Wings of Earth- Season One

by Eric Michael Craig

  Quinn, Ammo and Angel were all gone, and one of Marti’s minimech bodies sat in the corner. One light blinked on the top of its head, indicating it had a full charge. He didn’t remember Marti bringing the minimech down, so he stared at it for several seconds in mild curiosity.

  It surprised him when it jumped up and toddled over to stand beside him. “Captain Walker, I had two of my miniature automech bodies delivered to the surface to use as a secure communication system,” Marti said. “If this body remains with you, we will be able to remain in contact without concern of being intercepted by authorities or other civilian technology.”

  “Where’s the other body?”

  “Currently it is in the lounge at the Larcossa Royale Wager Parlor, under a table,” she said. “Do you need to make contact?”

  “No, but I assume you’re close enough to be heard if need be?”

  “The second body is thirty centimeters from Ammo’s left knee with a view of—”

  “I don’t need to know that,” he said, assuming what potential object might be dominating Marti’s view considering its reported placement.

  “I am covertly observing the lounge floor,” she said. “We have a plan to see if we can draw out and identify anyone who may be surveilling us. I have completed an initial assessment of the people in the area and we are about to attempt to create an incident that will disturb the clientele sufficiently to leverage any operatives into exposing their activities.”

  “An incident?” Ethan sat down on the sofa and stared at the minimech. “Is this going to get us riffrushed off the planet?”

  “I assume it will be minor, at least on a planetary scale,” Marti said. “Their intent is only to create a distraction and not to damage the facility.”

  “And when does the show start?”

  “Momentarily. I have completed my assessment of potential operatives and am relaying that information to the others now. Once everyone is in position to optimize our countersurveillance potential, we will begin.”

  Ethan shook his head. The coffee wasn’t helping his throbbing brain, but it was at least making him more alert. “Good luck, but don’t get yourselves in trouble.”

  “I believe trouble is the objective of the plan,” Marti said.

  He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles and yawned. “Will it be too much of a distraction for you to put me through to Rene?”

  “Not at all,” she said, sounding insulted by his question. “Maintaining communications bandwidth from the ship to both of these automech requires less of my cognitive capacity than my Humanform automech does by itself.”

  “How goes the search up there?” he asked.

  “We are scanning all the datanets to which we have legal access, and nothing has directly indicated anything unusual,” Marti said.

  “That’s true, but indirectly there might be something relevant,” Rene said, his voice coming over the minimech as if he were standing in the room. “We wanted to start with the obvious and look for unusual activity in and around the Tamilis star system. Unfortunately, we can’t access FleetCom internal schedules.”

  “Where does that leave you?”

  “We decided to look at what info we could get to see if we could deduce any irregularities in patrol patterns,” he said.

  “Commercial transit logs are available as a matter of public record,” Marti explained. “From those, we can determine that the routine patrol scheduled to check in on Tamilis last month was diverted. As a result, there was no contact made.”

  “Is there anything that says why it got pulled off?” he asked, taking another sip of his coffee, and trying to stay focused.

  “All we have to go on is that it stranded several paying passengers when the multicruiser that was scheduled had to cancel the run. Interestingly we can’t find where it has made any other stops since then, and there’s a string of missed patrol checks attributed to that ship,” Rene said. “Care to guess who it was?”

  “The Argos?”

  “Nope, even better,” he said. “It was the Magellan.”

  “The Magellan was stationed in outer Cygnus wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, and the missed patrol stops are all for Cygnus Sector systems,” Marti confirmed.

  “Is it still under MacKenna?” The hair on Ethan’s head began to dance its way up from the top of his spine.

  “Yes.”

  “If they’ve pulled her out of Cygnus and moved her to Draco, I’d bet it’s because she was at Starlight.”

  “It would be possible, although the records show that they also diverted her from Tamilis,” Marti said.

  “Unless they didn’t,” Ethan whispered as he shook his head.

  “The Argos is also part of this,” Rene said. “Right after Coldwater harassed us on that unofficial border stop, their next patrol port of call was Tamilis. It reported in that things at the colony were normal, but since then it doesn’t show up as having logged a station call anywhere else. It’s completely under the grid somewhere.”

  “From the public records, we can tell that FleetCom schedules appear to have been adversely affected across three sectors. This may indicate an effort to conceal the activities of these two multicruisers,” Marti said.

  “The pattern shifts after the Argos reported from Tamilis Two,” he said. “But other than the Magellan’s missed patrol stops in Cygnus Sector, they’re working hard to make sure nobody else has been skipped.”

  “If all the misses are all in Cygnus, that looks to me like they’re wanting curious eyeballs to look there and not in Draco,” Ethan said.

  “That might be significant,” Rene said.

  “It might also be circumstantial,” the AA reminded them. “All of our conjecture thus far lacks sufficient direct evidence to be more than coincidental.”

  Marti was right, but Ethan’s gut screamed there were too many lines moving in one direction for this to be anything but what Jetaar had said. “Is there any way we can go deeper to get better evidence?”

