Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1)

by David Alastair Hayden

  Not wanting to wake Kyralla, she thought the message she wanted to leave him. Artemisia would translate into her voice.

  “Daddy, are you okay? We’re safe, but some very bad things have happened, and we’re in danger. Contact me as soon as you can, and be careful. My secret’s out. We’re going to try to come to you, so if you can’t get in touch and we’re not here, you’ll know we’ve fled elsewhere.”

  Oona swallowed and bit her lip. “Daddy…I hope you’re okay. I love you.”

  She ended the connection. She knew she shouldn’t have contacted him directly, but she’d had no choice. She couldn’t stand the worry any longer. And the government channels ambassadors used were all highly encrypted.

  “I’m sure he’s okay, madam. You know he never answers if he’s in a meeting.”

  “Thank you, Artemisia. Wake me if he calls.”

  She curled up against her sister, and the first of many tears flowed down her cheek.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Siv Gendin

  “Sir, wake up.”

  Siv opened his eyes to a dim room. The overhead lights burned a faint orange color that gradually brightened. It was still dark outside. Dawn was over two hours away. Six hours of sleep… He could’ve used a dozen. But they needed to move, and leaving under the cover of darkness would be safer. Besides, he didn’t want to sleep away what little of his life remained.

  As he sat up, the shakes hit him. Or the zaps as he liked to think of them. It was like an electric shock running up his spine. He shivered and his head twitched hard to the side. After only four pulses the episode abated. He sighed deeply. It could’ve been worse.

  “Ask Kyralla to come in. I need to…tell her something before we get going.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Head pounding, he downed two Pain-Free pills. He nearly dropped the water glass as he returned it to the nightstand. His fine motor skills were already eroding. Clumsily buttoning, zipping, and tying on his combat gear, he got dressed.

  A tentative knock sounded on the door. He opened it and smiled weakly at Kyralla. She looked more exhausted now than she had at dinner.

  “You need something?”

  Siv took in a deep breath and summoned his courage. This was going to be hard. In some ways harder than facing death itself. “Kyralla, I’m bequeathing Silky and all my equipment to you.”

  “Sir, what?!”

  “Wh-what?” Kyralla stammered.

  “When I die, someone needs to take Silky, and you’re the obvious candidate. With him and my sensor array and the rest of my gear, you’ll be better able to defend Oona. You’re going to need all help you can get, and Silky’s the best. He’s saved my ass more times than I can count. You can pass Rosie to Bishop. That’s a big upgrade for him.”

  “Siv, I don’t think now’s the time to—”

  “It has to be now. Every piece of gear I own is locked to my DNA. My father saw to that as he passed away. And there’s absolutely no getting around it. The military didn’t want any of this gear to fall into enemy hands, so they enabled a nearly uncrackable locking system. You can only bypass it with a command override.”

  A puzzled look came over her face. “So how is it that your father could use the gear? Someone in the military wouldn't turn this kind of equipment over to an archeologist, would they?”

  “Silky doesn’t remember. My dad locked that information away, along with everything else he discovered and experienced.”

  Kyralla nodded. “I’m…I’m honored that you would choose me…”

  “I’m less than thrilled, sir.”

  “But are you sure I’m the best choice?”

  “You’re the warrior.”

  “Alright then. What now?”

  “I’m not keen on this, sir.”

  “Would you rather sit around forever with nothing to do?”

  “Obviously not, sir.”

  “Then it’s settled. Don't worry, Silkster, I’m sure you’ll get used to her. Besides, that precog thing could be—”

  “A pain in my ass, sir. Fine. Let’s get this moving. Time’s wasting.”

  Siv smiled at Silky’s grumpiness as he put on his combat gloves and held out his hand.

  “Give me your hand.”

  She placed her right hand in his. His heartbeat picked up, feeling her touch, even through the protective mesh of the gloves. He had so little time left, if only he could spend some of it… He took a deep breath and focused his mind.

