Sertian Princess

by Peter Kenson

  "Yes, that should be more than enough. 15:00 at the Information desk, then."

  ***

  Within the spaceport complex, many of the shipping lines and freight forwarding agents, had offices in the Administration building. It was in a ground floor room at the back of this building that a second group of people was assembling. Stefan Pulowski was there talking to a tall, slightly greying man who had a definite military air about him. Until three years ago, Darren Rodgers had been a Major in one of the crack armoured regiments. He had once had a good career, solid rather than spectacular, but with a clean and unblemished record. However, he had served his 30 years and despite applying for reselection, he had been forced to retire. He had never forgiven the bureaucrats within the army administration for forcing him out when he felt he still had so many good years left to give and as a result, he had been an easy mark for one of Wolfram's recruiting agents.

  Stefan had worked with the Major before and had been impressed with his organising ability. Although he might have some slight doubts about the Major's reactions under fire, he was experienced enough to recognise that a good team needed men with many different abilities and skills. The Major was Alpha Leader, but when it came to the action it would be Stefan who would be in the front line. The thought did not particularly bother him; it seemed as though he had been in one front line or another, all his life. Violence was his trade, and he was good at his job.

  The other two members of Alpha group, Stefan had never met before. Xieng was a Martial Arts expert, useful in close confines where the discharge of energy weapons could be as much hazardous to your own health, as to the enemy's. He had also at one time, been a Medical Student and knew how to administer the drugs, if it became necessary to sedate the Princess. Foss, on the other hand, was a thief. He too, had seen military service but, unlike the Major, he had served only the minimum time that he was legally obliged to. However, during that brief and extremely undistinguished career, Foss had received some very valuable training in one particular subject: explosives. After the army, he had put this knowledge to good and very profitable use, becoming one of the best powder men in the business. He could judge precisely the quantity and placement of explosive which would be just sufficient to remove a door or even a complete wall. He was in the group to guarantee them access to the Princess, even if she had been warned and had locked herself away.

  Stefan stopped pacing the room and swung angrily around on the Major. "What the hell's keeping Beta group. They should be here by now."

  "Their ship only landed an hour ago," he replied calmly. "They have to clear Customs and Immigration the same as anybody else. Just relax; they'll be here."

  He had barely finished speaking when the door to the office opened and two men and a woman walked in. That the two men were brothers was immediately obvious. Apart from their facial similarities, they were of roughly the same height and build and to crown it all, they both had a shock of bright red hair. The woman who was with them, was the type of beauty who could turn heads simply by walking into a room. Slightly above average height, she had curves in all the right places, although her breasts were a little too large for her figure to achieve classical proportions. But it was her face that always drew the attention. Haloed by a mass of natural blonde curls, she had brilliant blue eyes, downy soft cheeks and full red lips that were slightly parted in a warm and inviting smile. All in all it was an excellent cover for a cold blooded killer, for that was what she and her two companions were.

  Stefan only knew the three of them by reputation. He had never met them before and he watched now in open admiration as the blonde led the group across to the Major.

  "Major Rodgers?" she asked. Her voice had a husky quality to it, which only served to enhance the image she projected. "You are the Alpha Group Leader?"

  The Major nodded in reply. "You're late Maddie. You were due in yesterday."

  "We had a little difficulty in persuading the Captain of that filthy little scow that he really wanted to divert to Andes to drop us off."

  "Oh, Maddie. You were told to keep out of trouble on the way here. The Captain isn't going to make a complaint, is he?"

  "There'll be no complaint. The Captain is, unfortunately, no longer with us and his First Officer is much more understanding. Besides, we had no choice. If we hadn't diverted that ship, we couldn't have made this connection at all."

  "All right, all right," he grumbled irritably. "You're here now. Let's make the introductions and get on with it. Pulowski, Xieng, Foss, these are the Slatters."

