“We’ll be down there with the DSL to pick up the cargo in twelve hours. You need to make absolutely sure it’s ready,” he said, dragging the conversation back on track before something about Kaycee got into the wild over an open comm. “Not that there’s much we can do to help, but we won’t leave until after the conjunction is over. Unless Jetaar leaves us no choice.”
Makhbar nodded and cut himself out of the link.
“Rene, you keep working and if the stink starts, keep your head down.”
“Aye, Boss,” he said. “Do you mind if I forward your findings to the science team here? I think this is one of those discoveries that will go down in history.”
“Do what you think is best, but I don’t want them to get you off your objective,” he said. “We’ll try to come up with a strategy to buy time if the black hats come riding in, but if we can’t you have to be ready to abandon what you’re doing.”
“I hope it doesn’t come down to that,” he said.
“Me too. Hopefully, we’ll come up with something.”
“Good luck with that,” he said. “Just don’t break my ship.”
“Your ship?” Ethan laughed as he tapped out of the comm.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Captain Walker, report to the ConDeck,” Nuko’s voice cut through his restless sleep like a laser. He was halfway to the lift cage before he processed out the strangeness of her call. The urgency in her voice, and the formality of her words, were off in equal measure.
“It’s only the shuttle,” she said as he slid to a stop against the back of his seat.
“What’s their ETA?”
“They’re coming in fast,” she said. “Ninety percent of light speed. Under four minutes.”
“Marti, let Rene know,” he said. “Do we know if they’ve spotted us yet?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “Unless they’re packing an upgraded sensor kit, we’ve got the eyeball advantage on them.”
“Running that hot they won’t have power for anything but engines,” he said. “Get the planet between us and try to keep it there if you can.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said. Punching in to the commlink she announced, “All hands stand by for maneuvers.” The ship pivoted toward the planet’s polar cap and dropped toward the upper atmosphere. They’d decided if they needed to hide, the closer they could get to the planet’s energy field, the harder they’d be to pick out.
“Have you told Makhbar yet?” Ammo asked as she came through the door and dropped into the engineer station.
“I haven’t even made the announcement to the crew yet,” he said. “How do you know already?”
“It’s not every shift that the captain goes streaking half-dressed down the corridor looking like the ship’s on fire,” she said. “Not too many crises would be worthy of that kind of spectacle.”
“I guess not,” he said, realizing that she was staring at him. He looked down to make sure he had both legs in his coveralls. He wasn’t sure and breathed a sigh when he confirmed the important parts were all safely tucked away.
“Do you want me to let him know?” she asked, grinning as she caught his embarrassment.
He nodded and she turned to face the console and opened a comm channel to the archaeologist.
“Is it the same shuttle, and is it alone?” he asked, sitting down and bringing up a situational display on the main screen.
Nuko shrugged. “There’s no way to tell if it’s the same shuttle since it’s running dark. It is the same type though. There’s nobody else out there we can see, but it isn’t coming in from the direction of the gas giant so there might be.”
“We need to keep it in sight,” he said. “Can you slide us as close to the horizon as possible and still keep it to where we can see what he’s doing?”
“Sure,” she said. “We can shadow it and skim the surface, so they’ll lose us in the field. It won’t leave me any spare eyes to watch the rest of the universe though.”
“Makhbar is grumpy when he gets hauled out of bed, but he’s on alert,” Ammo said. “They’re powering down everything non-essential and moving their people into the Sha-Kahna Ri buildings. He says only proximity acoustic sensors can penetrate them, so they won’t show up on scans from orbit.”
“How long until the generator goes into transition?”
“Four hours and five minutes,” Marti said.
“That means we’re still two hours from being able to load,” he said, drumming his fingers on the edge of his console.
“And an hour after that to get it up from the surface and strapped on,” Nuko said.
“I’d be so much happier if they’d waited another twelve hours,” he said.
“Wouldn’t we all,” she said. “I really don’t like the idea of being halfway back to the ship with a container when they show up.”
“We should wait until after the guns are ready,” he said. “I didn’t want anything to delay us getting out of here, but it’s better to hold off now that they’re stepping up to play.”
“It’s your call,” she said.
“In my mind, waiting to load just shuffles the risk from one column to another,” Ammo said. “The longer we hang around the more likely he is to have more ships.”
“But if we’ve got the DSL undocked when they show up, we’ve got to protect it somehow, and get Nuko back aboard before we can run. And even if we let Marti drive it by remote, we’ll be without our extra speed boost to run.”
“Yah, I agree with your decision,” she said. “I just wanted to point out that we don’t know what Jetaar might bring to the table and the longer we’re here, the uglier it could get.”
Leaning forward, Nuko studied her navigation screen for several seconds. “It looks like the shuttle’s vectoring to do a flyover of Makhbar’s work site. As long as they maintain that trajectory, we can run circles near the pole and hide in the edge of the ionosphere. If they don’t look real close, the aurora will make us almost invisible.”
