Whether the rumor was true or not, he was more than happy to team up with the Ambassador's small group. Even if the Ambassador's two escort ships were only destroyers, they were modern, dedicated military vessels and the firepower that this small fleet possessed was still far superior to any band of pirates they were likely to encounter. The extra security would be a great comfort on the journey ahead.
Davis-Moore had also been informed that the Ambassador was expecting a representative of the Federation Navy to join his group before the big meeting. The merchant glanced at his wrist chronograph. He was to meet another of his merchant contacts in a half hour to discuss the transport of some small but valuable artifacts. He headed for the business district on the fourth ring of the Nexus orbital station.
Chapter 14.
On board the Piedmont Mining Station, Catskill-Soroyan system, December1, 2098.
Deputy Director Hartmann and several of his hand-picked associates were lying in wait. The mining station invaders, cut off from their companions in the departed yacht and unwilling to reboard their shuttle due to the threat posed by two mining ships lying in wait, each of which was equipped with an easily reactivated mining laser, were starting to get desperate. A team of four terrorists, two of them clad in battle armor, were working on opening one of the locked-down hatches that opened into the main corridor on the top level of the station. The two unarmored men of the team were using plasma cutting torches to methodically cut their way inward on the station towards what they knew to be their opposition: the station security team. Having negotiated several hatches, the terrorists had established a routine procedure for their continued invasion of the mining station. Once the hatch was cut and one of the battle armor-clad invaders had kicked it through into the next corridor or compartment, the two armored men would squeeze through the opening where the hatch had been to make sure the area was secure. The two torchmen would wait for the all clear signal, follow through the opening and begin the process of cutting through the next hatch. They had not encountered any resistance.
So far...
As the two armor clad invaders squeezed through into the newly accessed compartment, Hartmann's small but concentrated forces opened fire on them with pulse rifles and pulse pistols, bombarding the invaders with a virtual hail of pulse bolts. This time around though, only four of the ten men with Hartmann were firing at the faceplates of the invaders. Their earlier experience had revealed that though the faceplate was the most vulnerable spot in a suit of battle armor, the faceplates in these modern units were not affected by the pulse weapons the security forces were equipped with. Firing at the faceplates did have the virtue of distracting the men inside the armor from the security team's real targets, however. If the armor was, for all intents and purposes, invulnerable to the Security team's weapons, the pulse rifle that each raider carried was not.
While part of his team hammered at the faceplates of the armored warriors, to keep them off balance, Hartmann and his remaining men concentrated their fire on the pulse rifle that each of the invaders carried. Within thirty seconds, each the rifles had taken three or more direct impacts apiece and it soon became obvious that the weapons no longer functioned. When the armored men had attempted to return fire, they discovered that their guns no longer functioned and had quickly cast them aside. Both invaders immediately began fumbling for their sidearms but the next several volleys of shots targeted the pistols as well. Neither of the two raiders was able to get off a single shot before their pistols were also neutralized. With the enemy's pulse weapons out of the fight, Hartmann put the next stage of his plan to work.
"Gable? Stanford? Fire those riot nets, now!"
Two more of Hartmann's men, who had been lying low waiting for the signal, popped up with standard issue riot net guns which, except for the huge five-centimeter bore, resembled nothing more than a pair of overgrown sawed-off shotguns. Each of them sighted in on their designated target and pulled the trigger. A short, black canister that that rapidly bloomed out into a writhing, coarse- meshed, two-meter square spider web cartwheeled towards each of the disarmed invaders, engulfing them from ankle to neck in less than a second. The bewildered, armor-clad invaders found themselves tangled up in a web of neo-Kevlar fibers embedded with a gooey substance that would stick tenaciously to almost anything, battle armor included. Their motions slowed as the webs automatically retracted. Hartmann was certain he could detect some evidence of panic on the part of the ensnared men as they began to understand the predicament they were in. Hartmann was taking no chances with these still dangerous men, however.
"Again," shouted Hartmann.
Two more spidery nets tumbled out to engulf each of the raiders, restraining any possible movements even further. In the space of two minutes, the heretofore arrogant, invincible soldiers found themselves disarmed, immobile and all but totally helpless. To add insult to injury, each of them was further handicapped when two more of Hartmann's men inverted mop buckets full of hull sealant and slipped them over the enemy's armored helmets. One of Hartmann's other security officers used a device that ran a current through the sealant to harden it. Within two seconds, the mop buckets were bonded firmly in place. They then used the same device on the now fully contracted nets, hardening them in place as well and rendering the soldiers inside completely blind and totally helpless. The remaining invaders had long since fled.
The security team brought in a couple of maintenance carts and, without much regard for the well-being of the men trapped inside the armor, rudely tipped each of their trussed up enemies over on to a cart and wheeled them ignominiously away.
"Good work everyone," Hartman called out. "Now let's lock these guys in the brig and see which one of them wants out of his form-fitted coffin first. They've each got maybe ten hours of air left. I personally don't think it will take that long. Any bets?"
