Crystal Deception

by Doug J. Cooper

  “Juice,” said Criss. “Would you help me with a project? I would like to connect directly to the Kardish central array.”

  She jumped at the chance to contribute and keep her mind engaged. Sitting and waiting was driving her nuts. When she reached the tech shop, Criss used her dot to show her what he was trying to achieve.

  The device he proposed could be assembled from the unused parts of their previous projects. She rummaged through the discard pile, picked out the items she needed, and spread them out on the work table. She shuffled the pieces until they were arranged in the proper sequence for assembly.

  With Criss’s guidance, she fashioned a central array interface, a high-throughput communications link, and a power source. She found herself humming, her mind fully consumed by the intricate task. Sid drifted back to watch and stood in silence as she combined the delicate bits into a single small case.

  Criss showed them both a close-up of the Kardish vessel wall near the scout. He pointed out some likely access sites into the central array. Juice would need to run a hand scan at each site to identify the best entry point. She was to cut in and connect the device and then hide or camouflage the case as best she could.

  When Sid understood that Juice would be making the first foray out of the scout, he protested.

  “Sid,” said Criss. “Without this device in place, we are blind. We must send the person who can get it installed properly and quickly.”

  Sid relented. “Juice, this will be dangerous. I feel bad—this isn’t what I promised you when we talked about you coming along. Are you up for it?”

  “Hell, yeah,” she said with much more confidence than she felt.

  Sid held up his mallet. “Know that me and my friend here will have you covered.”

  Juice slipped through the hatch at the bottom of the scout and stood on the deck. Sid reached down and handed her a small pouch with tools and the device. He started to close the hatch and paused. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

  She trotted toward the box-buildings and then turned and followed a road bordering the buildings straight to the hull of the Kardish vessel.

  An overwhelming collection of objects covered the wall in front of her. Criss guided her to the location he believed held the most promise. She pulled the scanner from her pouch and moved it slowly over everything in front of her.

  “Stop,” he said. “Right there.”

  The scanner hovered over a square that looked just like a dozen others near it. She studied the object he’d identified, gripped what seemed like a cover along the edge, and pulled. It released to expose a smooth, dark surface. She couldn’t see any joints or connections.

  “Press the case against the surface, but don’t let your fingers touch it,” said Criss. She did so and, prompted by Criss, slid the case back and forth and up and down. Her efforts seemed to be failing, but finally Criss announced, “That’s it. Just like that. Can you fasten it in place?”

  Holding the case with one hand, she used her other hand and her teeth to fashion a sticky-stick. She put a gentle bend in it and stuck the center of the bend against the back of the case. She pressed her finger on top of the bend so the case wouldn’t move and then, one at a time, folded back the ends of the stick and pressed each against the hull. She pulled her hands away, and it all held together. She snapped the cover back on.

  “We still good?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” said Criss.

  Juice stood by, watching the assembly and waiting for further instructions.

  As the quiet stretched out, Sid asked, “Criss. Are we done?” Criss didn’t respond. “Criss!” Sid repeated with more urgency. “What next?” The silence continued.

  “Juice, get back here.”

  She turned around and saw an open deck. The scout was gone. “Wow, the cloak works great. You’ll have to guide me in.”

  * * *

  Sid focused on getting his partner back safely. “Stick to the road along the edge of the box-buildings. I’ll tell you when to turn.” He was annoyed at Criss for dropping the ball. This was a mission, though—he’d led many operations over the years and took the lead without hesitation.

  Juice trotted along the road, waiting for the signal from Sid, when some commotion behind her caused her to turn. Through her dot, Sid saw a tall, blond Kardish running after her. She froze.

  “Run, Juice,” commanded Sid. He saw the Kardish raise a weapon. “Now, Juice. Run!” he shouted. “Drop the bag. Move your feet.”

