Invisible Hijackers

by D Gemcats Purcell

  Jessi had taken up her station on the bridge and Mader was getting cleaned up. The rest of us were dressing in our working blue jumpsuits to look like a real group of well, rescuers, complete with pretty little tags and stickers. ‘SIX’ was emblazoned on or chest and the back of our suits. I relieved Jessi so that she could change and she slipped into the bathroom right after Mader. By this time Captain Ronald had shown up on the bridge looking well rested and we gave him a general outline of what we hoped to achieve plus discussed a few code words we would use if in trouble. He was still not to know that we could teleport. We suggested putting all four robotic probes that we had sent out in holding orbits, sort of geostationary over the moons of Tsatvik, Buboni and Trat as well as between Tsatvik and Baclet planet. We suggested having them irregularly blast lasers in unpredictable directions which would deliberately broadcast their presence to make it harder for the hijackers to move around without fear that they might be detected. It would send a chill down their spine. We on the other hand had a fairly precise lock on their location but they would not know that. That would keep the pressure up on them and their bosses. If they attacked the robots, it would tell us even more. He thought that to be an excellent tactic. As he walked away, we could hear him saying, “These are no ordinary teenagers.” He had taken great care to coach the officers on board to keep all sensors on and a sharp eye out. All crew were on alert. He was only going over to the BMOS for an hour or so anyway.

  Finally, by direct link comm from the BMOS we got our invitation for us Six and a delegation from the Celeste to board. “Welcome aboard Baclet territory to the rescue group Six and Captain Ronald and his top officers.”

  The Captain led the way with two control officers only and we walked behind. There was an electric magnetic trolley decked out with welcome signs waiting for us and a driver who hung a medal on each of Six’s members and a name tag on the Captain as well as his officers. We were whisked down long corridors to a conference room and seated on chairs in front of a long narrow curving table alongside Commander Ross the boss of the BMOS who said, “So good to finally meet you all in person and thank you for helping us with the rescue.” They had made sure to activate a decent amount of gravity here. With the cameras rolling, a large screen flickered to life and we were looking at Chief Martinette of Defnet with two assistants seated just behind him plus Chief Munchin of their Securinet with three assistants likewise behind him. They were fully attired in what had to be their official dress complete with epaulets on their shoulders and badges on their chest. They sure looked sharp and impressive. Their names were displayed on plates mounted on the table in front of them.

  We of Six kept ourselves loose and open not attempting to probe actively, but to see whether anyone was attempting to enter our own minds. After the “Welcome to Baclet” and “Greetings Captain Ronald” and “How are you all doing?” type greetings which we returned softly as teens would, we sat back and listened. Captain Ross enquired as to whether the photos and videos taken from the Celeste and its robots plus those of the missile parts were received. It appears that the information garnered from the freighter’s command module computer piloted by Mischa seemed to have been looked at as well. They both seemed a bit uncomfortable, uncertain and in fact were quite perturbed over the whole situation. We allowed only Cherese to read them very gently to keep up the pattern we hoped to establish. She reported silently to us. She said that no one among them seemed to be attempting any telepathy that she could tell. Cherese kept up an occasional commentary in our heads. “They seem uncomfortable because they know they are weak and don’t have the capability that Toigan and the Celeste has to get their problem solved and to prevent more hijackings. They are under huge pressure to get the valuable ores back by the Trat Mining Conglomerate but don’t want to feel compromised by asking directly so they are angling to get the Company and its investors to do so. That might give us an ‘in’ to meet the players we are interested in. So that’s good. So we need to try to ease their discomfort by volunteering. They know that they have some crooked folks amongst themselves. They want us to come down to the surface and to have a private audience with our Captain. Of course our Captain will not be interested in going down there and they know that, so we will have to try to get trusted as a safe go-between.”

  Without revealing our abilities, we had to agree with Cherese’s impression so far. So after the Chief’s said, “Our preliminary impression is that the missiles were stolen off a truck that was moving them from a factory to a storage depot that overturned and exploded. The driver and guards were all killed we thought in the explosion. We however did not find all the parts of all the missiles. Now we have reopened the investigation and will be looking anew at the parties involved. There had to have been a coverup. How these all got into space to be used against you is a puzzle so we are looking into that too. Then the mystery of the vessels that were seen, is a big one for us. We do have some big problems down here obviously and we hope for some more help from your bosses over on Toigan. Thank you for all you’ve done so far.”

  Captain Ronald knowing what he did about us, to our delight said, “Thank you for inviting us and I know our Chief of Defnet Mr Buenafe has been quite happy to volunteer our services. Our rescuers may have one or two days at most to visit your planet surface even though I need to stay with my ship and if that be something convenient or desirable to you all, feel free to speak to them as if to me. Greetings gentlemen and I hope some other time to visit as well, and to have you ride over on our spaceplane to visit with us too.”