Chapter 15.
"...Heard's World is the fourth planet out from a G1 type star in the outer fringes of the Santana Quadrant. Named after the intrepid explorer, Alexander Heard, it has the distinction of being the only inhabitable planet among several dozen planets that Heard had found and mapped in the sixteen different star systems that his expeditions had discovered.
Heard had been one of the early explorers who, along with his equally intrepid crew, had taken on the important but extremely dangerous task of being the first to try out newly discovered Whitney jump points. Some hyperlink points, like the one located near the Santana Nexus, constitute major hyperspace intersections, connecting as they do with multiple hyperlink destinations. Others, like the one in the New Ceylon/Naccobus system lead to only two or maybe three other links...
...Before the mathematics and the physics of hyperlink points became better understood, men like Heard and his crew went in search of new hyperlink points and then blindly tested them to see where they went. Almost blindly anyway. Heard claimed to have a system for determining whether an untested hyperlink point was safe to jump through or not and, for a time, his system actually seemed to work. Careful analysis of the frequency fluctuations of the gravity waves within the jump point were the key, Heard insisted, and he had designed and created the detectors and the computer programs that could perform this frightfully tricky analysis himself.
Beating all but insurmountable odds, the explorers had discovered Heard's World on the third of a series of these blind macrojump expeditions. He and his crew had then miraculously made more than a dozen additional blind leaps before they finally failed to return. Since about one out every ten jump points leads into the corona or the interior of a red giant star, it is presumed that jumping into such a point was their fate, in spite of Heard's elaborate detection systems. However, more mundane problems, such as a drive failure or some other mechanical issue could just as easily have stranded them a long way from home with no chance of ever returning..."
Their fate remains a mystery...
Hartwell Wrist Comp reference note highlighted for further review by Amanda Steu
ben. Excerpt is from "Pioneers of Space Exploration" by James Anders Boorstin, Curator, Santana Nexus Historical Society Space Museum.
The farmstead of Caleb and Hanna Jordan, near the village of Nazareth on Heard's World, December 2, 2598.
Caleb Jordan was a short, wiry man who wore his long, light brown hair tied back in a ponytail. He was tending a patch of potatoes on his small family farm on Heard's World while he ran down the list of all the things he needed to get done during the rapidly dwindling hours left in the day. Agriculture on this harsh planet, with its violent but predictable monsoons, was a constant challenge and even modest success at producing crops here required a great deal of knowledge and a generous measure of luck. Caleb had found that farming was every bit as complicated as anything he'd had to learn while he had been a weapons tech in the Federation Navy some twenty-five years ago.
His thoughts were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a planetary shuttle and he looked up as the craft whooshed past loudly overhead. He stopped briefly to reflect upon what sort of ill omen a rare visit from an unscheduled shuttle might represent and didn't much care for any of the choices he could come up with. It was a hot day and he mopped his brow with the back of his sleeve.
He silently prayed that the shuttle wasn't bringing bad news.
Heard's World was located out in a remote region of the Santana Quadrant that placed it on the fringes of both Federation and Islamic Alliance space. The Jordans were members of a fundamentalist Christian sect called The Veritian Way (The True Path) and their ancestors had deliberately chosen this isolated and remote planet as their home during the second wave of human expansion. Due to the remote location of the planet, and the relative poverty of its inhabitants, raids by lawless splinter and outright terrorist groups of Islamic, Christian or other loyalties were not common. Due to the lack of any real military presence on the peaceful, agrarian planet, such atrocities were not unheard of either.
Of greater concern, from Caleb's standpoint, was the fact that he and his wife Hanna had just played a major role in thwarting the plans of a small but determined cult consisting of members of the Veritian Brotherhood of Christ Resurgent, a radical splinter group off from the very religious sect that he and his wife belonged to. Perhaps the chances that the Jordans were somehow involved with the shuttle's business were remote but the possibility did remain.
Caleb forced himself to calm down. More than likely the craft was coming in on some business with the planet's Governor, who lived in the nearby village of Nazareth. The shuttle landing area was a good twenty kilometers away from Caleb's farm and with Old Earth horses being the most advanced form of ground transportation for most of the planet's inhabitants, it would be some time before word would get to him, if for some reason he and his wife were involved. One good thing, Caleb reflected, if the people on the craft had meant to cause some kind of personal harm to him or his wife, they could have bombed or strafed him on their way in. At least they hadn't done that! He shook his head as he realized that he had been overreacting and smiled before returning to his farm work.
Caleb's concerns all flooded back as the teenage son of the planetary governor came riding breathlessly up to the Jordan's small holding on a lathered horse a little over an hour after the craft had streaked by overhead. Hanna Jordan, a small, slender woman with a pretty but somewhat careworn face, her graying brown hair worn in a single long braid, came out of their modest home, built into the side of a hill with much of the interior underground, wiping her hands on her apron. The smell of fresh-baked bread followed her out of the door. Caleb had begun heading towards the house as soon as he heard the young man's horse coming up the road. Still carrying his hoe and a little breathless from the short run, he joined up with his wife. Together they confronted the agitated youth.