  He indicated each in turn as he spoke. "This is Maddie, that's Karl and Bruno. Maddie is the Beta Group Leader."

  "Well, hello Maddie," Stefan said, ignoring the narrowed eyes of both the redheads.

  "Stefan Pulowski. I've heard about you. This trip could turn out to be more interesting than I anticipated."

  The tension in the room was rising quite rapidly as Maddie held Stefan's eyes with her own. Abruptly the Major cut in.

  "Now let's get one thing clear right at the outset. Once we leave this room, there will be no further contact between the Alpha and Beta groups: none whatsoever."

  The Slatter brothers relaxed visibly.

  "We know that the Centre will have agents on board the Aldebaran," he went on. "What we don't know is how many. We identified two of them at Floreat, but there may well be more. And they will be trying to identify us, just as we need to find them. So all contact between us will be kept to the absolute minimum. Is that understood?"

  "Who are the agents we've identified?" Maddie asked, sidestepping his question.

  "The man is Lord David Held. We haven't managed to identify the woman yet, but they are travelling as husband and wife. We have to assume that she is an agent also and not just cover for him."

  "All right. Give me their details and we'll put them under surveillance as soon as we get on board."

  "There is a problem. Our people on Floreat tried to take out the man Held... and missed. He will, therefore, be alerted and on his guard."

  "Why don't we just hit them both straight away: end of problem," Bruno asked in a bored voice.

  "You cloth eared idiot." Maddie rounded on him with a startling ferocity. "You haven't heard a word that's been said. We need to know whether the Centre has any other agents on board. Killing these two won't tell us. It will only alert the other agents, if there are any."

  "I don't care when you take him out, Maddie," the Major said. "But make sure you do it properly. This man Held is dangerous."

  "Don't worry. Killing people is a Slatter speciality. We're very good at it."

  ***

  Zara's first port of call was the office of the Controller of Ground Transport. He proved quite susceptible to such a charming young lady with a problem that was clearly not of her making. After all, it was not her fault that the Spaceport Authorities had insisted that the Phoenix set down on the far side of the spacefield, nearly three miles distant from the Administration Complex. Why, therefore, did she not accept the loan of an official hovercar to go to collect the medical supplies which had been inadvertently left behind. Zara quickly thanked him and left, promising to return the hovercar to him, personally.

  On board the Phoenix, the systems had been left on stand-by so that they could be reactivated quickly and brought up to full operational status. Zara concentrated on the Comms system and set about establishing a secure link to the Salamander. Sam had completed the earlier research, which Zara had requested, and had sent a list of seven possibilities to her on the Phoenix: seven known Vostovian agents or assassins, whose movements could not be accounted for, around the time of the death of Queen Serena. None of the names matched with the list of Aldebaran passengers which Khan had supplied, but then, no professional assassin would maintain an identity beyond the end of the job for which it had been created.

  The Salamander had gone back into an orbit on the blind side of the sun from Andes, so that finding her and setting up the secure comms
link did not take very long. Zara had herself patched straight through to the main databanks.

  "Sam, I'm going to send you the information which Khan has supplied, on all those joining the Aldebaran at Floreat and at Andes. I want you to cross-correlate it with the results of that earlier research you did for me. None of the names match, of course, but Khan has put in some other detail which you may be able to use."

  She inserted the small optical disc containing the data into the laser reader and typed in the command to send it to the Salamander. After only a few seconds, Sam came back on the air.

  "There's nothing there on a preliminary scan, my lady. I can dig deeper using the medical records but it will take time. How long can you wait?"

  It was a stipulation of the insurance companies handling the Aldebaran and other liners like her, that the medical records of each passenger must be supplied, before that passenger is allowed to board. It was a rule that was strictly observed, and thus provided the various law enforcement agencies with an ideal mechanism for tracking the movements of suspects around the Galaxy. Although in theory, medical records could be altered as easily as any other type of record, in practice, it was very rarely attempted. The basic reason for this was fear: most people, whether criminally minded or not, wanted to ensure that they would receive the correct medical treatment in an emergency and this treatment was determined by the details in their Medical Records. So, unless the alterations were done very skilfully indeed, enough factors would have to remain constant in the records, to allow the type of trace which Sam was proposing.

