After the bitter coldness of the long climb down, the air inside the ops-room seemed stifling and a little claustrophobic. The overhead lighting had been switched off and what little illumination there was came from a row of computer terminals and long range scanning equipment that dominated most of the back wall.
Tobin gestured towards the towering bank of active screens, inviting Blake to step further into the room and examine the technology for himself.
‘I see the Freedom Party has been busy since I left Earth,’ said Blake, a smile on his lips. ‘I’m impressed.’
‘We’ve had no choice,’ Tobin explained. ‘After the escape from Cygnus Alpha, the Federation started systematically tightening up its security procedures across the board.’ He jerked his chin at the terminals in front of them. ‘Without this, most of the Party would have been rounded up and shipped off to the alteration facilities on Pharrox months ago.’
Tobin ran a finger along a bank of red neon switches, slowly snapping each one into the on position. The equipment chattered into life, spewing out columns of non-linguistic data.
‘We’ve been uplinked to the Federation archives for a while now, mostly fishing for encrypted files and military command reports, but this, well…’ he paused. ‘We’ve been trying to get our hands on information about Project Archangel for years. Anything we could find—documents, fleet reports, shipping manifests. But so far, it’s all been rumours and hearsay. I wish I had better news for you, but…’ Tobin shrugged, leaving the sentence hanging in the air, unfinished. ‘That’s why all I could give you was a name. You have to remember I was only a Fleet Officer, Blake. My security rating was strictly limited to Double-A clearance and below. And as far as I can tell, Archangel is off the scale.’
Blake studied him for a moment, then said, ‘Meaning what exactly?’
‘Meaning that this goes higher than I’ve ever known anything go. Whatever this thing is, it was buried a long time ago, and by the High Council themselves. I doubt that either Space Command or Servalan herself knows the full details.’
‘You’re telling me that absolutely no information either directly, or indirectly, linked to Archangel exists within the Federation computer archives?’ Blake asked.
‘Anything that was there has been removed.’
‘So you have no information for me at all?’ Blake asked.
Tobin shrugged. ‘There are rumours.’
‘I need solid facts, Tobin.’
‘The thing about rumours, no matter how wild or fanciful, is that they are almost always based upon a single, irrefutable grain of truth,’ Tobin said. He craned his head conspiratorially towards Blake, his eyes glittering in the artificial light from the computer terminals. ‘Did I ever tell you about the time my fleet was stationed out along the borders of the Callidus system?’
It was meant as a rhetorical question. Blake knew this, so he remained silent, waiting for the ex-Fleet Officer to continue.
‘This was before the colonial uprisings on the inner worlds three years ago, so most of the fleet was billeted to the Outposts along the Callidus border. At the time, the Federation were having a few problems with one of the ore-cracking stations out there. Some young hothead called Kaid was stirring up trouble. Threatening to blow the place sky-high with flutonic bombs unless the Federation withdrew its entire garrison. Something like that, anyway. Typical for those types of communities. So, naturally we’d all been shipped out there and placed on high alert. As it turned out, they didn’t need us in the end. Kaid was killed by one of his own people and his body handed over to the Federation on the understanding that there would be no retaliation if they broke up the protests and returned to work immediately.
‘I don’t know if you’ve ever spent time in one of those Outposts—I’m guessing you haven’t—but there’s really not much to do except hang around the mess halls, play a few hands of Five-Card Jixx, or sleep. Well, I was in the Officers’ Mess one day when I got talking to this pilot navigator called Roth, who confessed to me that he absolutely hated being out there—said the whole system gave him the creeps. An odd thing to say, don’t you think? Not the Outpost, or the planet, but the whole system gave him the creeps. So, naturally, I asked him why. Do you know what he said?’
This time it was clear that Tobin was expecting an answer. Blake thought it over carefully for a moment then shook his head. ‘Tell me.’
‘He said the system was haunted. Can you believe that? He was serious too. Said he knew it was true because he’d seen things with his own eyes.’
