Stellar storm, p.12
Stellar Storm, page 12
“Colonel?” Byrne’s voice was loud, and I suspected it wasn’t the first time he’d said it.
“She gets like that, sometimes,” Lyssa murmured.
I stirred. “Byrne, that chop shop where you got the trinocular…what are the chances they have a troop carrier parked on a field going rusty, somewhere?”
“Decommissioned Ranger personnel tub?” Byrne asked, rubbing his jaw. “Let me ask around, see what I can find.”
“Discreetly, Byrne. And try not to add my name to the question. Danny Andela and troop carrier adds up to only one thing. I don’t want everyone in the Carinad worlds in on this.”
Byrne raised a finger to his brow, a casual salute, and ambled away, his pants flapping around his legs. I examined his physique as he left and wondered if he’d lost even more weight since I’d last seen him.
I turned back to Ven. “I have another job for you.”
He nodded. “You have a plan now, Colonel?”
“I have the beginnings of a plan,” I agreed.
“I’m glad you have a plan,” Ven said, nodding.
If it had been anyone else, I might have left his comment as just an odd thing to say. I even thought for a second that Ven was trying to be polite, but his language skills had tripped him up again.
But something in my gut made me say, instead, “Why are you glad about it, Ven?”
He stared at me. No, through me. “The very first of your people to be taken…we do not know when that was, but Lyth believes it might have been nearly a year ago, yes?”
“Sure. The Terrans have been quiet for six months, until this Tracia thing, but what we think were the first ships to be raided disappeared about six months before that. Why?”
Ven nodded. “The timing is correct.”
“Huh?”
Ven put his hands together. The gesture made me think of someone pleading their case. Or trying to emphasize a point. “When I was taken, my orientation took about twice as long as I have been here in Carinad worlds, which is the only way I can measure it. In here.” He touched his chest with his clasped hands.
“Subjectively,” I supplied.
“Yes, subjectively. The very first of the Carinads the Muradar took will be coming to the end of their training, Colonel.”
My heart thudded unhappily. “Then they’ll be shipped off to their new owners,” I finished, feeling sick.
—17—
THE ARGUMENT RAGED FOR HOURS, and a lot of alcohol got used up in that time. I made no attempt to steer the discussion or influence it in any way. I needed perspectives and I couldn’t get them if I had an agenda of my own.
As hard as it was, I sat silently and listened to the debate. Everyone aboard the Lythion I trusted completely. Jai and Marlow and Kristiana were included in the discussion, too—Lyssa had them piped in and their holograms sat in the circle with us.
Time was against us, and that raised the stakes.
“If we’d gone in there without knowing the others were there, we would have left them behind, anyway,” Jai said. “This was only ever meant to be a morale boost for the Carinad worlds, to show we could fight the Terrans and win, if we wanted to. Perhaps it needs to stay at that scale.”
“And leave the others behind?” Sauli asked, appalled. He was the most impassioned of the people actually sitting on the Lythion. The dilemma had got to him.
“You don’t have time to build a full-scale military operation of the size you would need to bring back forty people,” Marlow pointed out. “If you take the time, you could get there and find half of them shipped out already. You have to go now.”
“We don’t have the people or the equipment to leave now, not if we have to extract forty people,” Dalton said. It wasn’t the first time he’d said it. He was the voice of cold reason in the room.
“Which brings us back to keeping the original mission objectives,” Jai added. Also, not the first time he’d said it.
“There has to be a way to do both,” Sauli insisted. “We go now, before they’re shipped out, and we take everyone off the damned planet.”
“We’d need an army three times the size of what we have,” Dalton objected. “That’s a major military operation. We were talking about sliding in, grabbing six people and sprinting home.”.
Sauli hissed. “Where are the fucking Rangers when you need them?” he muttered and shoved a hand through his hair.
“Sauli!” Kristiana chided him. “You really want those days back again?”
“Sorry, but…fuck, this just sticks in my gut,” Sauli said. “The Rangers could have stormed over there and kicked their asses, lifted everyone off and been back for dinner, a month ago.”
I glanced at Dalton.
He cleared his throat and said, his tone mild, “There’s another factor to this, too. If we leave now—today or tomorrow—then we’ll be unprepared, under-equipped and unready, even for the original mission. Danny was expecting a couple more weeks to ramp up to a ready state.”
That sobered them. Again.
Jai shifted on the chair he was sitting on, which we couldn’t see. “You have three choices,” he said. “You can leave now and try to extract as many as you can with the equipment and preparation you have on hand, which you all agree isn’t enough to lift off every Carinad. You can wait the two weeks Colonel Andela wanted, and do the same, but with slightly better preparation and equipment, and risk having some of the Carinads shipped out before you get there. Or you can wait until you are ready to extract all forty Carinads we think are there, only to get there and find that many of them have already gone elsewhere.”
Someone sighed heavily.
Jai shook his head. “There is no option which lets you take everyone off Hegara.” His voice was gentle, the summation brutal.
I was starting to feel like Sauli. This fucking sucked.
I spoke for the first time. “Mace, you were a Terran prisoner. Ven, you were a slave. Tell me what you think, both of you.” Byrne wasn’t here, or I would have asked him, too.