“It will however somewhat hinder our ability to scan the surrounding environment except in the GI spectrum,” Marti added.
That meant they could detect the powered drive coils of an approaching ship, but not much else. “It will have to do,” he said. “Ammo, since you’re sitting here, keep an eye on the long-range sensors for drive signals.”
“I’m on it,” she said, pointing at the console in front of her. She’d anticipated his request and had the screen open already.
“Do you think we should let Angel know?” he said.
“So she can shoot the window washer?” Nuko asked. “I think she wanted to do that, anyway.”
“I think Quinn’s in with him right now,” Ammo said. “Angel was still in her quarters when I left there.”
Tapping his earpiece, he said, “Angel if you’ve recovered, can you go check on Kaycee for me. Then set up camp in her lap if you can.”
“Cando, Boss,” she said. “Problem?”
“Not yet, but maybe,” he said. “Might be trouble dancing on the doorstep soon.”
“I’ll swing by the locker and tool up,” she said. “On my way.”
“If she tries to unload you, let her know why I put you on top of her,” he said, tapping out of the link.
“They’re changing heading,” Ammo said.
“I’m on it.” Nuko slid her hands over the console and the planet shifted below them as she altered their heading to keep the Dawn on the horizon. “Looks like they’re doubling back over the dig site again.”
“We need to let Rene know to keep under cover,” Ethan said.
“Done,” Marti said. “I still have a link to my Gendyne automech on the surface and I moved the shuttle under a cantilevered balcony before the shuttle made its approach. It should not be visible to scans.”
“It’s swinging back for a third run,” Ammo said. “Their pattern looks like they are tightening up over the center of his site.
“They are pinging the area with acti
ve multi-spectrum RF pulses,” Marti said.
“That will light up anything metallic,” Nuko said.
“Like the fabrication printer chassis,” Ethan said. “And anything else they’ve got out there on the surface. I know they had several rovers that might be hard to hide.”
“And the artillery,” Ammo said.
“With the exception of the tread and turret mounts, most of the weapons themselves are ceramic compounds that would show little reflection to the pulses,” Marti said. “Sergeant Eriksen placed them all under overhangs similar to where I parked the shuttle. It is possible they will not detect them.”
“Well if they didn’t, they sure aren’t staying around to look for more,” Ammo said. “They’re heading back in the direction they came.”
“And accelerating back to ninety percent,” Nuko added.
“That was fast,” Ethan said. “Did they see us?”
“If they did, they didn’t react,” she said.
“They might think we’ve already left,” he said.
“They focused on the surface,” Ammo said. “And notably a specific area of it. They came in looking for something and weren’t doing a general recon survey.”
“The artillery.” Ethan nodded. “If they didn’t see them, then the attack is coming.”
“And if they did, they’ll come at us sidewise,” Nuko said.
“That’s even worse,” he said.
“Problem is without the artillery, there isn’t anything we can do,” Ammo said.
“Not necessarily,” he said. “Do we know if they’ve still got the second container empty?”
“Probably at least partially,” Ammo said. “As far as I know when we told him to stick it on container two, he quit loading it.”
“It might still be risky, but we could use it as an emergency evacuation lifeboat,” Ethan said. “All commercial standard containers have independent air recycler systems.”
“Our life support and food stores wouldn’t make it far, but we could probably get to Cygnus Deep-Two,” Nuko said.
“I don’t think Makhbar will go for it,” Ammo said.
“Why not? We could get some of the critical people, and their families out of there,” he said.
She shook her head. “Because he’d see it as retreating. He’s got the kind of personality that doesn’t withdraw from a fight.”
“I’m betting his own people would climb into the container rather than watch their families become pirate food,” the captain said. “If he tried to pick that fight, he’d lose before he got his mouth open.”
Maybe,” she said. “He picks people for their loyalty and their willingness to put him and his brilliance above all else. Some might be more scared of Jetaar than of the idea that he might blacklist them, but I don’t know many who would turn on him.”
“You really think so?”
She nodded. “I do.”
“Well then we better hope Jetaar holds off and doesn’t come at us sidewise.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Six hours later, they had their answer. Jetaar chose to play it sidewise, but at least it didn’t look like he was bringing in the big guns. “We are picking up a ship approaching,” Marti said.
“Is it Jetaar?”
The three of them had not left the ConDeck since the shuttle had made its recon run and although only one was watching the sensors at a time, they were all on deck and ready for anything.
“I do not believe it is the Blackwing, but it is much larger than the shuttle,” it said.
“It’s running at half-light. ETA twelve minutes,” Nuko said.
“How the frak did we not see this earlier?” Ethan said.
“It’s got no transponder and seems to be in low-power mode,” Ammo said.
“It looks like they are running ballistic,” the pilot added. “I don’t see much coil output.”
“Additionally, we are still hanging close to the planet’s energy field, so our sensors are at about half efficiency,” Marti said.
“Can you tell what kind of ship it is?” the captain asked.
“It might be a smaller science vessel or a personal craft,” the AA said.