  “We just need to match your DNA profile to the equipment.”

  “You can take a sufficient sample like this?”

  “Sensors in the gloves.”

  “Got it, sir.”

  Siv held her hand a little longer.

  “I said I’ve got it, sir.”

  “I heard you.”

  He released her hand and nodded. “You’re all set.”

  They stared awkwardly at one another for a moment.

  “Siv…thanks…I…” She chuckled. “I’m not really good with people. I spend too much time alone or with Oona. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Neither do I,” Siv replied. “Why don’t we go get some breakfast and make sure everyone else is—”

  “Sir! My level five scan is picking up imminent threats.”

  “We’ve got incoming!” Siv said. “Get Oona to the skimmer car.”

  Kyralla ran out of the room, shouting the alarm to everyone.

  “What’re we facing?”

  “Eight armored personnel skimmers inbound, sir. APS Hammer Strikes with railguns and slug-throwers. Twenty combat-armored soldiers in each. Terran Federation. Ekaran IV First Division.”

  “Vector?”

  “They’ve formed an eight-pointed star, sir. And we’re at the center.”

  Siv grabbed his neural disruptor. “That’s just peachy.”

  “Now detecting a Dagger Fist strike-fighter overhead.”

  The strike-fighter was similar to a starfighter in design, only a little smaller and not equipped for spacefaring.

  Siv ran out into the main room where Mitsuki was waiting on him. Kyralla and Oona had just darted into the garage.

  “The Dagger Fist has a missile lock on the farmhouse, sir. And its plasma cannon is armed.”

  “What’s going on?” Mitsuki asked with worry.

  “We’re surrounded.”

  “Fracked is more like it, sir.”

  Chapter Forty

  Siv Gendin

  Siv caught Mitsuki up on the situation as they ran into the garage…where they found the skimmer car partially disassembled and tangled in a web of wires with various parts scattered about. The old, beat-up skimmer truck parked next to it had been stripped down and looked like a corpse with its guts hanging out.

  Karson, smeared with grease and scored with electric burns on both arms and one cheek, glanced numbly at them, then leaned over into the front of the skimmer with the hood propped precariously over his head. He muttered something about converter arrays.

  Kyralla and Oona stood awkwardly to one side, their faces frozen in confusion.

  “Shit,” Siv cursed, his heart fluttering uneasily. “We’re so screwed.”

  “We’ve got to buy time, sir.”

  “Enable the phantom emitter to show the house rigged with explosives. If you could show several more people here with a better armament, that would be helpful.”

  “The phantom emitter is now showing significant explosives armed within the house, sir. That’s the test routine we used seventeen months ago. For that other stuff to work, I needed advanced warning. If I launch a bad signal, then they’ll see through the entire ruse faster.”

  Properly calibrated, the phantom emitters could trick sensor sweeps, giving false readings. The device Siv had installed here was finicky, difficult to fine-tune, and had been hard to acquire. Siv had hoped to put phantom emitters in all his homes, but had given up after it took two weeks of fighting this one to get it working. Too bad Karson hadn’t had a
chance to—

  “Karson!” Siv yelled. “What the hell, man?!”

  As Bishop dug his way out from the engine, Mitsuki shrugged. “It doesn’t make any difference.”

  “Why not?” Kyralla asked. “How else are we going to get out of here?”

  “Not by driving out,” Mitsuki said. “Not right now.”

  “She’s right, sir.”

  “What? Oh. Yes, of course. But, look what he's done to my car!”

  If Silky could roll his eyes, Siv sensed that he would now. "Priorities, sir.”

  “So how are we going to get out?” Kyralla snapped at Mitsuki.

  She shrugged. “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  Mitsuki was composed, her voice confident. But Siv knew her well enough to see the signs of nervousness in the twitch of her mouth and the way she suddenly didn’t seem to know what to do with her hands.

  “Siv, what exactly is going on out there?” Kyralla asked.