  “Not without getting caught,” Rene said.

  He sighed. It was persuasive enough for his flawed human intuition, but he knew he’d need more to motivate Kaycee to take a swing at it. “Well, just keep poking into things and see if anything else leaks air.”

  “Cando boss,” he said.

  “I’m going to go for a swim and see if it helps me re-inflate my brain,” he said. “Keep me posted on your progress.”

  “Link closed,” the minimech said, turning to walk away. Ethan stood up but the miniature body stopped and pivoted back to face him.

  “Ammo wishes me to report that we will be back to the cabana as soon as we are cleared to leave the Medical Center.”

  “What?” Ethan asked, crashing back onto the sofa.

  “There was a minor accident involving a stunstick and the casino security personnel.”

  “Frak, they got rolled by the doorman, didn’t they?”

  “Negative. When the Larcossa Royale security personnel attempted to intervene in the diversionary phase of our plan, one of the guards fell and landed in such a way that his stunstick became lodged in an… inappropriate… bodily orifice.”

  “Nojo?” he gasped, trying not to visualize any part of what series of events could have caused that to happen. He was failing miserably despite drumming the heel of his hand against his forehead to drive the image from his mind. His hangover made his head ring like a bell, but it still wasn’t enough. “He fell on his stunstick? Never mind, I don’t want to know.”

  “Those are the alternative facts she instructed me to relay to you. Apparently, the process was quite mortifying for the guard, and Quinn volunteered to assist in transporting him to the medical center.” Marti said. “He claimed to have experience in this type of trauma.”

  Ethan felt an overwhelming urge to go back to bed and hide under his pillow. Maybe if he restarted the day.

  Instead, he reached for his coffee, but even that wasn’t cooperating. When he flopped down on the sofa
, his mug sloshed most of its contents into a rapidly widening puddle that spread toward the lamp beside him.

  He snatched the lamp out of the way, and that’s when he realized, they were into something well above their air supply.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Ethan sat staring at the pile of debris scattered across the floor in the main living area. Through the windows he was vaguely aware of the beach and bright sunshine reflecting off the waves of Larcossa Cove. Instead, he focused on what he’d discovered hidden in the table lamp beside the sofa.

  If there had been any uncertainty in his mind who’d been watching them, it had evaporated. He had no doubts that it was the Shan Takhu Institute. He didn’t know what it was he’d found, but the technology was well beyond anything in the public domain. It looked at least as sophisticated as the Urah Un he’d used to find the miniature device from where it had landed in the plush carpet.

  It was an accident that he’d touched the lamp since the bright light coming through the windows made artificial illumination unnecessary. But when he’d touched it, he felt an obvious and familiar thrumming.

  At first, he’d thought it was something that had drilled into his hangover as a new brainache, but when it stopped the instant he turned loose, it made him curious.

  And curiosity led to the catastrophic disassembly of the lamp.

  When Ammo and Quinn walked in, they both stopped and stared. Angel carried the other minimech under her arm like a child-doll of chrome and plastic. She set it down and it toddled over to the charger platform without comment.

  “A wild party while we were gone?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Not as wild as yours,” he said, blinking up at them.

  “You heard that she beat the snot out of me,” Quinn said.

  “I had to make it believable,” she said.

  “Fortunately, it worked, otherwise I’d have had to let you hit me again,” he grinned, rubbing his face where an obvious handprint was still visible.

  “You’d have loved it, you little pain puppy,” she said. “You’re just jealous I used the stick on him and not you.”

  Ethan rolled his eyes, refusing to ask despite the temptation.

  “What’s going on?” Ammo ignored their banter as she looked at the lamp and then at Ethan.

  He shook his head and held a finger to his lips.

  He held up his other hand and wiggled his fingers, pointing to his palm and then at a small pile of things in the middle of the sitting table.

  She looked at him for several seconds and then nodded. Message received.

  “Can you two leave us alone for a couple minutes?” she asked, turning and tossing her head toward the balcony.

  Quinn had already grabbed Angel by the arm and was tugging her outside. “Mom and dad want to talk,” he whispered as she jerked her arm free of his grip.

  After they pulled the door closed behind them, he held out his hand, palm up and tapped his opposite finger in the middle of it to let her know he wanted to link. She studied him for several seconds before she nodded and reached out with her opposite hand to make the connection.

  He dissolved into her awareness as their two Urah Un fused into the connection. It was something they’d shared a few times, but it was far more intimate than he’d have liked to carry on a simple conversation. It was a lot like having sex during a business meeting, but considering the risk of speaking aloud, it was safer this way.

  He pushed past the layers of almost sensual duality as he plunged inward to a place where he could hear her mind speaking to him above the background waves of intimacy.

  It’s STI based tech? she asked, her words forming in his mind and almost indistinguishable from his own thoughts.

  Yes, he replied, holding his mind’s eyes closed as she spread out into his awareness. I don’t know if it’s any safer to communicate this way since it might be a miniature version of a TAC unit.

