Federation chronicles th.., p.78
Federation Chronicles: The Complete Series, page 78
Teagan looked below and angled toward the rooftop of a long corridor that connected the citadel to the building next to it. With her head thrust forward, she kicked away from the citadel, moving beyond the artificial gravity field. A short burst from her suit jets propelled her free fall. Her pulse quickened, and she kept her arms pinned to her sides. As she raced toward the rooftop, the artificial gravity emitters on her suit slowed her descent into a controlled swoop. Teagan’s lips curved upward and she inhaled, enjoying it probably a little too much. She reached out toward the handles on the rooftop and propelled herself forward, moving toward her target.
A comlink appeared on her HUD and she acknowledged it.
“You’re almost there,” Victor said. “How’s the view, Tia?”
His tone sounded a little strained and less than curious about her progress.
“Stimulating,” Teagan replied.
Victor began to reply and stopped. She relished his hesitation, but he hadn’t suffered enough yet for her to disable the explosive charge.
“You didn’t tell me about drones,” Teagan said.
“Give me a break, Tia. I didn’t know about them. Otherwise, I would’ve told you. Do you think I’d take a chance like that?” he asked.
Teagan snorted. “No, I suppose not, especially if you want to keep your head.”
He laughed mockingly.
“Don’t expect any sympathy from me. You brought this on yourself,” she admonished.
Victor didn’t respond.
Teagan cleared her throat.
“I brought this on myself. I shouldn’t have tried to betray you to that agent.”
“There, you see? That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Victor released an explosive breath.
“I’m closing in. Disable the security locks on my signal,” Teagan said.
She angled toward a maintenance hatch and passed it. A short distance away was a smaller hatch for repair drones.
“Ready,” Teagan said.
Victor transmitted the drone transponder codes and she broadcasted them from her suit. The small hatch was only a meter in diameter. Someone Victor’s size would never fit through, but Teagan was slender. The hatch popped open, and she glided through. She slowed down as her stealth suit’s VI increased power to her gravity emitters. The tube stretched out ahead of her and she coasted without slowing, not touching any of the walls.
“I’m in,” Teagan said.
She couldn’t hide from the sensors in the transit tube, but she’d gotten a power signature from the maintenance drones she’d tracked. The VI of her stealth suit mimicked the power output, and her counter-grav emitters were configured to match those of the standard model repair drones used for maintenance.
“Good,” Victor said. “Since you’re inside now, will you disable the collar?”
“Don’t you like your new necklace?”
“Not especially.”
“You know the deal. When I get what I need and am safely out of here, then you’ll be fine.”
Victor was silent.
The tunnel opened to a charging station. Spherical repair drones sat in their charging cradles, waiting for instruction. She spotted a control panel on the far end of the chamber.
“What’s the matter, Vic? Afraid I’ll treat you like you treated me?”
“Come on, Tia. Enough with this already. You’re almost out of range.”
Teagan chuckled. Victor thought she’d used the standard transmitter range for the collar, but she’d found a way to increase it.
She closed in on the control panel and said, “Just trust me the way I trusted you.”
Victor muttered a curse. If given a chance, Victor would have killed her. The galaxy never pitied the weak. It was one of her earliest lessons. Her temporary partner had rolled the dice and lost.
Teagan used her implants to initiate a comlink session with the control panel. She then ran a trace program that gave her access to the nearest data node and switched her comlink session to it.
“Hey Tia, what do you think about what’s been going on?” Victor asked.
She triggered the locking mechanism for the door, and it silently slipped to the side. She walked through and it closed behind her.
“I’m in,” she said.
“Did you hear me?”
She rolled her eyes. Victor had hardly said anything when they first started working together, and now she couldn’t get him to shut up. She walked down the dimly lit corridor.
“Huh?”
Victor sighed. “The stuff about the Sentinels.”
“What are you talking about?”
He covered the microphone. “…such a bitch.”
She grinned. “That’s the spirit.”
“Why do you do this?”
“Because it’s fun,” she replied.
There was a data core here in the depths of the citadel, and she was going to access it. Most security systems focused on preventing unauthorized entry from the outside. However, they lacked detection capabilities for trusted system sources.
She lifted her hand and a small scanner feed appeared on her HUD, giving her an inside view of the data lines behind the wall. She found the one she wanted and followed it.
“Did it bother you?” she asked.
“You think?” he said. “Sentinels were created by Harding and they’re… you saw it right?”
“I did,” she said.
The data line angled away from her, and she started walking faster. Teagan sent a small broadcast signal, and a door appeared a few meters from her location. She hastened toward it.
“I’m inside the data node. Just a quick data dump and we’re done,” Teagan said.
The brightly lit data node was lit up from the small computing core inside. There were rows of octagonal-shaped processing units—definitely not the standard processing units if this were just a station computing core. If she had to guess, this data core was much more important than she’d first realized.
She headed deeper into the room, following the highlighted path on her HUD. The specific processing unit she was going to use flashed on her HUD, and she walked over to it and connected a data-dump device to the side. The data dump began to offload, and she waited.
A minute went by, and she frowned. Glancing at the comlink session she had with Victor, she saw that it was grayed out. The connection had been lost. Pressing her lips together, she tried to initialize a new connection, but it didn’t work. She glanced around at the computing core, thinking there was something interfering with her comlink. She checked the security alert system, and it was quiet. If they’d detected her, there would be all kinds of alarms being raised.
She checked the data dump progress and sighed, then decided to lean up against the wall to wait.
Victor’s comlink became active.
“Oh good, the collar didn’t malfunction,” Teagan said.
“Ha, ha,” Victor sneered. “I had to switch locations.”