  "I can't wait, Sam. I have to get back to catch the shuttle. If you come up with anything, you'll have to send me a coded cable on board the Aldebaran. Is that ok?"

  "Of course, my lady."

  ***

  Inside the Terminal building, the four girls watching the entrances, had been having a very boring time of it: nobody even vaguely resembling Stefan Pulowski had turned up at all. Corin arrived shortly before 15:00, having been equally unsuccessful. If their man had been staying at any of the local hotels, he had not been using his real name and none of the hotel staff he had spoken to, could recognise the photograph.

  Pulowski eventually entered the Terminal at 16:40 and went straight to the check-in desk, just beating the one-hour deadline. He checked that the shuttle was on its approach and on schedule, and then retired to the Balcony Bar. Cerys and Brianey had spotted him as he came in to the building and followed him now into the bar. Once they were satisfied that he was sitting alone and not obviously waiting for someone, Cerys left Brianey to watch him, and went to report.

  "We've got him! He's in the bar."

  "Is he alone? Has he spoken to anyone?" Corin asked.

  "No, he's on his own. Bri's keeping an eye on him."

  "You'd better get back there," Zara said. "We'll collect Carly and Tessa and find a spot just outside the bar. We won't all troop in and stare at him but if he makes any contacts at all, we'll be at hand to help you keep tabs on them."

  In the event, the next hour was totally unremarkable. Pulowski sat on his own at the bar. He spoke to no-one except the barman, and gave no sign of recognising anyone either. When the shuttle came in, bang on schedule, he joined the other passengers on the viewing balcony to watch the landing and then returned to his seat at the bar, again without speaking to anyone.

  The shuttle was very nearly full, on landing: 98 passengers were disembarking at Andes, and the unloading of the shuttle took rather longer than normal. When the final baggage cart was loaded and heading back towards the Terminal, the crew of the shuttle emerged and started to follow it. They were about halfway to the building when the alarms in the shuttle went off. The crew spun round as one, dropped their hand baggage where they stood on the field and began sprinting back to the shuttle. A trickle of smoke started to rise out of the open hatchway and the ground crew were scattering in all directions as the alarms were taken up and repeated around the spacefield.

  The crowd in the bar emptied back onto the viewing balcony again as the Spaceport Fire Service came rushing up with their specialised equipment. It looked as though the shuttle pilot had to be restrained from re-entering the shuttle while the firemen hastily donned their breathing apparatus. Four firemen in full gear, disappeared through the hatchway and for a while all visible activity ceased. The trickle of smoke had never increased appreciably and now it faded away altogether. One of the firemen reappeared in the hatchway, opened his face mask and shouted something to the others. It must have been the all clear because the shuttle crew started towards the hatchway, while the firemen began packing away their equipment.

  On the balcony, Zara turned to Corin and slipped a small plastic coated disc into his hand.

  "Get up to the Field Controller's Office and find out what's going on, and if there's going to be a delay. Don't use the disc unless you have to. It identifies you as an agent of the Drug Enforcement Agency, but if you have to use it, say that you have a suspect waiting to board the Aldebaran shuttle. They will co-operate with you: the Andeans hate drug runners."

  "What about our friend here?"

  "I'll stay down here with the girls and keep an eye on him. We may get lucky. The trouble on the shuttle may panic him into making a mistake."

  ***

  The trouble on the shuttle proved to be not as serious as it had first appeared. Jonas Middleton had spent a very worrying few days on the trip from Floreat, trying to think of an equipment failure that would look convincing and would produce the required delay. The difficulty was, that any breakdown had to be repairable with the facilities on Andes but had to be serious enough to take at least six hours to fix.