"Caleb! Hanna!" the young man shouted, still on horseback. "Come quick, there's an emergency back at the village."
"Slow down, Elijah," said Hanna, calmly. "Take a couple of deep breaths and then tell us what the problem is."
Valiantly attempting to follow her advice, the young man took a couple of ragged breaths and then, his agitation blunted only slightly, blurted out his story. "Father says that you need to come quick! One of the crew members of the shuttle that just landed needs a medic real bad!"
"What exactly is the problem, Elijah?"
"I'm not sure, Mrs. Jordan, it's a woman and she's unconscious and her leg is bleeding pretty bad. They called it a 'compound fracture.' They say it was an accident on their ship."
"And they didn't have a doctor."
"I guess not, Ma'am," replied the young man.
"I'll go hook up the buggy, Hanna," said Caleb, heading for their small barn. "Shouldn't take me more than a few minutes."
While her husband went to see about their transportation back to the village, Hanna had the young man dismount and come into the house for some refreshment while she gathered up a few of her medical things. She managed to get a glass of water into him and gave him the heel of a loaf of bread and a chunk of hard white cheese before Caleb came up to the front of the house with the horse and buggy. She gathered up her things and went out to join Caleb in the buggy. The governor's son made as if to join them.
"You've done this task well, Elijah," said Caleb. "Now listen to me! I want you to make sure that horse drinks a bucket of water and she ought to rest for several hours before you ride her again. Besides, I need you to wait here and tell Abner where we've gone. He went to the upper pasture to round up the cattle this morning. He should be back within a couple of hours." Abner was the Jordan's youngest child and though he was only seventeen, he was well on his way to becoming an even better farmer than his father. The Jordans also had a daughter, Rachel, who was in her twenties and married. She and her husband, Lucius, farmed their own spread just a few kilometers away.
"But Brother Jordan..."
"Don't let that horse drink too fast either." Seeing the earnest young man's stricken look, he relented a little. "We need you to do this, Elijah, we aren't sure when we'll be back."
The young man nodded his head.
"Yes, Brother Jordan."
"I'll tell your father you did right well." He clucked at the single horse hitched to the buggy and gave the reins a gentle flick. The two-wheeled wagon lurched gently forward and he and his wife were headed towards the village. Caleb set the horse on a brisk but not torrid pace, he and his wife were not wealthy people and there was no sense in ruining his only horse either.
The two of them made good time and arrived in the village a little over an hour after leaving their holding. They could see the landing shuttle, still radiating waves of heat, out at the landing site about a half a kilometer outside of the small village. A crowd of perhaps twenty people were gathered around the landing area, standing a discrete distance away. The Planetary Governor was among them, looking harried. There was also a pair of strange men in shipboard gear standing apart from the citizens. Caleb drove the buggy right up to the crowd. Caleb's eyes narrowed as he took in the pulse weapons that each of the strangers carried at his hip. The holsters containing the guns appeared to be well worn, as though they had seen heavy use. He took the information in without saying anything but he didn't like the situation at all.
"Where is the injured woman?" asked Hanna.
"We feared to move her," replied one of the men, in a strange accent. "She is still in the landing craft, unconscious."
Hanna grabbed her medical gear and Caleb helped her get down from the wagon. She headed towards the open door of the landing craft with the two crew members trailing behind her. With the crew members temporarily concentrating on his wife, Caleb spoke softly but urgently to the Governor. "These fellows look like trouble to me. Did they say who they are?"
"They said they represent the Sheik of Barsoom, whoever that it is."
"Sheik of Barsoom, eh? Can't say I like the sound of that. Don't do anything foolish, but if something happens to us, get word to Commander Kresge a
nd Lieutenant Harris over at New Ceylon as soon as you can!"
The Governor nodded, his expression serious.
Just then, Caleb's wife called out to her husband from inside the landing craft.
"Caleb? Could you come please? I'm going to need you."
Caleb grabbed the rest of the medical gear off from the buggy and headed for the open door of the landing craft. He was ushered into the passenger compartment where an unconscious woman with what appeared to be a very bloody leg lay on a litter.
"They say there are broken bones," said Hanna, "I'll need the instruments in that bag."
Caleb had barely gotten through the door to the passenger area when he was grabbed roughly and held tightly by the same two brawny crewmen who had greeted them outside. At the same time, Hanna was detained and held securely by yet another crewman who nonchalantly withdrew his pulse pistol from its equally well-worn holster and held it against her head. The "injured" woman sat up and shook out her black hair before stripping the bloody bandage off from her leg and standing up, obviously not injured. The dark eyes in her exotically beautiful face looked the two captives over.
"You are Caleb and Hanna Jordan?" said the woman.
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