Alpha strike, p.8
Alpha Strike, page 8
“I’ve got a few people that can manage,” she said, “though you might want to tag whoever refurbished the missiles for Port Royale to head that project. We’ve also got some folks helping get some of the laser batteries online. Checking out the missile launchers, the magazines where the missiles are stored, and the fire control equipment won’t be too much of a stretch for them.”
“That’s a good start, and I’ll see what I can find out about the missile refurbishment. What are we looking at timewise?”
“I can’t promise we’ll have everything done in a timely fashion, but we can get the work started. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out where the life-support systems are. Remember, gravity will be coming back on shortly. It won’t pull you down fast, but it’ll be there.”
“I’ll be careful,” he assured her. “Thanks for what you’re doing, and keep making the magic happen.”
Jack headed off in search of the battleship division commander’s office. His ability to navigate the old-style location markings had improved, but it wasn’t anything to write home about, so it took almost half an hour to locate the appropriate deck and start wandering through the offices.
Gravity had been restored to low levels at that point, but he was still using his magnetic boots. Cracking his helmet would be a disaster in a vacuum environment, so it was better to be slow and safe.
Having the lights on meant that he could turn off his headlamps and see everything clearly. He still had his Marine guards making sure everything was clear around him, though he was confident that the people who’d been looting the supplies and equipment were long gone.
The Marines still acted as if trouble might lurk around every corner, but he didn’t begrudge them their paranoia. It was their job to keep him safe, and he had to make allowances for that.
By the time he’d located the battleship division commander’s office, gravity was back up to three-quarters normal. He shut off his magnetic boots and entered the adjutant’s office, where some junior officers would’ve done the office tasks and screened visitors coming to see the division commander.
He almost laughed as he walked in. The room was at least as large as Vice Admiral LaChasse’s office. It wasn’t just one person screening calls and looking over visitors. There were a dozen desks here, and he felt sure mid-rank Navy officers were screening information much like a command staff would do to make sure the admiral in charge got the information they needed without drowning in other data.
There was one rather large desk in front of the door leading into the next compartment. This would be where the person screening the admiral’s person from visitors decided who got in and who didn’t.
Vice Admiral LaChasse had had a lieutenant filling the role. He wagered the division commander here had had a full commander. Hell, maybe even a captain. The problem was that so many people on this station would’ve been flag officers.
Talk about problems he didn’t have to worry about.
He let himself into the admiral’s office with a bet that it would dwarf LaChasse’s, and he would have won big. The division commander’s office was twice the size of the disgraced vice admiral his father had arrested and replaced.
In addition to the admiral’s wide desk—which was larger than even his own aboard Hunter—there were small clusters of workstations where people did critical work for the division commander. They were far enough away that the people could work without feeling like the admiral was staring over their shoulders, but that still couldn’t have been an easy job.
Jack made his way over to the admiral’s workspace and found it spotless and pristine. The built-in computer was turned off, and the desk itself had nothing on it. Of course, everything had been in microgravity, so anything sitting out would’ve drifted away long ago.
Not that he could see signs of anything like that in the compartment. Whoever had been in charge of this office had put everything in its place before leaving.
When Jack looked around, he noted that though it didn’t have any viewports leading into space, the right-hand wall—when looked at from the admiral’s desk—was covered with viewscreens set edge to edge.
Curious, Jack walked over and found the controls and turned them on. He gasped when they came to life. It was as if he was looking out over the gas giant they orbited with nothing between him and it. It wasn’t a static image but a video. Its cold colorful beauty filled the compartment with pastel light.
He double-checked the controls and found several other views he could choose from. One was of deep space, another showed a fleet of Confederation warships in formation—not the battleships, but smaller vessels.
There was one of a battleship, and it was labeled “Delta Orionis.” It was his ship, though much less chewed up. This video was taken by someone flying around the vessel in a slow spiral to show everything.
The last setting was a planet from orbit. Earth: the birthplace of mankind. He put that up and marveled at how much like Faust it looked. Still, the iconic shapes of the continents told the true tale.
He left that video playing and went back to the admiral’s desk, sat, and tried to imagine what it would’ve been like to sit here when the first commanding officer had been in charge. They’d built this facility after the invasion, so everything here was prepared for a new war rather than fighting the old one.
Too bad they hadn’t kept the ships up. If they’d been ready for this invasion with the same level of preparedness, they’d have eviscerated the Locusts.
Sadly, human beings were what they were. They couldn’t remain vigilant forever, and the Locusts had stayed away long enough for their defenses to atrophy. It was up to him and his people to honor those who had built this facility by winning this war.
He was about to get up but decided to further indulge himself and look inside the desk drawers. All were empty, except for the top one. It contained a small wooden case.