  That said, the ball was now on their court. They jumped at it. “We will be thrilled to have your Six down even though the visit will be short. We have two small transports leaving that can take three of your team down in two batches and we will arrange to have things set up to get them back up two days from now too. Will that work? We hope you will come ‘Six’.” We all nodded in unison and gave the thumbs up. Cherese mind said, “They are slightly disappointed that our Captain Ronald could not come though not surprised and are eager to meet us. The Captain said just the right thing at the right time and we did not put words in his mouth, right.....” All those looking at us would have sworn we were grinning in pleasure at the invitation!

  11. YASHID’S SPY

  Next chore was to somehow reach out and touch Second Officer Robert Mendez to ascertain how he was involved in this whole deal. So before we could depart in a few hours for the surface, now that the ‘defrosting’ was done and Captain Ronald was headed back to the Celeste we planned to find a way. So Cherese asked, at our urging, to meet with some of Commander Ross’s main assistants if possible. She feigned interest in how the BMOS handled our complicated docking which they were not previously set up to do. Our spaceplane being such an oversized vessel and using one berth she said could have led to perhaps dangerous torsional forces if our vessel started rotating especially if off axis to the rest of the BMOS main plane with the mating berth not able rotate a full 360 degrees freely. Captain Ross took the bait and invited us to a control room close to the bridge and called out for some of his technical people to come visit with us. So now up close we could probe the Captain himself and everyone else. Overall they were earnest and wanted to help be good hosts. Refreshments were offered as well as bathroom facilities and a training video of descent and ascent in their small capsules. The ones going down to the surface were going to land by parachutes with the use of a last stage rocket to cushion the last few seconds if the AI or onboard pilot decided it was necessary. We had to wear full spacesuits as an added precaution. Then finally the gravity was about 7/8 of what we were used to on Toigan. Hurrah! We would be able to jump higher. We shouldn’t have gotten weaker after less than three days away from normal gravity hopefully. One of the Officers introduced himself as Robert Mendez and he was maybe thirty, young and handsome. Cherese thought, “If I weren’t happily married, I’d have made sure to get to meet him.” Jessi said, “With looks like that, I’ll bet he is l
ocked in already though.” Cherese said, “Nope, I already probed that.” Matt said, “Ok Cherese how about his work history and affiliations?”

  She said, “As expected he is a Securinet man and does not like Yashid since his son took his girl who was Yashid’s accountant daughter. He has quite the aversion to the Yashid clan actually and although still a little upset about being bumped, feels grateful that he did not get mixed up with them. One of the accountant’s sons who would have been a brother in law still keeps in touch. That’s how he had first met the accountant’s daughter in the first place when the two of them played rugby at school.”

  “Thank you Cherese.” Matt said.

  One of the other officers, sallow faced who had sidled up to us and had taken over the explanations of the how and where the BMOS decided to berth us, didn’t fare so well. Cherese had his name, number and rank and it spelled ‘crooked’. She said, “He is a weak telepath who got involved in illegal games at the casinos and was caught but he offered to work for Yashid the casino boss. Yashid realized that he was technically gifted, had him trained, made sure to prevent any record of his crime and helped, using his influence to get him hired onto the BMOS. He is dirty, and getting a dashing salary on the side.”

  His name was Gentry Smith and he had tried to access Cherese’s mind first. He saw the cute little innocent teenager and thought she might be a good conquest to roll over in bed as well as for Yashid. Cherese rolled her eyes silently as she said that to us. She so adroitly let him have her mind, the part of course that said, “Oh wow, this guy looks very sharp and knowledgeable! He might be a good one to know. Then she wistfully thought of her husband Arthur she said to us, blowing up the bed part for him.” She went on to tell us, “He still was closely prospecting her mind to see if she’d maybe just like to be friends and if she’d like nice gifts so that he could advise his boss Yashid on how to inculcate himself to her. He felt that it would be a coup to make useful contacts with a well placed up and coming Toigan modern who had access to the fastest spaceplane.”

  Based on the impression she got out of him, she felt that we would be hearing from Yashid one way or the other. Interestingly, she was able to learn that the name Brataslav and Marybeth were on his mind and got from him the Baclet time 1345 which was thirty minutes from now. He was undoubtedly racing through the explanations with us and we suspected he had a desire to be elsewhere. It is a good thing that Cherese could compartmentalize her mind so that he couldn’t probe where she didn’t want him to. We knew her shielding was well developed as we could not get to know thoughts that she didn’t wish to share and we were by now all pretty fantastic telepaths. We knew to him, that he would only get into our minds just far enough to verify that we were simply teens who were thinking of being down on the surface soon, meeting other young people, anxious to get done with boring meetings and being able to say that we went to Baclet surface to our friends. We gave him all the shallowness we wanted him to see in droves when he tried to probe our minds. We decided warning Captain Ronald to keep away from this Gentry Smith fellow physically. We didn’t think he was a particularly powerful telepath and we planned to use him to get to Yashid as well as to whoever Brataslav and Marybeth was. So Cherese made the excuse that we needed to talk to our Captain Ronald before we had to leave on the transport.