Mace’s expression was troubled. “I never want any Carinad to go through what I did, Colonel. If there really, truly is no option that saves everyone, can we at least find the option that lets us get the most people out of there and go with that?”
“Even if it puts all of us at higher risk because we’re not ready?”
“Yes,” Mace said firmly.
“Ven?”
Ven had his hands together again. “I, too, bleed for those who are still slaves. I would…I would pick up a shriver and use it, if it helped more of them come home.”
It was me who gave the heavy sigh, this time.
“Alright,” I said. “Lyth, please work with Lyssa to crunch variables and figure out our optimal window of departure. I’m sorry, but I’ll need that information as soon as possible.”
“Yes, Colonel.” I think it was the first time Lyth had spoken, too.
I got to my feet. “In the meantime, we ramp up everything. Prep, equipment, logistics, as if we’re leaving tomorrow. Just in case.” I nodded at everyone. “Thank you for your input. But now I have a great deal of work to do, and very little time to do it.”
I walked back across the field where the Lythion was parked, under the night sky that didn’t twinkle with stars, but with the lights of the buildings on the other side of the cylinder. It was late, so there weren’t many windows showing lights. The dimness suited my mood.
The camp was still and quiet. We were working everyone hard. It didn’t surprise me they were sleeping all the hours we let them.
I stopped by the kitchen and printed a thermos pitcher of hot coffee and went back to my office. There, I deleted all my plans for tomorrow and looked at the blank slate, only now becoming aware of the unsteadiness of my heart and the way my hands trembled.
I’d never before lead a team into an operation where the chances of failure were so dismal. And this team wasn’t a squad of professional Rangers ready to face whatever came at them. Half of them were family. Most of them were friends.
I put my head in my hands.
I don’t think I had ever been this scared before a mission, not in over fifty years of professional soldiering.
—18—
I DIDN’T SLEEP MUCH THAT night.
By the time I reached the bottom of the carafe of coffee I’d made for myself, I heard the sun mirrors give their soft clank as they adjusted to the rising of Plinio, outside. Soft dawn light rose around us. I’ve been told that dawn on Wynchester is nothing like dawn on a normal planet, that the transition is more abrupt. I’ve only been on one planet at dawn, and at the time I was in a cage surrounded by assholes living in huts, so I didn’t take a lot of notice of dawn.
But I was getting used to the switch from the soft blackness of night to the pale light of dawn, and the steadily building light of the day as the sun rose. They say we never really get rid of the biorhythmic beat of night and day even when we live in space. Maybe that was why I had grown used to Wynchester’s day-night cycles.
When everyone moved into the square between the huts for morning exercise, most of them yawning and scratching themselves, barely awake, I had the day’s assignments sorted out.
I moved over to where Marlee Colton was getting ready to take everyone through the workout and gave her a stiff smile.
“You look like you’ve been up all night, Colonel,” Colton said.
“That must be because I’ve been up all night,” I told her. I lifted my pad. “Change of plan, I’m afraid, Lieutenant. But you’ve assembled everyone here, which saves me from rounding them all up.”
Colton nodded and stepped back.
I turned and faced the rows. There were a few glances to left and right. A couple of raised brows. But they all waited silently for me to speak. They’d learned that much in the few weeks they’d had to prepare for this.
“I’ve got news both good and bad,” I told them. “It’s possible that we may be launching the operation as soon as sometime today, for reasons I won’t go into here.” I was still suspicious of open areas, and I still didn’t know everyone on the team very well. The four ex-Rangers we’d had to boot out of the operation told me to keep very sensitive information to myself, and this was the most sensitive kind.
A soft mutter, mostly comments from the sides of everyone’s’ mouths.
I held up my hand. “We’re swinging to operational status as of right now. Most of you know your operational statuses, and you should consider yourself active from this moment forward. However, before we actually launch, there is some make-up work we must get done before we leave.” I paused and looked at them, not at the pad. “I’m presuming you would all like fresh coffee on the jump to our target, yes?”
“Hell, yes!” came the answer from several of them.
I nodded. “So, packing food and equipment into the Lythion must happen before we dust off. I’ve posted the assignments to the camp notice board.” They could all access the camp notice board on their pads, but I was gratified to see that no one reached for their pad straight away. They were waiting for permission from me to move.
“This is earlier than I thought the go light would blink on,” I told them. “I’m sure it’s earlier than you thought, too, but it’s happened. Now we must deal with it. Make sure you take a few moments today to make any calls you should make. That is all.”
I turned and trudged back to the hut. Behind me, I heard Colton dismiss everyone and remind them to check their assignments before they got to breakfast.
She was a good officer.
My pad buzzed at me a few times as I reached the hut, but I waited until I was inside before I answered it. Then I waited until I was sitting down, because I just didn’t want to stand any more.
By the time I got the pad up front of me, the call had cut off. It had pinged off just one communications beacon, though—and I recognized the serial number, because it was one of the beacons that served Wynchester.
Curiouser and curiouser.
I refreshed the connection and waited, staring at the screen, feeling the ache of tiredness in my bones. My face felt like it wanted to slide off my skull.