  She was much better at this kind of thing than he was, but he reminded himself it was because he was still a novice with his Urah Un.

  You will get better, she whispered, gently touching his insecurity. She leaned forward to physically look at it without turning loose of his hand. He saw it through her eyes. It’s only a few millimeters long.

  It feels like a TAC to me, but it’s also got several different components attached to it.

  She confirmed his thought. How did you find it?

  The memory flashed up to the surface of his mind. I touched the lamp with my Urah Un, and I could feel there was something to it other than just the electricity. There was a strange pulsing that made my head hurt.

  Worse than your hangover? She felt for his memory and smiled. A humming buzzing sensation washed over their link. Then she thought again with him. You weren’t wearing it.

  He confirmed. Yes, I was bare handed. I didn’t remember that. Then I don’t know how I knew it was there.

  You’re getting more sensitive, aren’t you?

  He shrugged mentally. I don’t know if they were aware of my… rewiring. I had to get my Urah Un to find it though, so it might be something they know now. I touched it when I picked it up out of the carpet.

  He could feel her confusion and frustration. Why haven’t Kaycee or I felt it before?

  They probably assumed that she could detect it, and they might suspect you of being able to feel it, too. It would make sense for them to keep it turned off when either of you are around, he suggested.

  That also tells us for sure they hadn’t figured out that Qara altered your mind, she pointed out.

  If it is telepathic technology though, they might be able to hear us even when we’re linked. If so, it also means we’re not safe here anymore.

  She nodded.

  Glancing over his own shoulder through her eyes, he read the chrono on the shelf behind him. Nine hours until the others get back.

  What do we do until then?

  I think it’s time we leave, he thought, breaking the link and tumbling back into his own awareness.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Grand Palazzo was a giant open courtyard shared by most of the local offerings of a dozen intersystem hotel chains. The Larcossa Royale was the largest of the monolithic towers along the Grand Palazzo but only by a small margin. Its shadow cast an arrow across the open stone pavers and just grazed the edge of the Cirque Stage. It was a very public venue and thousands of people strolled past street vendors and performers as they all competed for the attention of the passing crowds. It was an amazing confluence of culture and a perfect place to land at a table and sit in plain sight.

  Of course, they sat as far across the Palazzo from the Royale as possible. Their plan had also confirmed that their tail had been STI, even if it wasn’t what convinced Ethan. The incident would eventually fade from the hotel staff’s memory, but for now they maintained a discreet distance and occupied a table closer to the stage.

  Sometimes the safest place to be was where there were plenty of witnesses. That was where Ethan had decided to put them. Out in the open and as visible as possible. Even their choice of clothing made them noticeable. In a land where skin and paint were the preferred dress, they all wore matching ship duty coveralls. The disdainful glares of the elite and their personal attendants was enough to assure him that he’d made the right choice.

  They’d packed out all their other possessions, as well as those of Nuko, Charleigh, and Kaycee then left the cabana without checking out. Ethan knew he’d have to settle the leger with the cabana management company, but he intended to do it once they were safely away.

  They’d managed to get their stuff, and Marti’s minimech bodies, crammed into lockers in the Larcossa shuttle depot. The plan was that they’d pick everything up before they headed to the space elevator and back to the Dawn.

  He hadn’t thought far enough ahead to know where they’d go after they got back to the ship, but what mattered most to him was that a moving target was harder to hit.

  “Fr
ak it’s hot out here,” Angel said, undoing the front of her coverall and peeling it off her shoulders. The sun was heading toward the horizon, but their table had no shade so even at the oblique angle the late afternoon heat was enough to be baking.

  “It’s not as bad as Cap City,” Ammo said. “There’s no sea breeze there to moderate the heat.”

  “This is almost as hot as Starlight,” she said.

  “It isn’t.” Ethan didn’t look at her. He stayed focused on the people passing by.

  “I’d give anything to go for a fast swim right now,” Quinn said. He was sweating but hadn’t tried to undress yet.

  The captain glanced down at the thinpad on the table checking the chrono and the hydro-cruise status update. “They’re still thirty minutes out,” he said. “Why don’t you two whiners head down to the dock and meet them. If you happen to fall into the water to cool off, just make sure you haul your butts back out before they dock.”

  “I can stick it out,” Angel said, looking down at the table like she was ashamed that anyone might offer her mercy. At the same time hidden in her face was the hope that he wasn’t kidding.

  “Just go,” he said. “We’ll stay right here until you get back with them.”

  “You can go,” Quinn offered. “Someone should stay with the cap’n.”

  Ammo looked at him and her hand moved somewhere under the table. His eyes shot open, and he made a sound like an elephant with his trunk glued closed. “I think I can handle it, and we’re surrounded by a human shield.”

  “How did you get a stunstick in here?” he hissed once she moved her arm back to its original position.

  She batted her eyes and smiled innocently. “You are such a farmboy sometimes. They sell them in sex shops if you know where to look.” She pulled the handle up, so it showed over the edge of the table. It was bright pink. “Concealing it is a bit more interesting.”