Traitor's Duty

by Richard Tongue

   “I don’t know what your business is, but I know mine is a damn sight more urgent.”

   “So, you’ve hired a hitman,” the man said to Lilith. “My people are tougher.”

   With a sigh, Logan said, “We don’t have time for this,” and fired, the man falling limp where he stood. “Tranq dart,” he said to Lilith. “New issue. I guess you can have someone take this piece of trash out.”

   “He’s from the local Mafia,” she said. “Do you know what you just did?”

   “Cut out the crap?” he replied. “Look, never mind these petty underworld rogues, I need your help, and I need it right now.”

   Fury leaping across her face, she said, “You probably just cost my staff and I their lives, Logan, and you need my help?”

   “That depends if you want the Confederation to fall to a military coup and a Cabal fleet to swoop through here destroying everything that moves or not. If that’s fine with you, I’ll go.”

   Visibly deflating, she replied, “What’s going on, Logan?”

   “It’d take me too long to explain right now, but I’ve got to get back to Mars, and I need to do it in a hurry. You must have a ship around that can take me back. I’ll pay – once I get the Intelligence accounts open again.”

   “You’ve been quarantined?”

   “I think my boss has taken an executive decision to sit this one out.”

   Shaking her head, she replied, “Things are getting bad, Logan. All this security activity is doing very bad things for my business.” Pointing at the drifting figure, she said, “He was here to collect a quarter million credits, or repossess the bar, whichever came first. Probably both.”

   “Lilith, I’m sorry.”

   “Not your fault. It was inevitable that someone would start paying attention to the station eventually; the good times couldn’t last forever. Though that bastard Watson’s made things a lot worse. Why did you leave him in charge?”

   “You’ve got an inflated idea of the influence I wield, especially at the moment, but that at least has been dealt with. Don’t you have any way of getting me to Mars? Any contacts?”

   “With all the fleet ships that have been back and forth here lately? The only people moving in here are too damn honest. Or they’ve been infiltrated themselves by your bad guys. I presume Watson was one of them. The only smuggler that’s still operating left yesterday, and didn’t have any of my cargo on board.”

   “Damn,” he replied.

   “Can’t you get a ride back in that shiny battlecruiser of yours?” She shook her head, and said, “You didn’t even say goodbye.”

   “I never had a chance! One of my friends had almost been killed, and…,” he paused, took a breath, and said, “Look, I’ve got to get to Mars now. Alamo can’t jump for five days, but I can be there in plenty of time. We’ve got to move on this before it is too late.”

   Looking around the room, Lilith said, “I need to know something.”

   “What?”

   “That you’ll help me get past the consequences of this. That you’ll make it good. I’ll trust that you’ll find a way, but I want your word on this.”

   “I don’t let my friends down,” he replied. “Which is pretty much how I got into this mess.”

   “That makes a crazy kinda sense.” She tapped a control on her desk, and said, “Harry, we’re closed. Get all the customers out, and do it right now. Tell everyone except you, Boris, Janet and Clyde to go to their quarters; they’ll find their next three months’ pay deposited in their accounts when they get there.”

   “Boris is working for you now?” Logan asked.

   “Watson fired him, insubordination or something like that.”

   “Right, boss,” a tinny voice replied. “Does this mean what I think it means?”

   “It does,” she said. Turning off the communicator, she looked up at Logan and said, “Come on. Let’s go to my quarters.”

   “Do we have time for this?”

   With a smile, she replied, “Men. All the same. Trust me, I have an ulterior motive.”

   “Wait a minute,” he said. “I’ve got someone else coming.” He tapped a control on his datapad, and an image of Esposito flashed up on the screen. “Make sure she’s let in when she arrives.”

   Lilith glanced down at the face with a brief glare of irritation, and reached over to tap a few controls, sending the image and instructions to her bartender. That done, she drifted out of her office, gracefully swinging from handhold to handhold to the forward section, and opened the door to her quarters with a passcode she took care to ensure Logan didn’t see. The hatch slid wide, and the two of them drifted in, looking at the huge viewscreen that filled a wall.

   “Over there,” she pointed, “You’ll find systems control. Start turning everything on, and tell me if we get any red lights. I’ll start feeding power to the primary feeds.”

   He looked at her, eyes wide, and said, “This is crazy, even by my standards.”

   “This bar was originally a United Nations scoutship, remember. I always made sure to keep everything maintained, including the hendecaspace drive – and in direct contravention of security protocols, it’s even fueled up for a single jump. I always thought I might need a get out of jail card one day, and I guess that day has come.”

   Logan pushed over to one of her tables, taking the cover off to reveal the control station below. The systems were archaic, decades out of date, but as he started to run the power-up procedures, everything seemed to be working properly, one step after another winking green to confirm activation.

   Boris drifted in through the far door, the engineer still wearing his battered uniform jacket, and said, “Logan? Might have known you’d be involved in all of this.”

   “Is everything ready?” Lilith asked.

   “Sure, Cap’n,” he replied. “I’ve prepped the seals to pop when we give the word, and the airlock is sealed. We don’t have any passengers on board, just the five of us.” Frowning, he replied, “That’s not many people for a dimensional transit.”