“Is it a Cousteau Class science vessel, maybe?” he suggested.
Nuko nodded. “It’s close to that size.”
“A Trojan horse?” Ammo suggested, shrugging.
“Maybe.” he nodded. “I don’t like it.”
“The transponder just came up,” Nuko said. “It’s identifying itself as the Saknussemm.”
“We’ll then that’s settled,” he said. “Get us back into the aurora and out of sight.”
“No cando,” she said. “When the planet dropped into conjunction and the power field went offline, the aurora thinned out to almost nothing.”
“Frak. Then get us around to the backside and we do this the old fashioned way. I don’t want them to see us unless we’ve got no choice,” he said.
“Let Rene know. Makhbar too,” he leaned forward and pulled his seat into position. “Make sure you tell them we’re concerned it might be a set up.”
Ammo turned to the engineer’s console and Makhbar responded personally. “We see it. They just hit us.”
“Have you responded?” Ethan asked, cutting in on the comm.
“My communications officer confirmed the message but nothing more. He has told them to stand by while he got me up,” he said.
“Can you patch us into the link?” Ethan asked. “You need to be very careful.”
“I am aware of the danger, Captain Walker,” he said. “According to what they have reported so far, the Chief Engineer is in command. He says they have had problems and only just got the ship running.”
“Calling pirates a problem might be an understatement,” Nuko said.
Ethan nodded, signaling for her to hold position.
She raised an eyebrow but swung around and brought them to a halt.
“I’m worried they’re going to pull a Trojan horse on you.”
Ammo ping the ship. Hit it active and make sure they know we’re scanning them.
Makhbar frowned. “He says the captain and first officer were injured in a power system fire.”
“We know better,” Walker said.
“Perhaps they escaped after your prisoner was conscripted?” he suggested.
“And perhaps your legendary intelligence needs more caffeine to operate,” Ethan said. “The shuttle was a recon run to see if you had your defenses up, and when they didn’t see any, they decided to do this without the big guns.”
Makhbar bristled, but he nodded. “It’s not worth the time arguing the validity of your hypothesis.”
“Holy frak,” Ammo hissed, pointing at the sensor screen. “Their power grid is wired sixteen ways from Hades.”
The captain leaned over and looked at the display. “It looks like they’re fully up, but got it cut off in a dozen different places in there, so it doesn’t show,” he said, turning back to Makhbar. “Their life support is barely this side of a smelter.”
“What does that tell you, Captain Walker?” the archaeologist asked.
“That you better not let them get to ground or you will have a small army on your hands,” he said. “Tell them they have to stay in orbit until you can get your widgets dewormed, or whatever. Tell them anything. Just do not let them land.”
“We have no weapons operational,” he said.
“And you just made sure he knows that,” Ethan said, slapping his palm against his forehead. Letting out a loud hissing sigh, he slashed a finger across his throat and Ammo muted the comm.
“We’re going to have to do this for him,” he said. “No matter what I say, do not react.”
“What?” Nuko asked, her eyes wide as she tried to imagine what he was about to suggest.
“And while we’re at it, have Quinn drag the window washer up here. We might need him.”
Ammo nodded.
“Open the comm,” he said. “Makhbar, you�
�re really going to owe me for this. Cut me in on the comm channel with the Saknussemm.”
“Not until I know what you have—”
“Is the Saknussemm armed?” he asked.
“It wasn’t.”
“Then I’m going to give them a chance to surrender before I blow them out of orbit.”
“You can’t be serious,” Makhbar almost screeched.
“Cut me in on the channel,” he said again, this time his tone making sure there was no mistake that he was giving an order.
The archaeologist blinked several times but didn’t comply.
“Fine we’ll open our own channel,” he said. “Ammo see if you can figure out how to jam his uplink to the Sak while we talk. I hate to be interrupted.”
“How da—” the rest of the doctor’s rage vanished into hissing static.
“They’re receiving you,” Ammo said.
“Saknussemm, this is Captain Ethan Walker of the Olympus Dawn. Do you care to state your intent?”
“Ethan Walker? I don’t know who you are, or why you’re contacting us.”
“I’m doing some special work for Dr. Makhbar at the moment. I asked you to state your intent,” he said.
“We’ve suffered damage to our primary power grid, and we need to put down before we lose what little we have left.”
“That would be why you’re over a month late?” Ethan offered.
“Exactly,” he said. “We don’t have the power to keep the ship operating much longer. We need to land right now.”
“That’s not going to happen,” the captain said.
“We’re in distress. You don’t have the right to—”
“What I have the right to do is tell you that you will not make planetfall,” he said. “You might reach the surface, but it won’t be in one piece.”
“Look, Walker,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, or what you think you’re doing, but I don’t have time to argue with you. I have a ship full of injured people here and the captain and first officer are both in need of critical medical attention that I can’t give them.”
Muting the comm, Ammo said, “I can hear him sweating.”
Ethan nodded. “Like someone’s pointing a gun at his head.”
Wings of Earth- Season One Page 34