The screen resolved to show Eliot Byrne, his head tilted to take in who might be calling him at this uncivilized hour. “Hell, Colonel, you look worse than me, and I’m dying,” he said.
“Long night,” I assured him. “You called?”
He nodded. “I jumped to call you as soon as I heard, then I realized what time it was and figured you would still be asleep, so I cut the call. Sorry. Shoulda realized you’d be up all hours.”
“So, what’s up?”
“Hang on a bit. Wanna just…” He looked down and I could see his shoulder moving. He was manipulating a dashboard. The screen flickered, and he nodded, satisfied. “Shell’s in place. No one can overhear us, now, not even if they bust into the beacon and hack the feed. They’ll just get scrambled buzzing—”
I sat bolt upright and gripped my desk. “Eliot, I could kiss you. Of course—damn, I’m so out of practice…” I held up a hand. “I have to go. Can your business wait?”
“Why do you think I scrambled the call?” he said, with a gentle tone. “It wasn’t just to swap coffee recipes. I think this is gonna make your day, Colonel.”
“You’ve already done that,” I assured him warmly. “See if you can top it.”
His smile broadened. “I got a guy who can get his hands on a decommissioned Imperial drop ship.” And he waited.
I drew in a breath, sharp and hard. “Capacity? What size?” My brain began to hurtle down nine different paths at once. “Model? What year?”
“Yeah, I just knew you’d ask. So, I’ve got the guy on standby. Can I cut him in?”
“Yes, cut him in. I’m going to get someone else on the call.”
“Who?” Byrne said, half curious and half wary.
“Jai Van Veen. He’s ex Imperial Shield and he had a lot of fingers in a lot of different pies. He’ll know the drop ships even better than me…and if this one is anything close to suitable, then he’s the man holding the drawstrings on the money purse, too.”
Byrne nodded. “Gotcha. Yeah, best get the money guy in on the negotiations. I’ll keep this call open. Go get your guy. I’ll get mine.”
The screen grew still, holding an image of him reaching for something behind the pad—Byrne was making the connection to his guy.
I put my pad on pause, too, and flipped over to another channel and hit the fast connect for Jai. I used that connection at least once a week to report in on progress with the camp and the mission preparation and it had always connected instantly.
So today, it took a month for the screen to form. Jai rubbed his eyes hard with the heel of his hand and blinked at me. “Danny?”
“Sorry to wake you. Sort of sorry, anyway. I need to cut you in on a four-way call, Jai. Eliot Byrne has got a guy who thinks he can get his hands on an Imperial drop ship. You know them better than I do. Interrogate him and tell me if he’s just yanking my chain.”
Jai blinked a couple times more. “You look like a three-year-old could run rings around you right now. Have you even slept?”
“No.”
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked softly.
“If the capacity of the ship is big enough, then maybe…just maybe, if we play this right, everyone gets to come home.”
Jai cleared his throat. “Okay, cut me in.”
I connected the two feeds and waited for the screen to rebuild itself into quarters.
Byrne’s guy looked like he was long overdue for regeneration therapy. Silvered whiskers covered his chin and his eyes were rheumy. But he remained steady as he studied the screen in front of him. No weaving or ticks. No scratching. His gaze was unwavering. His attention did not skitter all over the place.
He nodded at me and Jai.
“Danny, this is Christopher Booker,” Eliot Byrne said. “Chris, Danny and Jai.”
Booker nodded again. “Meetcha.”
Byrne added, “Danny was curious about that drop ship you were telling me about.”
Byrne was underselling my interest. Bless him. I made myself nod casually. “I’ve never heard of anyone having one for sale. I heard they were all dismantled after the Shutdown.”
“Me, too,” Jai said. “The Shield a-holes didn’t want anyone getting their hands on their precious designs.”
Booker didn’t look upset or affronted. He didn’t leap to defend himself, either. “Just what I heard, my man,” he told Jai. “But this one is sweet and pretty and whole. I’ve seen it myself. Parked in one of the lower levels of Badelt city. You know how that goes.”
Excitement made my heart leap and my gut to clench. Badelt City was one of the places where old starships went to die. The Supreme Lythion had been dumped there eighty years before Dalton had stumbled upon the ship. It wasn’t out of the realms of possibility that, rather than break a ship up, an Imperial Shield officer had ordered it dumped in one of the rust levels of the city, instead. Gone, but not for good.
Jai rubbed his jaw, looking doubtful, but I knew that glint in his eyes. He was as interested as I was. “Is the thing even running, if it’s down there?”
Booker nodded. “Good question. I just looked it over, myself. Didn’t want the dude with rights to it to think I was too excited by asking him to fire it up. And it was pretty jammed in there, too.” He fumbled with something in front of him. “But I took a photo of the serial plate. Would that help?”
“I don’t know,” I said doubtfully. “It doesn’t sound like much…”
Booker’s image was replaced by a photo of a starship serial plate. I’ve seen hundreds of Ranger serial plates. Shield plates were very similar, with the official Imperial seal in the corner, the name of the ship, the date of incorporation, and beneath, in even smaller lettering, the make, model number and serial number.