  For the first time, Bishop seemed to comprehend everyone else’s urgency and worry. “Is something wrong?”

  Siv rolled his eyes and explained everything.

  Bishop nodded, and dove underneath the car, muttering faster now.

  “So we’re trapped?” Oona asked softly.

  “There’s no getting out of this,” Kyralla said. “Having the best extraction agent or not, we’re going to get captured.”

  Mitsuki scowled. “Don’t count me out yet.”

  “If you’re going to do something, then you’d better do it fast,” Siv told her.

  She chewed at her lip a moment, then her eyes lit up. “I’m not doing anything, Siv. You are. Contact them. Tell them the girls are your hostages and that you’re an extremist. Then promise to kill them unless your demands are met.”

  “So you want me to stall for time?”

  Bishop poked his head out from under the car. “Yes, stall.” He went back to work without explaining himself.

  “Okay…” Siv said. “What if they don’t care? What if they’re just here to—”

  “Either it works or it doesn’t,” Mitsuki said.

  “Great,” Kyralla muttered.

  Mitsuki scowled. “Look, I’m not going to lie to you. Getting out of this is basically impossible. To have a chance, we need time to find a weakness we can exploit. An opportunity will present itself at some point. We just need to be ready to take advantage of it.”

  “That’s all we can do?” Oona asked.

  Mitsuki nodded. “Guns blazing gets us killed. And yeah, that might happen anyway. The stall might not work. But I think it’s a good bet that government troops will be measured in their response and take the time to try to get it right. If Siv pulls it off, we could get anywhere from fifteen minutes to several hours to work with.”

  “Silkster, can you open a channel to the government forces?”

  “Easily, sir. They still use secure frequencies from my days as a special forces chippy. Which is kind of pitiful, you know.”

  “I need a fake identity—something fast and decently plausible. I know we don’t have enough time for airtight, so make it hard to verify.”

  “No worries, sir. Last night I researched anti-Benevolence extremists on other worlds, in case you needed to pose as one.”

  “Silkster, you’re the best. And I can’t believe you thought to do that. That’s a hell of a play, guessing that I’d need to pose as an extremist!”

  “I’m a smart chippy, sir. But it wasn’t a guess. I also researched fundamentalist Benevolence worshipers. Running around with a messiah, I figured fake ID’s of either group could prove useful. Besides, both groups could end up as players in all this. And I like to know my enemies ahead of time, if possible.”

  The data for Siv’s alternate identity popped up on the screen as the audio channel squawked to life. Silky had altered the public appearance record of the man to match the preset on the only good face disguise Siv had left.

  “Channel opened, sir. Colonel Nines on the line.”

  “Who the hell is this?” a gruff man barked. “And how in the hell did you patch into this channel?”

  “My methods and sources are my own,” Siv replied. “I am Telmar Togs, and if you don’t back off, I will kill these two girls.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Their blood will be on your hands then.”

  Siv closed the channel.

  “How’s it going?” Mitsuki asked.

  “We’ve entered the handshake phase. I expect to exchange pleasantries very—”

  “Incoming call, sir. Colonel Nines on the line. Shall I patch Mitsuki in so she can listen?”

  “Yes, do so.”

  “Patched in, sir.”

  “Colonel,” Siv said.

  “What do you want, Togs?”

  “For starters? Respect.”

  “I have none to give. Look, if you are who you say you are, then why haven’t you killed them already?”

  “Because…”

  “Martyrdom, sir.”

  “Because I didn’t want to make her a martyr to the Benevolent cause. Give me a chance to publicly discredit her claims and I’ll gladly turn myself in.”

  “And your compatriots?”

  “Likewise.”

  “And how will I know that you won’t kill her after you’ve discredited her?”

  “Shift the burden of the decision to him,” Mitsuki said.

  “Well, Colonel…I don’t know. This wasn’t my original plan. I had intended to escape and do this on my own terms at my leisure. You’ve spoiled that.”