   “We don’t have time to recruit a crew.”

   “One thing we can do,” Logan said, opening a communications channel. “Logan to Lieutenant Race. You there, Pete?”

   The voice of Alamo’s astrogator replied with a yawn, “What’s going on? Do you know what time it is?”

   “Time for you to do something for me. I need a course from here to Mars, to Titov Station, calibrated for ninety-eight minutes from now.”

   “Ninety-eight...never mind, I’ll get on it right now, feed it through your datapad.”

   “Thanks. Much appreciated.” He looked up at Lilith, and said, “Astrogation, oddly enough, is not one of my talents. It’d be better for us to end up at the right place. I figured Titov rather than Mariner, a hell of a lot less traffic.”

   “Fine by me,” Lilith said, tapping a control. A series of lights flashed on, and the room now looked a lot more like the bridge it once was, wall panels flickering on, readings spilling out across the viewscreen, the focus switching to the hendecaspace point. “We’re not going to get any pursuit, are we?”

   “Not from Alamo,” Logan replied. “We’re going to surprise the hell out of everyone, though.” Looking down at his station, he said, “All power systems look good at my end.”

   From the rear, Boris said, “Hendecaspace drive is primed, ready to go. We just need to know where we’re going. Where are we going?”

   “Mars,” Logan said. “I’ll explain later.” Turning to Lilith, he said, “You don’t have to go this far. I’ll think of something else.”

   “Little late for that now,” she said. “Don’t worry, I was thinking about changing my base of operations anyway. That’s why I hired Boris, I wanted someone to do an overhaul of the systems, make sure they were all working.”

   “Are they?” Logan asked Boris.

   “The
ones I checked. I’m only about half-way through.”

   “Great,” he said. “Just great.”

   “Clyde here,” a voice loaded with a heavy burr said over the ceiling speaker. “The woman Logan was waiting for has arrived. Should I send her up?”

   Looking at the status monitors, Boris said, “We don’t have time, and you’re going to need the help with the internal engineering relays.” Looking at Logan, he asked, “She does know some engineering, right?”

   “Just the usual basic training.”

   “That’ll have to do.”

   “Stand by to undock, then,” Lilith said. “Logan, that’s you.”

   “Out of purely academic interest,” Logan replied, “What’s this going to do to the rest of the station? This bar...ship...has been docked here for years.”

   “Probably nothing much,” she replied. “The maintenance gangs will have to spend a few days tidying up, but I don’t think the integrity of the station itself will be compromised.” With a smile, she asked, “Cold feet?”

   “I’d really prefer to not destroy the station on our way out if we can help it,” he said with a levity he didn’t feel.”

   “Relax,” Boris said. “It’ll be fine. I’m far more worried about whether this ship will fall to pieces once we undock.”

   “Very reassuring,” he said, looking down at his board. “We’re ready for separation. Main engines are primed and all systems show green. Undock at your discretion.”

   “Let’s get this over with,” Lilith said. “At least I didn’t have to pack.”

   With an ear-splitting grind, the sound of metal tortured almost beyond its limits, half a dozen clamps that had not moved in nearly two decades ripped open, sending the erstwhile bar tumbling forward, away from the station. Boris and Logan hastily ran through the engineering telltales, but astoundingly everything seemed to be working.

   “I guess they built this girl to last,” Boris said, shaking his head.

   “Let’s see what happens when we turn the engines on,” Lilith replied. “Hang on.”

   She manipulated a control, and Logan started to feel heavy as the acceleration built. Something dropped on his head, leaving a scratch, a piece of loose metal, and the accumulated debris of years of zero-gravity rained down all around them, but the ship began to slowly move onto the calculated trajectory, heading for the hendecaspace point. Looking across at the unoccupied communications station, Logan saw a host of incoming calls, all of them listed as urgent. Tapping a control to slave that station to his, he opened a channel to Alamo.

   “What the hell is happening over there?” Marshall yelled. “Station maintenance is having a heart attack, they thought there was a structural integrity failure!”

   “There might be,” Boris said from the back. “Tell Chief Hooper that he should have someone check the superstructure in that area right now, and he’s going to need to do something about the power grid in that module as well.”

   “We’re on our way to Mars, Danny,” Logan said. “Has Race finished that course yet?”

   “I’m sending it over to you now,” Race said, breaking into the channel.

   “Thanks, Pete. We’ll keep a seat warm for you at the bar when we get home. Logan out.”

   “He seemed a bit upset,” Boris said.

   “Commanding officers often like to be kept informed of changes to the mission profile, and besides, my original plan was to sneak away from the station. We’ve traded secrecy for speed, but as long as we have enough of it, I think everything will work out.”

   “Hendecaspace drive coming on-line,” Lilith said. “This is the big jump.” The engine faded out for a moment, sending the three of them drifting forward, Boris banging his head on a ceiling panel.

   Logan, swinging himself back behind his console, said, “Fuel feed malfunction. I can bypass it. I guess that was one of the systems Boris hadn’t gotten around to yet.”