‘What sort of things?’ Blake asked.
‘Unexplained occurrences, Roth said. Like the sensors picking up ships that appeared from nowhere, then seconds later simply vanished.’ Tobin clicked his fingers together. ‘Just like that. When he tried to log the reports he was “advised” to forget what he’d seen. He said that people were disappearing too, along with any information about them on the computer systems. It was as if they had never existed. But I didn’t really believe that, not straight away at least. Not until a few months later, when I was reassigned back to Earth. I got a vidcast from my wife, telling me that my son, Sheya, was missing. His ship had docked at the Outpost, but he wasn’t on board. After that I checked every datafile I could lay my hands on, but I couldn’t find even one mention of his name. It was as though he’d never existed.
‘After that I decided to do some digging around, see what I could find on the Callidus system. I did it discreetly, of course. The last thing I wanted was a visit from the presidential guard in the middle of the night, and my body discovered a few days later with a laser bolt in the back of the head. I had to find my boy and I needed to be alive to do it.’
For a moment Blake wondered if that was how it had happened with his own family, if that was how his brother had died. Dragged from his bed in the dead of night and made to watch as they murdered his wife and son, before finally turning the gun on him. A shiver ran through him, despite the stifling heat of the ops-room. ‘Very wise,’ he said at last. ‘Did you find him?’
Tobin shook his head sadly. ‘The only thing I found out there were rumours. Mostly of an ultra-experimental new assault ship, a Stinger Class, that was supposedly being built out in the shipyards on Callidus IX. It was said to be capable of achieving speeds in excess of Time Distort 30.’
‘Time Distort 30!’ Blake repeated, genuinely shocked. He’d been prepared for a great many things, but this took him completely by surprise. ‘But that’s almost three times the speed of a regular Federation pursuit ship.’
‘Yes, I know. There was a word connected with it too, something I heard from one of the Space Majors I talked to out there. He said that they were calling it Archangel.’ Tobin shrugged. ‘Though, as I say, it was just rumours.’
There was a pause as Blake considered the information. At last he said, ‘Thank you, Tobin.’
Tobin shrugged as though he didn’t really deserve it. ‘I can’t see how it will be much help to you.’
‘It’s a lead, at least,’ said Blake. ‘And that’s all I can hope for right now.’
He turned to go, and Tobin put a hand out to stop him. Blake could see that his old friend seemed to be struggling with something, frowning as though he were unsure whether to speak up or not.
After a while Tobin shook his head, seemingly making up his mind. ‘Wait, there’s more.’
Slowly he opened his fingers to reveal a small, black info-slug nestling in the palm of his hand. Light from the nearby computer terminal danced briefly across its tiny surface. ‘This was smuggled out of the Braccus system aboard a civilian hospital ship a few days ago. It contains a single thread of data that the High Council appears to have overlooked. We didn’t notice it at first, as it was practically undetectable on the initial system sweep, but once we’d run it through the encryption filters a few times we started to notice some faint ghosting, particularly on the earlier files. You need to see what we found.’
The info-slug wasn’t
strictly compatible with the equipment in the ops-room, so Tobin had been forced to improvise, modifying an old interface-patch from a Type 1 Federation pursuit ship. It wasn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it did the job. Just about. He clicked the slug into place and a faint shimmering wisp of white smoke drifted up from the connecting lead. Almost immediately the computer terminals jerked into life, the data-stream a little slow at first as it struggled to cope with the erratic bursts of information that surged through the makeshift uplink.
Tobin cycled through an endless barrage of field reports and official communiqué, before stopping on a single page of information. It was a list of names. ‘What you’re looking at,’ he explained, ‘is a list of personnel—mostly scientific, but some military—who have, at one time or another in the last five years, been removed from various top-level projects without any explanations whatsoever, in most cases quite literally overnight. One day they’re there, the next…gone. What is more, none of them have ever been seen or heard of again, although there is no record of their deaths either. All documentation pertaining to their reassignments has been erased from Central Archives. Each of those names have one thing in common—they are all linked to the secret Federation project codenamed Archangel.’ He met Blake’s gaze coolly and nodded towards the screen. ‘Read the list, Blake.’
