“My orders didn’t come from Admiral Buckner, Mister Buxton. They came directly from the Directorate, and they were extremely specific.”
Pearce again was taken aback. The Directorate was bypassing the chain-of-command and issuing orders directly to a Captain in the field? That didn’t make sense, even for a disaster scenario like this. The Confederation Armed Services Directorate was the body of senior uniformed leaders responsible for strategy planning and advising the Confederation Council on military matters. While they all held some of the highest ranks in the armed forces, they rarely delivered orders directly.
“That is highly unusual, wouldn’t you say so Captain?” Pearce asked with a raised brow.
“Ordinarily yes, but with the political situation what it is and this PAN panic gripping every system I’m not surprised that they are trying to micro-manage it.” Truth, Pearce read, but he wasn’t as convinced as the Captain.
“Even so, they could easily micromanage through the chain-of-command,” Pearce argued. He needed to get the Captain on his side, and so decided to use some psychological persuasion. “Captain, you are a very capable officer and you’ve dealt with the military bureaucracy effectively for a long time. Why would they take such unusual steps here?”
Scalzo took the bait, taking a deep breath and leaning back in his chair in a more relaxed manner. “Honestly, I don’t think they trust anyone other than the inner circle at this point. Our response here has been by the book; gathering all of the relevant civilian field experts and carrying out a fully cooperative inter-agency investigation. But if this was an attack and there is a weapon of some sort that can defeat the PAN, they cannot trust such a fearsome capability to be secure in such a large operation.”
Pearce mused on the thought. Paranoid thoughts regarding security would explain why they would only allow restricted access to the PAN, but not necessarily whey they would bypass the chain-of-command to give the orders themselves. Not trusting a civilian or intelligence officer was one thing. Not trusting your Admirals was quite another.
“May I please see the orders, Captain?” Pearce asked politely but firmly.
Scalzo grimaced and leaned forward in his chair again. “I take it that question was not a request, Mister Buxton.”
Pearce said nothing in reply. After a moment, he received a knock from the Captain and accepted it. The Captain’s official orders scrolled in his OHUD.
Effective until arrival of CNS-626 Tropicana, all ships under your command in Shenzen sector are to maintain their current positions. Under no circumstances should any ship under your command approach or interact with any of the GTS PAN Array stations. CNS-626 provided specialists will be the only ones allowed to access the PAN stations. Command will transfer to CNS-626 upon arrival on or about 3.26:0700.
They were brief and concise, and precisely worded. Probably intended to ensure that Scalzo couldn’t find any loopholes. And there were none. For him.
“These orders state that you are to have all ships under your command hold their current positions, and refrain under any circumstances to allow them to approach any of the PAN arrays until relief arrives four days or so from now.” Pearce said as he dismissed the text from his vision with a thought.
The Captain nodded in agreement.
“Well it is a good thing I brought my own ship.”
EIGHT
New Shanghai High Orbit, Shenzen System
CNS Scorpio
In the end, Scalzo had no choice but to agree with Pearce’s logic, with certain conditions. Pearce had to limit who he took along with him, which wasn’t a problem because the only two people he wanted to bring were Jula and Meson.
Middle Management and The Suit demanded to be included as well to avoid legal infractions. Pearce managed to persuade the lawyer to remain behind, with the caveat that Jula’s boss be able to contact him at any time for consultation if needed. Pearce didn’t object to another body on the trip, but he didn’t need a corporate lawyer breathing down his neck on the op. If something required non-conventional thinking, Pearce would block transmissions with the lawyer and ask for forgiveness later.
The Captain insisted that a Marine fireteam accompany the group. That engendered a bit of back and forth, because if they were under Scalzo’s command that nominally meant they would be in overall command of the Nightingale, which would invalidate the loophole. And so Scalzo begrudgingly agreed that the Marines would be temporarily detached to “Buxton’s” command, able to monitor and record everything that happened but unable to exercise authority.