  Try as he might, Jonas had been unable to think of anything that would fit the bill, and so he had turned his mind instead to the possibilities of a small fire in the passenger compartment. If he managed to judge it correctly, the Fire Service would use foam to put out the blaze. The damage within the compartment need not be very great, but it would take hours to clean away all the foam and make it fit for use again. If he needed any further time, the electrical and control wiring beneath the floor and behind the panelling of the passenger compartment, would have to be thoroughly tested, before the shuttle could be allowed to take off. As a final touch, he had used a lighted cigarette end to ignite a small pile of rubbish beneath one of the seats, thus throwing the blame neatly onto one of the passengers.

  Right now, though, Jonas had to deal with one of the most difficult parts of the whole exercise. He was on a direct visual communication link to Captain Wainwright, who, according to the comms technician who had connected them, had to be scraped off the ceiling when he first heard the news.

  "Why is it all going to take so long? Why can't the wiring checks be done at the same time as the cleaning is going on?"

  "There's only so much we can do from outside the compartment, sir. We need to get in there to remove some of the panelling, and we can't do that until the cleaners have finished. We can't risk traces of foam or cleansing agent getting behind the panels and into the wiring."

  There was a muffled bellowing on the link which continued for several minutes, as Captain Wainwright "discussed" the alternatives with his Navigation Officer. Eventually, he came back to Jonas.

  "Very well, I've given orders to change our course into a parking orbit. Navigation tells me that you will have seven hours 46 minutes to get that shuttle spaceworthy again or I will have to make a second orbit. I do not wish to make a second orbit, Pilot. Do I make myself plain?"

  "Perfectly, sir," Jonas replied, hoping desperately that his contact would arrive within the six hours as he had promised originally.

  ***

  The ship Jonas was waiting for, came in well under the six hours; a small, fast family cruiser. Its flight log had been falsified to show that it came from Namdal, a small system whose virtue as far as this flight was concerned, was that it lay almost on a direct route from Vostov to Andes. The five passengers on the ship a
ll promptly made for the transit lounge to join the others waiting for the shuttle. Jonas watched them crossing the field to the Terminal building and heaved a sigh of relief as he recognised one of the faces.

  Fortunately Corin was still in the Field Controller's Office when the ship touched down, otherwise he might not have noticed the new arrivals. He watched interestedly as the details of the transit passengers came up on the screens, and then hurriedly excused himself to find Zara.

  "We should have noticed that we were five passengers short," she said when he told her. "I suppose they are all scheduled passengers."

  "Oh yes. They're all on Khan's list."

  "Still it is curious. A fire on the shuttle; not serious but enough to delay it. Then this ship arrives with five passengers who would otherwise have missed the connection.

  "I think these five will bear a much closer examination. Let's get a message off to Khan, and ask him to copy the results of the check to Sam, for incorporation into the research I've got underway."

  CHAPTER 13

  For the crew of the Cleopatra, the five day run across to the second rendezvous point was fully occupied with training exercises and rehearsals. It always took a while for a new crew to get used to their ship, not only to find out what the ship itself was capable of, but also to establish their own rhythm to the functions they had to perform. They practised countering the evasive manoeuvre with which the Andromeda lost them before and, once they had mastered that, Mikael had the probe programmed with other evasive manoeuvres, some standard and some unorthodox, and they practised countering those.

  Some of the counter moves which they rehearsed, were the result of some hasty improvisation. With the port laser turret out of action, all the manoeuvres had to be designed to bring the starboard laser to bear, which was not always easy if the target was banking to the left. The damage to the port laser was clearly visible from outside the ship and so it was a reasonable assumption, that any ship attempting to escape from the Cleopatra, would either dive or climb to the left. Accordingly Mikael had them rehearse over and over, a series of turns which would bring the starboard laser to bear in the shortest possible time, whatever evasion the target tried.