  The Kardish yelled something. Juice spun, threw the pouch up over her head, and ran. The Kardish stopped for a moment to watch the pouch arc toward him, giving Juice the seconds she needed.

  “There’s a turn ahead past this building. Turn right. Turn now.”

  He watched through the dot as she glanced down the lane and then sprinted into it. There were box-buildings on either side of her. Alleys branched off in both directions.

  Sid stood up and fumbled his way back to his cabin. He toggled his dot a few times to see his own local view, but he moved mostly by feel and memory so he could stay linked with Juice.

  There was an explosion, and Juice looked over her shoulder. Sid could see an impact crater on the corner building behind her. The Kardish had fired his weapon. The shot was nowhere close to her, but it erased all doubt that the fellow meant business.

  “Glance back,” said Sid. “Let me see.” He saw the Kardish rounding the corner. Pumping his arms and huffing through his mouth, he was outmatched in every aspect of the running game. But a race against energy bolts from his weapon would be no contest. “Take your next right. Go as far as you can and then make another right. Go in a circle. I’m on my way.”

  “Got it.” Her breathing was slow and measured. It gave him hope.

  Sid toggled his dot so he could see his world. He snatched his weapon from beside his bunk. Running through the ship, he slapped it on his wrist as he made his way to the hatch, dropped down to the deck, and sprinted toward the box-buildings.

  “Criss,” he called as he ran. There was no answer.

  He reached the buildings and turned toward the Kardish hull, running along the dividing road in the opposite direction from Juice. He counted alleys as he ran, but realized he didn’t know where she was relative to him. He stopped, crouched down, and toggled to see through her dot.

  She was still running. “How many turns have you made?” he asked. He watched the scene shift as she turned into another alley.

  “That’s my third,” she said. “I couldn’t make it to the far end. I’m two alleys short. I can see the open deck ahead.”

  “Can you make it?”

  “Easy. This guy is no runner.”

  “When you reach the open deck, turn right again and keep going along the road. You’ll see me standing here. Prepare mentally for that. Run right past me and turn into the alley behind me. Hide somewhere and wait.”

  He watched through her dot as she ran. He could see that he had time before she would reach the end, so he rose, ran farther up the road, and crouched near where she would emerge. He held his arm up and pointed his weapon. Then he saw her. She popped out of an alley farther down from where he expected. He rose and sprinted in her direction.

  As their distance closed, he saw that her face was calm, her stride was easy, and her pace was fast. Sid was impressed. As she zipped by, he told her, “We’ve lost Criss. It happened when you connected that box.”

  He turned his attention ahead. Once Juice was safely past, he stopped and waited. The alien came huffing around the corner. He was struggling from the exertion and didn’t have much run left in him. Sid put a shot in his chest and ended his misery.

  Dragging the dead Kardish back into the alley, Sid shoved him into a recess and returned to the road, moving at a fast trot down to the next alley. He rounded the corner and saw Juice standing there. She was completely still. A Kardish had his arm around her neck. He held a weapon to the back of her head.

  Chapt
er 28

  Jack snapped awake. It took him a moment to orient himself. He checked the time and saw that he’d been asleep for several hours. Creeping out to the edge of the hideaway, he peeked into the alley, studying up one way and down the other. Nothing. He stood and walked to the back of the gap. Cheryl still leaned against Cait, and they were still asleep.

  He removed his hood and squatted down. “It’s Jack, Cheryl. Rise and shine.” Her eyes popped open, and she registered recognition. She rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  “How’re we doing?” she asked, sitting up straight.

  “So far, so good.” He pulled the large pack over next to her and opened it so she could get at the food and water.

  He stepped over and crouched in front of Cait. He looked at her, shook her shoulder, and then leaned forward to study her face. Sighing, he reached out and felt for a pulse in her neck. There was none. Her skin was cold. He’d seen enough death in his time, and his com confirmed what he already knew.

  He lifted Cait’s hands and held them in his. Tilting his head forward, he said something under his breath.