The list was mostly made up of names that Blake recognised—Doctors Bishov and Ardell of the Federation Space Drive Research Centre, the cyberneticist Keldo, and the neurosurgeon Pellas—but there were a handful that he’d never heard of at all such as the scientists Daines, Fredriks and Sylveste and the cybersurgeon Steinn.
Then he saw it.
At first it didn’t register. The name was quite low down, somewhere near the bottom of the list, and his eyes skimmed across it without a second’s hesitation. Then something clicked inside his head, causing him to stop dead. Slowly his eyes tracked back up the list until he found the name again.
Kodyn Tam—Cybernetic engineer, Grade 2/A.
His first thought was that it was a mistake, an administrative error, or a ghost thread from another file that had somehow become mixed up with this one. He looked up from the terminal screen, his eyes wide with astonishment. Then quickly, he reached for the teleport bracelet on his wrist, thumbed the communication button, and called the Liberator.
CHAPTER THREE
A flotilla of Federation pursuit ships were moving in at extreme sensor range by the time Blake arrived back on the Liberator flight deck.
Zen had been tracking them for several minutes and so far their course had remained unchanged; they were travelling at a steady speed along the edge of the system, probably nothing more than a standard patrol sweep.
‘AT PRESENT SPEED AND COURSE, LIBERATOR WILL BE WITHIN SENSOR RANGE OF THE FEDERATION PURSUIT SHIPS IN 7.5 MINUTES.’
They broke orbit on the far side of the Dionysus, nudging the ship off at a discreet speed, trying their best not to attract attention to themselves. Slowly, the Liberator slipped away towards the asteroid belt, following a direct course out of the sector. All the time they were careful to keep the giant platform between themselves and the flotilla’s sensors.
Blake waited until he was sure they’d shaken off the Federation ships before he told the others about the list Tobin had given him.
‘You mean your old friend, Kodyn Tam?’ Vila asked. ‘The cybernetic engineer? The one who was killed five years ago?’
Avon peered sarcastically at Vila as he settled himself into the co-pilot module. ‘As opposed to the other Kodyn Tam, equally famous throughout the Federation?’
Vila frowned in confusion.
Blake said, ‘Yes, Vila. The one who died five years ago.’
Vila thought about this for a moment before answering.
‘But he’s dead, isn’t he?’ he said.
After that, the rest of the crew decided to leave him out of the conversation and he went back to flicking idly through his deck of cards.
Jenna switched through to autopilot and joined Blake by the seating area at the front of the flight deck. The ship was decelerating now as they reached the edges of the asteroid belt and Zen began to twitter impatiently, lights dancing in time as it awaited further instructions.
‘Orac, I need you to scan the data stored on this device and transfer all information to the main screen.’ Blake slipped a hand into the pocket of his tunic and pulled out the info-slug, cradling it in the palm of his hand. ‘Then I want you to retrieve all available information on Kodyn Tam from Federation archives, with particular reference to the past five years. If he’s alive then I want to know where he’s been and what he’s been doing.’
Orac huffed irritably, but complied none the less.
‘And why hasn’t he contacted you in that time?’ Jenna was looking at the small, black slug that Blake had placed on the sensor plate near Orac, tiny power-lights blinking softly as the information was extracted.
Blake seemed to consider the question for a moment, before nodding towards the device. ‘I’m hoping that Orac will find the answer in the archives.’
‘Why are you assuming that Tam would have any desire to speak to Blake at all?’ Avon spoke without looking up, continuing to examine the control panel in front of him.
His words caused Cally to suddenly stop what she was doing, her hand hovering in front of the console. ‘He was Blake’s friend. Why would he not want to speak to him?’