Pearce met the civilians at the airlock he had transferred through not an hour ago, lugbot floating behind him again. Three Marines gathered to one side of the compartment, which Pearce noted with interest. Marine fireteams were made up of groups of four, which meant somebody was in for an ass-chewing for not being punctual to the rendezvous. As Pearce considered the oddity of the situation a baby-faced and out-of-breath Marine hopped through the doorway and snapped to attention in front of the fireteam’s NCO.
“Sergeant, Private Garga reporting on behalf of Private Igniasis, per the L-T’s orders.”
The Sergeant’s nametag read “Rogers”. He didn’t look pleased as he responded. “Igniasis better hope he dies in sickbay or else I’ll kill him myself. Fall in.” He motioned to the Private to add his gear to the pile with the rest of the Marines as he turned and approached Pearce.
“Sir, Staff Sergeant Rogers reporting for detached assignment with my fireteam, as ordered.”
Pearce raised an eyebrow. “Problems with your squad, Sergeant?”
“My PFC is sick, Sir. Food poisoning or something. He’s hurling all over sickbay. They had to give him a shot just to slow it down. The Lieutenant assigned Garga as a replacement. We’re good to go.”
“Understood,” Pearce said, before stepping up on the lip of the open airlock door and facing his assembled team. “This should be a simple op. Three hour burn to the PAN. A few hours to investigate the hardware. Back to the Scorpio in time for third shift. At least one of Sergeant Roger’s Marines will accompany any group of civilians at all times. Understood?”
The civilians nodded and the Marines responded with a crisp acknowledgement, and Pearce turned to lead them into the airlock. “A simple op,” he thought to himself. He hadn’t been on a simple op in decades, and he didn’t expect this to be any different.
***
The L2 Planetary Approach Network Station was located at New Shanghai’s L2 Lagrange point, which meant it held a constant position relative to the planet and the Shenzen sun. The Nightingale therefore had to make a hard burn to escape its New Shanghai orbit and then an even longer one to slow to the near relative stop required to rendezvous. The Captain of the Nightingale, having just been awarded a generous retainer for services provided from Pearce’s Omega account, was more than happy to oblige.
As the Nightingale smoothly sealed the connection with its umbilical to the PAN station, Pearce checked the environment suits of the three civilians under his charge. The PAN station was fully automated and had no atmospheric capabilities or artificial gravity, and neither the GTS employees nor the physicist had any zero-g or zero-pressure training. On the way over, he had provided a crash course in both, but he didn’t expect their virginity to be an issue. They’d be connected via tethers and accompanied with fully trained Marines at all times.
The station itself would give them little in the way of trouble. The interior space that they would be entering amounted to little more than a few hundred square meters of space, smaller than a modest sized home. And that space was broken up into a series of small interconnected access tunnels, the largest barely over three meters wide.
The group had watched out the airlock viewports as the PAN station came into view in fascination. Even military ships were normally never allowed to approach to unaided visual range with a PAN station. Pearce had seen and done an awful lot more than the average person in his lifetime and had never seen one u
p close.
The station was made up of a central body, roughly cuboid in shape, studded with small protrusions and six long antennae that pointed like spears hundreds of meters outward from each face of the cube. Those antennae were each comprised of the dozens of different sensors and receivers that allowed the station to detect ships moving at faster-than-light speeds. The central body contained the substantial amount of processing hardware, generators, and the quantum communication matrix that made the entire thing work.
They would need to inspect the various hardware clusters for each type of sensor the station utilized, which required first opening maintenance panels and then manually patching in via a remote terminal. Jula was the only one that could actually tap into each system, but much to the lawyer’s consternation and against her bosses protests she instructed Dr. Meson in how to perform the physical connection, who was broadly familiar with such technologies.
This would allow them to separate into two groups. Jula, Pearce, and Middle Management would start working on the gravimetrics cluster first, accompanied by Sergeant Rogers and Private Garga. Meson and the other two Marines, Private Allisan and Corporal Murrig, would start working on setting up the physical connections for Jula to eventually use in other clusters. They would save a considerable amount of time, since it took five to ten minutes to patch in to each cluster. And they would avoid bunching up in claustrophobic, tight access tunnels that were never designed for more than one or two engineers at a time.