   “Good guess,” the engineer replied, rubbing his head. The engine roared into life again, sending him careening back to the far deck, slamming his elbow into the wall. “Damn it, I think this ship wants to kill me!”

   “She just wants a little love and attention,” Logan said, patting the console. “Next stop, Mars!”

  Chapter 17

   “Sir, Lilith’s Bar has just entered hendecaspace,” Steele said, shaking her head.

   “Congratulations, Sub-Lieutenant,” Marshall replied, standing from his command chair. “I think you’ve just issued the most surreal tactical update in the history of the Triplanetary Fleet.”

   “We’ve only been official for three years, Danny,” Caine said with a wide grin. “Give it time.”

   “Is Watson below?” Marshall asked.

   “Secured in our temporary second brig; the midshipmen are being held in separate quarters down on the lower habitation deck.” Caine shrugged, and said, “We ran out of brigs. Alamo wasn’t built to carry large numbers of prisoners.”

   “Cooper’s people are watching them?”

   “Like a hawk. Barbara wants to speak with you as well, now that we’ve managed to extricate her from Cooper’s embraces.”

   A smile crossed Marshall’s face, one of the few he had managed since this nightmare began, and he replied, “I can’t blame either of them, can you?”

   “Hell no. Who do you want to see first?”

   “The one on our side, I think; have her come up to my office. I’m going to need time to prepare myself for Watson. I’ll still trying to get used to the idea that people in our own damn Fleet are working against us.”

   “I think I’d rather not get used to it,” Steele said. “I don’t want it to ever happen again.”

   “There we agree, Sub-Lieutenant.” Marshall walked across to his office, stepping through the door and taking his usual seat behind his desk, looking around the room. A dozen datapads, each flashing a ‘memory full’ warning, were sitting on it for his attention. Captain Winter had managed to let the paperwork build up to a new record backlog, even by his standards. Nine days before they got home and everything went crazy. The last thing he wanted was a court-martial for administrative incompetence. Bad black mark on his record. Though admittedly, it paled beside hijacking a battlecruiser.

   He looked out of the window at the dim star at the heart of the system, trying to find his usual solace in the view, but this time he couldn’t seem to rest or relax; he was too tensed up, and he knew why – the five people under confinement below decks. There was a knock on the door, and it opened to reveal Barbara standing at the entrance, wearing a brand-new uniform.

   “Sir,” she began, “I must inform you that I am currently AWOL from my assigned posting.”

   “Who isn’t?” Marshall said. “Right now, I think that’s the least of our problems. Have a seat.” As she sat down opposite him, he said, “What’s the situation back home? How’s Orlova?”

   “When I left Mars two weeks ago, she was recovering from a gunshot to the leg; not the security services, the occupants of a drug lab. It’s a long story.”

   “For once I’m looking forward to going over the after-action reports.”

   “The impeachment process is still ongoing, and Senator Harper believes that it won’t be resolved until just before the election. Both the Progressive and Technocratic parties don’t have anything to gain by closing the book on it. They want to take the maximum advantage from the mess that they can.”

   “Which means we should have the time we need to present our case to the Senate. Alamo should enter Mars orbit with a few hours to spare.” Shaking his head, he continued, “We’re really cutting it close this time.”

   “Couldn’t we send them on ahead? Commandeer a transport, put a prize crew on board as well as Cooper’s platoon, and get them to Mars five days earlier?”

   “We could, but that’s even more risky. A transport is far too vulnerable, and I
know if I was running any of the stations right now, I’d be instituting checks on passenger manifests and inspections we couldn’t get through.”

   “Captain Winter might have...,”

   “I don’t see how,” Marshall interrupted. “He’s going to have enough trouble getting himself through security, without explaining why a platoon of Triplanetary Espatiers and five members of the conspiracy are on board.” Looking around, he said, “Taking them in on a battlecruiser might be a little obvious, but it’s the safest option.”

   “They’ve got bigger pieces on the table, sir,” she said.

   “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Is there anything else I should know?”

   “Orlova and Nelyubov are in the Ragnarok Embassy at the moment, seeking refuge. Both of them are facing charges of espionage for the Cabal. The Rockies are on our side in this, though I don’t know how much detail they’ve been given about this affair. Also, the President – Newton – and the Commandant are working out a new peace treaty, to take into account the assumed hostilities at Hades Station. Both of them seemed to think they could come up with something acceptable to all sides.”

   “Reasonable politicians. How did we get so lucky?” Marshall said. “What about the general population? How much do they know?”

   “Not much beyond the superficial. Both sides are slinging mud, but no-one’s said anything much yet. There’s a general agreement that the President should be impeached, but the peace treaty is staying off the radar.” She paused, then said, “The polls do suggest that it will be rejected in the next Senate session. The Progressives are set for some good gains, and it’s the hawk wing of the Freedom party that’s surviving best.” Shaking her head, she said, “I’m a shuttle pilot, damn it, not a political strategist.”

   “Right now you are a messenger, Sub-Lieutenant, and I’m very glad to get your report. It means there is still some hope of resolving all of this quietly, much to my surprise.”

   She nodded, then said, “You’ve got a spare fighter on board, haven’t you, sir?”

   “I presume you’re offering to fly it.”