  Mader spoke to Commander Ross, “Is it possible to make a quick trip over to the Celeste to retrieve something?” Ross immediately waved to one of his junior officers, “Please hurry this young man to the Celeste and back.”

  Mader was taken to the transit point for the trip through the boarding dock. I called Captain Ronald on my vidcom to ask him to urgently meet Mader at the port.

  Mader on arrival got off the transport and walked quickly up into the Celeste motioning Captain Ronald to walk with him. He said, “We have ascertained that Officer Gentry Smith is a mole for Yashid.” He then explained the relationship and warned him that he can read minds. So he needed to not invite him over and not go over there. It would be necessary to think persistently of simple tasks and not go over in his head anything that he wouldn’t want an enemy to know. He told him to monitor the BMOS intently for bursts of energy likely laser type but it could be any type and record all bursts that occur within the next forty minutes as we suspected Gentry may be communicating possibly with the hijackers soon. He then told him that Robert Mendez was likely in the clear although he did have links to one of Yashid’s accountant’s son but likely was not involved in Yashid’s enterprise. We encouraged him to get a game going on his vidcom if he felt he might be in a position to be mentally compromised. Captain Ronald professed understanding and pretended to hand Mader something that he then slid into his pocket for the benefit of observers. Then Mader boarded the little runabout transport for the trip back.

  We in the meantime, were led to the appropriate berth to get into the first capsule which Dillion, Matt and Jessi got into. That left Cherese, myself and Mader who had just rejoined us to leave on the second capsule and thus give us more time to eavesdrop on Officer Gentry Smith. Cherese had thanked the officer graciously by reaching out and brushing her hand on his shoulder gently which obviously pleased him greatly. That physical contact gave her a major lock on him now. As he swiftly moved to what seems like an office that he worked out of, Cherese related that he moved a piece of equipment up to a porthole and activated it. Then he punched in,

  “No good info on you, going down, will try to plant device.”Putting our hands on the bulwarks, we felt a slight electrical surge but it was at the same time as the capsule release with three of our colleagues along with two other folks so it did not help us. Hopefully the Celeste may have picked up something. Mader got a vidcom message, “Do remember to take the LL with you for Cherese, thanks.” This was from Captain Ronald. It was an agreed upon improvisation by him to us saying a laser light signal had been sent off by Gentry Smith. Mader relayed the message to us mentally. The Captain would hopefully be able to triangulate the area of the sky it was directed to and that may further confirm what we already knew.

  12. WELCOME TO BACLET

  Mader, Cherese and Jonah boarded along with three others, a pilot and two other passengers who seem to be rotating out of their six month stint aboard the BMOS. After a good deal of wiggling to get into the spacesuits that were already belted into the seats, indeed couches would be a better description and after final inspections, the door closed and was made safe. In the semi darkness with mostly instrumentation glow, thankfully all green, we felt the slightest of nudges and all of a sudden we saw on our view screens the white network of the space station floating above us gradually diminishing in size. There was a brightening of the sky as we got into solar glare and in a half hour we entered a twilight with darkening skies and a slight buffeting. We then shortly thereafter saw bright glare accompanied by more buffeting then a floating feeling, white clouds zipping by and a sudden increase in g-forces. We hit the ground with a sudden thump, rocked back and forth and got the signal to unbuckle. The video showed three land vehicles almost upon us.

  The three of us bounded out of the capsule while the other folks who had been in space for many months took their time. I’m sure gravity and moving their limbs was not easy on them. We had no such problems after space experience of less than three days. The air was heavy in a weird sort of way and felt different from our Toigan air. Oxygen levels were ok we knew, but it would be like trying to breathe at ten thousand feet up. It was thinner. They had had over the past few thousand years geo-farmed the planet a lot. The folks who picked us up reassured us that our three companions were well and waiting on us. They were very friendly and welcoming. We were shown into what was equivalent to an RV and offered drinks and toileting facilities on board. We took them up on both. They assured us that it was a fifteen minute ride to meet our friends and officials. The sky looked the same and the temperature was very pleasant at a 66 F with very light breeze. Our RV started off very slowly over the bumpy grass and transi
tioned to a paved smooth roadway still being driven gently, likely to avoid upsetting delicate stomachs.