The airlock had already been depressurized and as the umbilical finished mating to the station, the lighting surrounding the outer airlock door flashed red and the two halves parted open. The group made their way out of the lock and traversed the tunnel connecting ship to station. Unlike Pearce’s fast and flashy transition to the Scorpio, they crawled at a snail’s pace.
The civilians were doing their best to navigate using the handholds and avoid flailing about. When they finally reached the access hatch on the surface of the PAN station, they were already breathing heavily and burning oxygen at nearly 2 times the rate that the Marines and Pearce were.
The leading Marines quickly cycled and pulled open the hatch, revealing darkness beyond. There was no airlock and no lighting since the station was automated and every gram of mass mattered in space. They squeezed into the station one by one, their powerful suit lights splaying across the “walls” of the access tunnel. Walls being a misnomer, as there was merely the skeletal frame of an octagonal empty space surrounding on all sides by conduits, wires, and other circuitry and machinery that would normally be hidden behind bulkheads on manned vessels. Again, no need for such luxuries on an unmanned station designed to operate for decades without required maintenance. Jula had warned everyone on the team to avoid touching anything but the handholds spaced every half meter or so apart.
They headed inward single file until they came to a six-way intersection, with a “vertical” shaft that occupied the center of the station connecting to four different “horizontal’ tunnels like a cross. The vertical shaft connected five different levels of similar intersections that provided access to the various station systems, and the group was clustered around the third such level roughly in the center of the station. A simple, utilitarian design.
Pearce’s team then split up and began traversing “down” the central shaft towards the gravimetrics systems, leaving Meson’s team to head “right” to begin plugging into their first assigned cluster.
Private Garga led the way down, followed by Jula and then Middle Management, who Pearce had begrudgingly begun referring to by his actual last name, Benzinger. Pearce followed them and the Sergeant brought up the rear. Jula was infinitely more comfortable making her way in zero-g than her boss, and he admired how quickly she seemed to be applying his training to reality.
Garga reached the “bottom” of the central corridor and headed out of sight into the proper side tunnel towards the access panel as advised by his VIA. Pearce watched as Jula smoothly made the transition as well by gripping the corner handhold and pivoting her body into the new vector as he had instructed. Benzinger attempted to follow her example but ended up misjudging and bounced off the “bottom” of the shaft and disappeared from sight, slowly spinning backwards and shouting over the comm.
“Shit, I’m out of control, I can’t stop, I…”
Jula’s calm voice interrupted him on the comm. “Easy there you big klutz, I’ve gotcha. Didn’t anyone tell you this station is a valuable piece of GTS hardware?”
As Pearce swung down into the corridor he saw that Jula had anchored herself to a handhold and used the tether attaching her to Benzinger to arrest his out-of-control spin and slowly reel him in until she had grasped him by the rescue straps on his back. Pearce smiled as they made eye contact and she rolled her eyes.
They made it to the access panel without further incident, and Jula took the pack from Garga and began pulling out what was needed to remove the panel and plug into the data port. She disconnected from Benzinger and they both then attached their tethers to nearby handholds so they wouldn’t float off as per procedure. Over the comm, Corporal Murrig reported that they were also in position and that Meson was beginning on his end.
As they waited for Jula to work, the group spread out as much as was permissible in the small enclosed space. Garga and Rogers floated towards the far end of the corridor. Benzinger watched over Jula’s shoulder as Pearce supposed he was wont to do, but at least he was lending his suit lamps to the effort. Pearce held onto a handhold on the inner-side of the tunnel, watching each step of the process and committing it to memory. Never knew when such knowledge would come in handy. Not that he was likely to find himself inside a PAN station again anytime soon.