  “What’s the matter?”

  He stood up and looked away. “Say your good-byes. We have to move.”

  While Cheryl fussed over Cait, Jack dumped the gadgets and devices from his ghost pack onto the ground. He put back a couple of items, including two of his three remaining demolition squares, then filled the rest of the pack with food and water and assembled everything they were leaving behind around Cait. He meant it as a symbolic ritual of remembrance. He placed his third demolition square into her hands and folded them in her lap.

  He helped Cheryl to her feet. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m ready,” she said in a somber tone. Looking down at Cait, she added, “I hate these bastards. I really hate them.”

  He shouldered the ghost pack, reached up, and pulled down the cloak sheet from its perch overhead. Cheryl shook it, held it up, and saw it was showing smudges here and there. It was becoming more like camouflage than an invisible shroud. She wrapped it around herself.

  Pausing at the exit, Jack toggled his speck from urgent mode back to normal conversation. “Let’s go ruin their day,” he said as they walked into the alley together.

  They made their way to the edge of the box city and stood concealed in shadow. Jack remained quiet while Cheryl evaluated the expanse in front of them. He listened while she described what she saw, and her observations and conclusions matched his.

  Her eyes were drawn to the huge hangar doors in the hull of the vessel overhead. “We need to get out of here.”

  He looked at her.

  “You know how we get rid of vermin on Fleet cargo ships? We open the hold to space. Cold vacuum is a great way to kill everything.”

  He looked up and considered the hangar doors, seeing them in a new light. “You think they’d do that to us?” He pointed down a long corridor between two rows of drones. “This brings us to the dividing wall and hopefully a way out. The good news is that being hidden between big structures gives us plenty of cover. The bad news is that if they figure out where we are, it’ll be easy to trap us.” He stepped out from the concealment of their shadow. “Hold for a moment. Let me check for all clear.” He took a few steps, then stopped and scurried back. “Looks like we’re done walking.”

  She leaned out and peered down the road. A cart was approaching.

  Jack stood close to Cheryl and waited. He spent those moments deciding that he was no longer interested in keeping a running tally of the body count—the entire vessel didn’t have enough Kardish to balance the score.

  “This one’s for Cait,” he whispered when the cart rolled in front of them. Taking quick steps out of the shadows, he broke into a run behind the cart, lifted his arm, and shot the driver. The cart drifted to a stop. He pulled the alien onto the ground and dragged him to the nearest cover.

  “Your chariot awaits, chérie,” he said as he sat where the driver had been. He waited as she climbed in next to him. He reached over and helped her adjust the cape to maximize her cover, though he suspected that, at this point, such details didn’t really matter. The sight of an unauthorized cart driving among the drones would be enough for the Kardish to shoot first and never think about asking questions.

  Before he started driving, he opened his ghost pack and removed a small box. “Good-bye, Cait.” He touched the box. There was a tremendous explosion in the distance, and the deck of the Kardish vessel shook beneath them. Almost immediately, there was a spectacular secondary explosion. A pillar of flame thrust upward.

  “Holy hell,” said Cheryl, watching the flame mushroom out into a ball. As it dissipated, she added, “Whatever we were sleeping next to was powerful stuff.”

  Jack drove the cart between two rows of the drone parking garage. The cart’s top speed wasn’t as fast as he’d have liked, but at least the deck was flat and the ride was smooth. As they rode along, Jack set off another charge. This one didn’t trigger a secondary explosion, but it was impressive in its own way as the sharp bark of the detonation ricocheted throughout the open area of the vessel.

  The drive was nerve-racking as column after column of cubicles, each holding its own drone, passed by on either side. They were anxious to complete their passage as quickly as possible and fearful they’d be attacked at any moment. Halfway to the dividing wall, Jack set off the third demolition square. This one caused a secondary explosion that rivaled the first. They didn’t stop to watch.

