!” Just as she had ended the call,

  the lift opened, revealing two burly mercenaries who looked very confused.

  She jumped into the air and with a lunged kick driving the first one into the back wall.

  A knuckle punch into the other's throat sent him to the floor.

  As they hit the ground, she landed lithely and stepped into the lift,

  hitting the button for the docks.

  As one moaned, she lifted her leg and brought it down on his head,

  and Xera smiled a little.

  A minute later Kree came back on the line “Something Is definitely going on. The dock is listed as green, and when I try and change it, it won’t let me. Someone has a hell of a hacker watchdogging this system. I managed to get into a back door to ensure that on their screen the status boards stay green and I tripped off a few alarms, not sure what you are walking into,

  but I would say it isn’t good.”

  Kree was near panic, and it was showing, but she didn’t have time to calm him, the ship was the priority.

  Xera thanked him and got off the line.

  She prepared herself and did a few deep breathing exercises.

  When the elevator doors opened,

  she stepped out into hell.

  Kree stared at his computer display in awe,

  this thing had his ears twitching,

  according to Xera,

  there was a hell of a battle going on level 2 and possibly one going on in the dock itself.

  His board was green most of the cameras were down for maintenance according to the system information in front of him.

  Not at all odd but it seemed as if the whole station was in

  “All is well” mode while everything fell apart.

  His left ear did twitch,

  and his hackles were up.

  Kree started pulling apart code from the stations operating system.

  The first thing he did was look for anything that was updated recently, unfortunately,

  because of the ability to self-update that was still a lot of files.

  The code was written in a language that was not meant to be looked at in 2-Dimensions

  but instead had to be viewed in its original 3-Dimensional form.

  Kree’s eyes glinted as his augmentations moved his vision into 3-D,

  he regarded the code files floating above him around the room.

  He leaned back in his chair and started to point at blocks of code that would move out of the line scrolling up by him and zoom in,

  The code cubes opening and revealing thousands upon thousands of written lines of computer code. This hacker was good,

  very good Kree started highlighting code fragments and studying them,

  rotating them,

  trying to get a feel for what they did.

  He soon found a pattern someone had been in this for a while, under the radar,

  this was not new code.

  He expanded his search for files changed in the last year and started to piece together a pattern and a map of what the system was doing.

  It appeared to be rerouting the warnings keeping the system green without alerting any authorities, the entire station and the sensor and weapons system outside of it were all infected with this trojan horse allowing the hacker to take full control of any system.

  Kree knew the hack, he had done similar,

  it was a great way to allow certain illegal operations to occur while allowing security to maintain a blind eye.

  But this person had set off every hack in every section of the station.

  This was a scorched earth move,

  someone must be paying them well,

  it would take years to get this back into place. Someone wanted what was on that ship,

  very, very bad.

  Kree highlighted another piece of code and just about fell out of his chair.

  His ears went flat against the back of his head,

  and he uttered a string of curses in his native language.

  He quickly grabbed his pack and jumped down from the chair,

  setting his drives and Quantum computers to auto-destruct and setting deep wipes on all equipment, he grabbed his portable system and a few data-pads,

  as well as a box of wrist QCS quantum computing systems that had not even hit the market.

  Hurrying as fast as the small creature could,

  he quickly made his way to his chair and launched towards the exit,

  hitting the open function on his elevator he put a burst of speed into the chair.

  Kree hit the comm in his ear,

  his hackles were just going down as he got Xera on the radio

  “Sweetie, this is bad, really bad we need to get out of here fast,

  and I mean if yesterday was an option we should be on that train.”

  Xera was grunting and huffing

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about Kree,

  can you actually make sense?

  I am kind of busy right now.”

  Kree took a deep breath.

  “They have control over not just the security system, but all of the systems on the station sensors, defense systems,

  communications everything,

  they have control of the entire defense system,

  do you know what that means?

  I took a look at the raw sensor data,

  ships are moving into the system on intercept with the station.

  Empire ships Xera!” Kree let the last word hang in the air.

  There was silence on the other end of the line,

  and then Kree thought he heard someone wail in pain, and what sounded like a bone breaking

  “Get down here now Kree,

  we need to get off this station!”

  before she had finished responding, he was moving,

  Entering the shaft of his private elevator,

  sans the elevator itself,

  he set his chair to descend as fast as it could without killing him.

  He left his suite just as three mercenaries in black body armor broke down the door and began quickly making their way through the apartment.

  As all three entered the main control room which was once the main living area,

  they lowered their guns and watched as the only screen still left on counted down 3,2,1 and then the entire floor, detonated reducing anything on the top floor to dust.

  Kree smiled as the reinforced shaft shook.

  It was hard to stay one step ahead of a being like Kree, aside from his through the roof IQ and built-in Personal QS computing environment wired into his brain,

  the being had guile and a healthy dose of paranoia. Down on level two,

  the fighting was all but over.

  Blake had sequestered one of the mercenaries while Rom and Shira were finishing clean up.

  “Alright Sparky,

  you want to tell me who threw this little party?” Blake asked while lightly squeezing the man’s broken wrist.

  It was one
of the walrus creatures that Blake had seen on the freighters,

  this one was bigger with one tusk broken off and was worse for wear after the fighting,

  but he was still alive and talking.

  That was all Blake needed.

  After applying the right amount of pressure,

  the walrus began to talk and talk and talk. He told Blake all about Craylor, Druzenz and the plan to take the ship, he couldn’t tell him enough, he told him about Selcarm who had orchestrated this little welcome party.

  Then Blake stopped and looked at the man,

  “Go back, what did you just say?” he asked,

  Blake’s face becoming like stone.

  The Walrus thing blustered a bit and started talking about Craylor again.

  Blake reared back and slapped him hard

  “After that asshole! You said ‘diversion.’

  What did you mean?”

  The Mercenary looked confused

  “I said, while we put this diversion on Selcarm would go for the ship.”

  Blake felt his stomach drop,

  of course,

  the ambush was shabbily setup but more to the point they knew it was coming,

  it wasn’t the fight,

  it was a way to get the crew out of the way to allow this Selcarm guy access to the ship.

  Shit how had Blake not seen it,

  it is precisely what he would have done,

  the target wasn’t them it was Morgan,

  they were just in the way.

  “Guys, we need to get back to the ship, this is a diversion, they are going after Morgan,”

  Blake said into the coms.

  He dropped Walrus guy and was moving towards the elevator at a brisk pace,

  slicing or slapping down mercenaries along the way,

  if they got in his way, he put them down.

  Blake slapped desperately at the earbud trying to hail anyone on the dock, all that came back was static,

  Blake felt his stomach drop,

  were they too late?

  Shira and Rom joined him,

  they reached the lift a moment later and were entering it before the mercenaries could gather what was left for a counter attack

  and with a smile on his face Rom Pulled one final plasma grenade from his combat vest and tossed it into the forming group as the elevator’s doors shut. The trio rode the lift back to the docks.

  Blake was fuming not only had he not made contact with the broker,

  but there was a guy who had orchestrated pretty much a foolproof way to bypass his crew and get access to the objective.