As he watched, he suddenly picked up encrypted comms between Garga and Rogers, which his VIA automatically intercepted and decrypted.
“Sarge, I think she is doing something to sabotage the system.”
“What the hell are you talking about Garga? Since when do you have a degree in Quantum Computer Science?”
“It’s the connection, Sir…she’s splicing in reverse polarity. The power supply on that terminal will cause a short and fry the entire system. She must be trying to hide something!”
Pearce was no electrical engineer, but he knew how to hotwire and patch into all sorts of terminals and he couldn’t see what Garga was referring to at all. Furthermore, from the angle that the two Marines were viewing from they couldn’t even see the power connection that she was hooking up. Pearce’s well-honed instincts began sounding alarm bells.
He turned his attention from Jula’s work to the two Marines. Rogers was moving forward to get a better vantage at what Garga was warning about, and Pearce’s eyes landed on his gloved hand, which was hovering over his mag-holstered sidearm. Rapid movement caught his attention and he flicked his eyes to Garga trailing just behind the Sergeant, just as he suddenly lost the open VIA connection to the rest of the team.
There was a bright flash of light that lit up the entire corridor for an instant before the darkness only broken up by the beams of the suit lamps returned. Something red splattered against the faceplate of Pearce’s helmet even as his brain registered what his eyes had witnessed a split second earlier.
Garga, just behind Rogers with his sidearm pointed at the back of the Sergeant’s head.
Engage Combat Mode.
His OHUD lit up with data, overlaying each person with threat matrices, highlighting the murderous Marine in red, providing attack vectors and tracking Garga’s aim with a visible red line that was swinging from the ruined head of Rogers towards Benzinger and Jula. His VIA pumped adrenaline, norepinephrine, and cortisol from his military-spec chem-synthesizer directly into his aorta, hyper-alerting his body and brain. His cyber-warfare suite spun up and began automated defensive procedures. All this occurred in milliseconds, preparing his bio-genetically enhanced body to fight.
Pearce pushed off from the handhold slightly, reorienting hi
s body in the microgravity. His feet found purchase on the same solid bar he had been anchored to, knees bent slightly. When his upper body lined up with Garga, they explosively extended, launching him directly at the Marine even as he fired a second time. The accelerated particle round silently blew a massive hole in the side of Benzinger’s head even as Jula continued to work on patching in. She was heedless of the danger over her shoulder, as there was no sound in the vacuum of the station, and she couldn’t notice the flashes of weapons fire with the helmet’s lack of peripheral vision.
Pearce had been separated from Garga by only five meters or so and it took just a second to close the distance. Garga saw him coming and attempted to shift his aim, but he didn’t have time to react to the speed of the counter-assault. Pearce slammed into the stomach of the Marine with tremendous force, his shoulders crumpling the upper torso and legs in a comic display of physics.
The pistol sailed out of his hands and flew into the maze of conduits on the side of the access tunnel. Newton’s Law ensured that both of their bodies continued deeper into the tunnel before crashing hard into the bulkhead that separated the stations interior from deep space.
If the double impacts had affected Garga he didn’t let it show, as he immediately used the u-shaped position of his own body to strike a hammer blow against Pearce’s back while using his legs to provide an anchor. Pearce was surprised to feel sharp pain from the strike as the oxygen tank embedded in the back of his suit was vigorously punched against his body. A suit alarm began beeping, noting the loss of O2 pressure. The bastard had punctured his tank with a single hit, and in zero-gravity no less!
Pearce’s mind raced. Garga was clearly enhanced well beyond the levels of a normal enlisted Marine and possessed incredible strength. This was no mere lunatic, but in all likelihood a trained assassin. His VIA, analyzing the battle even more quickly than Pearce could, had already updated the threat level of Garga and was automatically attempting to hack the Marine’s own VIA with his cyberwarfare package. Incredibly, it was met with an equally powerful counter-attack, and a digital stalemate quickly ensued. There would be no cheap victory here.
Impact Event (Dargo Pearce Chronicles #1) Page 11