  They were purring along, lost in their own thoughts, when Jack asked, “Where’s the alarm? Why no fire or emergency personnel?”

  “You know one of the most effective ways to extinguish fires and clear smoke out of a ship?”

  When she phrased it that way, Jack knew the answer. Vacuum. He looked up at the hangar doors and this time saw them as threatening jaws preparing to rip the life out of them.

  They mercifully made it to the end of the long drone corridor, and Jack kept driving straight at the wall.

  “Do you see a doorway?” His eyes scanned side to side in a desperate attempt to outrun what seemed like an ever shortening time table. The wall drew close, and Jack chose to turn right. They continued along, solid wall to one side and rows of drones to the other. “Somewhere along here there’s got to be a way to get people and carts in and out.”

  “There,” said Cheryl, pointing ahead, then Jack saw it, too. A doorway. He slowed as they drove by and gave it a quick visual inspection. “That’s our ticket,” she said.

  He stopped the cart. “I’m going to park. Wait for me here.”

  Cheryl stepped out and watched him drive the cart back to the nearest row of drones. When he reached the structure, he slowed down and slanted the cart into the first ground-level cubicle. He drove at a severe angle to the drone, catching it on its edge, then accelerated and was able to shove the craft to one side. He backed up and drove forward into the small space he’d created, the cart scraping and squealing as he forced it forward between the drone and the cubicle wall. Climbing out over the back of the cart, he viewed his handiwork, satisfied that most of the vehicle was hidden inside the compartment. He hoped it would buy them more time.

  He joined Cheryl and studied the doorway. Given all the Kardish technology around them, the door certainly must have a mode that would cause it to open automatically when approached, but it wasn’t functioning for them. He spied a small lever on the door at waist level and pulled on it, but the door didn’t open. He tried moving the lever left and then right, pulling each time, but it wouldn’t budge. Stepping back, he scanned the outline of the frame and then shook his head as if to acknowledge his stupidity. He lifted the handle and pushed. The doorway swung wide.

  With his foot propping the door open, he touched the detonation box and blew the final charge. They both turned to watch the explosion, but the drone garage blocked their view. The thunderous sound was pleasing enough.

  As the echo of the explosion fad
ed, their attention was pulled to a grinding noise overhead. They looked up to see mechanisms moving on the giant hangar doors. A whistle became a howl as ever greater volumes of air rushed out through a widening gap in the hull. They stepped through the doorway in the dividing wall and shut the door behind them.

  * * *

  Cheryl rushed to the left toward a rack of pipes. Jack ran straight, heading for the cover offered by a series of columns. They saw they were moving in different directions and both switched destinations to join the other.

  Before it became a silly dance, Cheryl stopped moving and pointed. “Let’s go for the pipes.” She turned and dashed for her original target.

  The crisscross of pipes and ducts had a familiar industrial appearance. After they’d climbed several layers deep into the maze and stopped to assess their situation They couldn’t detect any pursuit. Well hidden by the tangle of equipment, their location’s one disadvantage was its limited view of their surroundings.

  Cheryl could see enough to appreciate that this section of the Kardish vessel was different from where they had just been. The Alliance had passed through here, so the open area in front of them was undeniably huge. Yet compared to the previous section with the drones and box city, the open space here was much smaller. The expanse was narrowed on each side by partitions that ran along the length of the ship. The featureless partition walls offered no clues as to what might lie behind.

  “Any ideas on what’s going on in this place?” Jack asked.

  She patted the huge pipe they were resting against. “At least some of this stuff would be in our operations bay. I’d need to see more to know, though.”

  “What’s your take on that city of box-buildings?”

  “I’m thinking that was the infrastructure for their military machine. With a couple hundred thousand drones, it would take a lot to keep them operational. They’d need maintenance and repair. Spare parts. Factories to build weapons. Warehouses to store them. They’d need fuel.” She shrugged. “Let’s face it. War is big business.”