‘Because it was due to Blake’s negligence that Tam and his family were sent out of the Habitation Dome totally unprepared and completely vulnerable,’ said Avon. ‘Resulting in their capture.’
‘I didn’t know that they were unprepared,’ Blake told him. ‘He assured me he was ready to go. I thought I was doing the right thing.’
That made Avon smile. ‘That’s hardly the point. Even if he is alive, do you really think he has been enjoying the past few years? His wife was killed. His children were taken away from him. The fact of the matter is that without your interference, Blake, none of that would have happened.’
Blake said, ‘Kodyn Tam came to me and asked for my help. He wanted to get away from the Earth and away from the Federation. He wanted his family to be safe. What was I supposed to do?’
They were interrupted by an abrupt electronic cough from Orac, as though it was trying to attract their attention.
‘I have completed the requested tasks,’ Orac announced somewhat pompously. ‘The information is now available.’
‘Let’s hear it, Orac. Everything you’ve got,’ Blake told the computer, though his eyes were still on Avon.
‘Tam, Kodyn. Subject 405/64/2C. Third of four boys. Father: Rafen, Mother: Maree. Raised in the Tertian District of Habitation Dome Three until he was eleven years old, when his father…’
Blake flapped an impatient hand at Orac. ‘Skip forward. Give me details from his supposed death onwards.’
‘According to official Federation files, Tam and his family were caught attempting to pass sensitive documents to an unnamed terrorist cell working in the wastelands outside the Dome. They were arrested and found guilty of sympathising with known terrorists by a Federation court.’
‘Two of those so-called “sympathisers” were his children,’ Blake spat in disgust. ‘The youngest girl was only eight.’
Orac continued, ‘His wife, Lyssa, was killed while resisting arrest, and his daughters Katri and Tala were adopted by a family living in the outer colonies. Tam was later charged with four counts of terrorism and crimes against the Administration and executed three weeks after his arrest.’
‘OK, we’ve heard what the official Federation files have to say,’ Blake turned to look at the streams of data scrolling across the main viewscreen. ‘Now let’s hear the truth, shall we?’
*
The call came through five minutes after Blake had teleported back to the Liberator, just as Tobin knew it would.
He was sitting alone in the darkened ops-room when the comm
unications console trilled lightly, the terminal to his left flashing up a Call Waiting notice in time with the sound. Tobin hesitated a moment, before leaning across and flicking the control to Receive.
A flimsy, holographic projection sprang up on the comms-panel in front of him, the ghost of interference across its skin dividing it momentarily into sparkling crystals of information.
‘It is done?’ The voice rattled through the tiny speaker-grill, prompting Tobin to quickly reach forward and turn down the volume.
Tobin nodded. ‘I have given him the data-slug as you requested. Although what he will do with the information…’ he shrugged, leaving the sentence to hang in the air.
‘Blake will do what he always does.’ The hologram shimmered briefly before returning to dark solidity. ‘That is what I am counting on.’
‘Blake isn’t stupid, you know,’ Tobin hissed. ‘He’ll work out that he’s being set up eventually.’
The hologram smiled, exposing a set of very white, very even teeth. ‘And by that time it’ll be too late, I’ll have him exactly where I want him.’
Tobin leant forward until his nose was mere inches away from the tiny hologram, blue-white light danced and rippled across his face. ‘Then that is it, my part in all this is done.’
In reply the hologram shook its head. ‘No, not yet. There’s just one more thing that I need you to do.’
‘We had a deal,’ Tobin hissed angrily. ‘I pass the information onto Blake and his crew and in return you get my son out of Pharrox.’
‘That is not quite how I remember it,’ returned the hologram. ‘I said if you did the things I asked of you then I would look into getting your son released. Pharrox operates a little differently to normal Federation prison facilities. Perhaps I don’t have the authority that you think I do.’
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