Jack set the box on the desk and opened it. Inside was a folded piece of paper and a data chip. Carefully, not wanting to damage something that might be historically priceless, Jack unfolded the paper and read what was written on it.
To whomever next commands the battleship division:
I don’t know who you are, and we’ve likely never met, but I wanted to take a moment to leave my thoughts for you. Odds are you find yourself in challenging times, and I hope my insights can help.
I’ve left something for you in my cutter, locked safely away in its cargo bay. I realize we’re powering the station down, but I’ve taken precautions. Hopefully, you’ll find everything intact. The code to the lock is the date we destroyed the last Locust ship. Enjoy it in good health.
Humanity is in your hands, my unknown protégé. Be worthy.
Grand Admiral Edward Carstairs
Edward Carstairs had been the man who’d crushed the Locusts during the first invasion. He hadn’t been a Grand Admiral then, just an admiral. He’d ended his Navy career with that fifth star, and no one had ever done more to earn it.
He’d been dead and gone for more than a century and a half, so this was a message from the grave. It also emphasized how much time had passed since the station was mothballed. He hoped whatever he’d had left in his cutter could stand up to the cold, airless conditions for that long.
Jack put the note back where he’d found it, closed the box, and put it inside his suit. He’d wait until he got back to Hunter to hear what his predecessor had to say.
Whatever it was, he knew he needed to give it his full attention, but he had other tasks to complete. If anyone could understand what he was going through right now, the long-dead admiral who’d left this note for him was that man.
Well, he’d spent enough time indulging himself. It was time to get back to work.
10
Connor made his way to the flight control area serving Port Royale. It wasn’t much to speak of, but he knew the way. He supposed they’d have to expand the number of controllers with the Navy moving in. One more thing to work out when the council finished making up their minds about the treaty.
He needed to inform them about the attack, but he had too much on his plate to do it right now. All they’d want to do was talk about it anyway. Well, Romani would want to yell at him, but he could do with putting that off for a while, too.
The flight controllers were a phlegmatic group. They weren’t given to excitement, so when he stepped into a room full of people in an uproar, he knew something was very wrong.
“Pipe down!” he shouted over the chatter of voices. “What’s going on?”
One of the women turned to him as the conversation died down. “The computers crashed. We need a specialist to get them working again while we direct traffic manually.”
“We’ll get someone to look at things, but I need you to tell me what happened right before the computers crashed. The rest of you, get back to work.”
The woman he’d been speaking with shrugged. “It was a normal day. The failure seemed to come right out of left field. I suppose that’s how computer crashes are. You never expect they’ll happen, and boom, you’re down.”
“So, you only had traffic coming into the one bay, correct?”
She frowned at him. “Of course. Where else would they go? We had some traffic back and forth between some of the old battleships and the usual stuff going to the belts and the greenhouse domes, but nothing out of line.”
“Was there anyone on duty that’s not here now?”
That made her frown deepen. “We don’t normally have this many people working a shift, but we called in extra people to help us handle the load once the computers went down. It’s better to have two pairs of eyes looking at everything when you don’t have a computer backup. At this point, I expect we’re all here.”
“Was there anyone scheduled for duty that’s no longer here?”
She looked around and seemed to be counting heads. Since these were very detail-oriented folk, she’d remember who was supposed to be there, even with the pressure on.
“I don’t see Finley. He may have stepped out to use the bathroom.”
“Did anyone see when Finley left the room?” Connor asked in a louder voice. “No guesses. I need to know if anyone saw it happen.”
One of the young men seated at the console raised a hand but kept talking into his headset. He turned just enough to look at Connor as soon as he finished. “He left about an hour ago. Not sure what for, but things were still in an uproar because of the computers, so I thought he was going for help.”
“Is Finley his first name or last? Does anybody know where his quarters are?”
“His last name is McDonald,” she said. “I’m not sure where he stays, but it’ll be in our directory. Unfortunately, that went down when the computers did. I don’t think we have it written down anywhere. I suppose that’s something we need to correct.”
“What was Finley overseeing before the computers went down?”
“He had the main console,” the young man sitting there now said. “There were three of us on duty, so he watched the traffic and communicated with the various small craft while the rest of us were catching up on some paperwork. He was still doing it when the computers crashed. He headed out right after that.”
That was all Connor needed to hear. This Finley must have been covering for whoever had been in the parts storage area. Alone at the console, he could easily ignore traffic he didn’t want to acknowledge. If no one else saw the sensor records, they wouldn’t be able to say anything untoward after the fact.
Of course, that all went out the window as soon as people started shooting.
“When the computers come back online, I want you to go over every small craft that approached the station when Finley started duty at the console,” he ordered. “We’ve had someone stealing things from the warehouses, and the data may still be in there. There will be a bonus for whoever gets me the information I need.”