  “Sir, the Hammer Strikes have pulled to a stop within attack distance. The Dagger Fist is hovering above us.”

  “Here’s what I propose, Togs. You have fifteen minutes to turn over the girl. After that, we’re storming in.”

  “I’ve rigged the place with explosives, Colonel. So be my guest.”

  There was a long pause before the Colonel responded. “Okay, Togs. Give me a few minutes to work out a solution.”

  The channel closed.

  “So far so good,” Mitsuki said. “How long do you think the phantom emitter will fool them?”

  “On our tests it took Silky three minutes using a level four scan to figure it out, so I think they’ll crack it in ten to fifteen. But maybe we’ll get lucky and it will take them a lot longer.”

  Bishop slid out from under the car, grease dripping from his horns. “You’ve got a phantom emitter?!”

  “Yes, and what the hell have you done to my car?! I told you to fix one thing. One thing. And to have it done by now!”

  Bishop winced. “I know, I know. And I’m very sorry. But if you give me fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, I can have everything working. Speed boost, shimmer veil, force field, all of it.”

  Mitsuki raised an eyebrow. “Explain.”

  Bishop started to tell her everything, but Siv shooed him back to work. Then he told them about the car's extra features that he hadn’t known about.

  “Well, that’s one break,” Mitsuki said. “The force field could block a shot or two as we escape.”

  “That’s not enough,” Kyralla said.

  “No,” Mitsuki admitted, “but it does give us wiggle room. Whatever plan we come up with, if we can, won’t allow any room for errors. I’m one hundred percent certain that whatever we do, a couple of shots are going to come our way.”

  “Oh,” Bishop said, popping his head back out. “I’m going to need that phantom emitter.”

  “It’s busy right now,” Siv said.

  “You can move it while it’s working. That shouldn’t affect how it functions at all. And I can make good use of it.”

  “Explain,” Mitsuki said.

  “Well—”

  Siv shooed him again. “Tell us as you work.”

  “If we calibrate it correctly, or rather if Silky can since he knows military channels, I could set it to scramble all their sensors with a single data burst. It would throw off their scans and their targeting—
I think—for thirty seconds, maybe a minute. That might just give us a window to escape.”

  Mitsuki leaned over and looked under the car. “I think I underestimated you, little guy.”

  Bishop grinned and went back to work.

  “Sir, I can’t process a calibration that complicated in less than fifteen minutes. We can only stall them so long, and I suspect I’d need an hour to get it right. Even my capabilities are limited.”

  Siv explained the problem.

  “So we link all our chippies together, to multiply the processing power,” Bishop said. “Silky upgraded Oona and Kyralla’s chippies, mine too, so there certainly shouldn’t be any problem linking with theirs.”

  “You upgraded their chippies?”

  “No time to explain, sir.”

  Siv set off. “I’ll get the emitter while I wait for the Colonel to—”

  He only made it three steps before he collapsed, his entire body convulsing. His heart rate and body temperature spiked. Stabbing pains stormed through his body, and his eyes felt like they were going to burst. He couldn’t see, and he struggled to breathe.

  Amidst a wave of static, a voice came to him over audio. “Togs, I have a proposal,” Colonel Nines said.

  Siv tried to make a basic response using Silky to project his voice, but he couldn’t focus enough even for that. His HUD was flickering. The seizure he was having was actually interrupting his connection to Silky.

  “Did you hear me, Togs?”

  Siv couldn’t respond.

  “Damnit, Togs, if I don’t hear from you in the next twenty seconds, we’re coming in!”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Mitsuki Reel

  “Silky, can you hear me?” Mitsuki asked.

  “I read you, madam.”

  “Patch the Colonel through to me.”

  “Done.”

  “Colonel, this is…” Shit. Mitsuki hadn’t had a chance to come up with a persona. She’d just have to make something up. “This is Tan Koral. Togs is indisposed at the moment.”