Connor doubted the data was still there. This Finley would’ve erased everything incriminating before he crashed the computers. In fact, if the computers were recoverable, he’d be shocked.
He stepped out of the room, pulled his comm off of his belt, and called one of the council’s aides. “I need a room assignment for a man named Finley McDonald. He works as a flight controller.”
“Hang on,” the young man said.
Connor gestured for his guards to close in while he waited. “Once we find out where this Finley lives, we’ll pay him a visit. No matter what happens, I want him alive.”
The men and women nodded. They’d do their best to keep from killing the bastard if he started shooting, but Connor wouldn’t hold it against them if they couldn’t take him alive.
A few seconds after he’d finished speaking, the aide was back on the channel. “His quarters are on gamma deck.” His contact proceeded to rattle off a series of letters and numbers that designated the compartment.
Connor recited them back to confirm and let his guards know where they were going. With that accomplished, the group headed to the lifts and down to gamma deck. Everything seemed normal as they made their way through the twisting corridors and stopped outside the indicated quarters.
“Open it up,” he ordered.
The electronic locks on the station could be overridden with the appropriate codes, and his security team had them. That didn’t mean there wouldn’t be manual locks on the inside, but if they were engaged, that meant Finley was home.
One of the security people used a device to override the lock, and the hatch slid open. His guards went in with their weapons drawn. Inside, they found chaos. A suitcase was broken open in the living room, and clothes were scattered everywhere. Definitely not the sign of an innocent man going about his day.
The security team spread out, calling out to one another to let everyone know what they were finding. One of the groups found Finley in the bathroom, but he couldn’t help them. Someone had stuffed him into the shower and slit his throat.
Connor stepped into the doorway and saw the dead man sprawled in the shower. From the way the bathroom was torn up, he hadn’t gone into the shower willingly.
He was a loose end that someone had cut off. It was still possible they’d find something that pointed them to the right people, but this would be a massive pain in the ass to sort out.
“Go through everything,” he ordered. “He might have written something down that we can use to trace the people behind this.”
Based on how the place had been torn up, they’d searched for any incriminating evidence, but they’d been on the clock. They knew someone would come along, and they didn’t have forever to make things happen. That means the most secretive hiding places might have slipped by.
As his people spread out to begin searching, Connor walked through the quarters himself. He’d been a smuggler most of his life, and he knew how to hide things where people wouldn’t find them. He considered where most people stashed things and decided not to even look there. His folks would check those for him.
No. He was much more interested in a concealed spot that no one would think to check. On a ship designed for smuggling, there were concealed compartments made to look like they didn’t even exist. They were built so that other equipment concealed their presence, but they had to be accessible enough to get your stuff in and out.
He pondered and discarded potential locations as he went from room to room. The attackers had cut up the mattress and all the furniture. Amateur hour, there. No one with half a brain would think those were secure hiding spots.
There were access panels on the floor that had been opened up as well. Those served the conduits that provided water, power, and air. Even the kitchen had been ransacked. The freezer had been emptied, and all the containers cut open. What a waste.
Connor grabbed a beer—which hadn’t been opened because the glass was clear enough to see through—and took a swig once he’d popped the lid. He grimaced. It wasn’t the best, but it would help him think. He then proceeded to search everywhere he could think of.
He returned to the bathroom and set the now empty beer bottle on the sink. With the kitchen eliminated, the bathroom was the most likely hiding place in his estimation. He’d go through everything and hope he got lucky.
Connor failed to find any concealed compartments in the cabinets, or fake containers among the cleaning supplies, and turned to the pipes at the back of the sink. One of them served as a drain, but the other seemed to be going from the level above to the one below. Anyone opening up the access would believe that the pipe was for carrying other people’s water.
He found that unconvincing. Those would be in the bulkheads and not readily accessible, so he wrapped his hands around the pipe and tugged at it. It resisted his efforts for a moment and then popped free. When he looked inside, he saw it contained several data chips.
Connor stood, pocketed the data chips, and shook his head at the dead man. “You made some bad choices, boyo. I can appreciate the desire to make money, but you sided with people that valued their privacy more than your blood. It won’t do you any good, but I’ll make sure they pay for that. Not because I care about you, but because they’re a threat Port Royale can’t abide.”
Whoever these people were, they’d come aboard his station, attacked his guests, and then murdered their pawn right under his very nose. They would regret crossing swords with him.
He made his way out to where the guards were still working. Some of them had found money and even illicit drugs, but he was sure he had the most important stuff in his pocket. There was only one person he trusted to get to the bottom of this without triggering any potential safety protocols. He brought out his communicator and called her.
11