Teagan frowned. There was something in Victor’s voice that hadn’t been there before, something beyond anticipation.
She sighed. “What did you do?”
“What do you mean?” he asked a little too quickly.
Gritting her teeth, she triggered the detonator signal. No confirmation registered, and she heard Victor laughing.
“Wow, that’s it. You don’t waste any time, do you? Just like that, you were willing to blow my head off. Well, I disabled your damn collar!”
Teagan sprang across the aisle and snatched the data-dump device from the processing unit. It wasn’t finished querying the data core or dumping what it found. She initiated a data session to the device and began transferring the information to her suit systems.
She reached into a small compartment on her waist and placed a small disc-shaped charge on the processing unit. She wouldn’t be able to cover up her tracks the way she preferred, but it beat the alternative.
Teagan ran toward the far end of the computing core.
“That’s it, Tia. Run away. Run. Run. Run. Maybe they won’t catch you,” Victor said.
A message flashed on her HUD, and she smiled. “Goodbye, Victor.”
Victor shouted a half-strangled cry that was cut off when the comlink went dark. Why have only one detonator available when you could have three? There would be nothing left of Victor’s body, and the explosive charge would sanitize any kind of DNA evidence.
At least she hadn’t slept with him. She took a small amount of pride in not giving in to any of Victor’s charms.
She kept scanning security channels, searching for some kind of alarm. Someone had bought Victor off to get him to betray her. Had he told them where she was? She couldn’t be sure, and even if Victor could talk, he’d never tell her. The galaxy only respects strength.
Teagan never executed any operation without having a few alternative escape routes just in case. Betrayal was an occupational hazard that occurred entirely too often. At least she’d killed that bastard. Now all she needed to do was escape.
She ran down the maintenance corridors, increasing her distance from the computing core. Teagan selected one of the alternative escape routes and set that as default on her HUD. The path in front of her updated and she followed it. A few minutes later, her security scanner showed several alarms, confirming that Victor really had sold her out. He’d informed security forces of her escape route and they’d tracked her progress. Victor wouldn’t have alerted them until after she was already inside, but he’d been unaware of her alternate escape routes, which should give her an edge over the security forces. Time to employ some misdirection of her own.
She uploaded several infiltration protocols onto the station’s computer system. They quickly deployed multiple instances that would confuse security personnel who were monitoring her breach of their systems.
It didn’t take her long to reach the outside. With the station’s security monitoring systems compromised, there was no way they would notice another open hatch.
She vaulted over the walkway and engaged her suit’s counter-grav emitters. Her suit’s scanners detected security drones patrolling the area, but none of them had noticed her yet.
She initiated a recall of the flight harness she’d deployed a few days ago and received confirmation. A few seconds later, she spotted the harness speeding toward her.
A proximity alarm flashed on her HUD. Several security drones were coming toward her on an intercept course. Teagan blew out a breath. Her stealth suit couldn’t protect her against the weapons those drones carried. This was going to be close.
The flight harness swooped underneath her, and she spread her arms out wide. The harness wrapped around her suit, its systems going online with her suit computer. She initiated boosters, disabled her counter-grav emitters, and sped away from the security drones. They couldn’t keep up with her. She set the navigation coordinates and the flight control systems took over. Teagan became a passenger in her own suit. It was the only way she’d be able to escape.
The security drones quickly fell off her scanners as she moved out of range. Their onboard systems would likely report the anomaly, but it would take time for station security to organize a response. Teagan didn’t intend to waste any time. The security in this station was top-notch, and it wouldn’t take them long to regroup.
She reached her ship, and as soon as she was aboard, she initiated a micro-jump away from the station. Ten seconds later, the ship executed a much longer jump, stressing the drive to its limit. It would require a longer recharge time, but that was the price of crossing such vast distances.
Teagan removed the flight harness and put it in its cradle, giving it a companionable slap of appreciation, then initiated the removal of the stealth suit and stepped out of it. She put her equipment in maintenance mode, which would take care of diagnostics and the recharge they’d need when she used them again.
She looked at the data-dump device and considered what to do with it. She was supposed to upload the data into a secure comms drone and send it to the closest drop point so that a Union team could recover it.
“Welcome back, Tia,” said Greta. “Secure comms drone is ready.”
Teagan peered at the data-dump device with a thoughtful frown.
A circular panel opened next to the nearby workbench. It was Greta’s way of prompting her into following Union protocols.
“I’m going to hold onto it, Greta.”
“Tia, this isn’t protocol. I must insist—"
“Override. Authorization Teagan Cayne.”
Using her implants, she transmitted her identification to the ship’s computer core.
“Override accepted.”
“Good. And retire the Tia persona. I won’t need it anymore.”
“Understood,” Greta replied. “Shall I purge recent identity?”
As a rule, Teagan tried not to reuse a persona more than once, but sometimes it was unavoidable. “Yeah, I won’t keep that one.”
A holoscreen appeared, showing the current list of aliases Teagan maintained. The Tia alias had been expunged. She peered at the list of aliases and focused on one of them. It was much too dangerous to ever use again, but she couldn’t bring herself to erase it. She selected the alias, and a profile picture came to prominence on the holoscreen.
Her blonde hair, brown eyes, and tanned skin were replaced with something much more exotic. She studied the curves of her face from the delicate cheekbones to her full lips.
“My name is Vonya Irani,” Teagan said, and the edges of her lips lifted a little.
She’d changed so completely for that alias, from the dark lavender skin color to the silky platinum-colored hair. As she looked at the image, she remembered the smile of a young spacer aboard the Nebulon. He had an adorable little dimple that appeared when he smiled, and there was something about him that made her want to stay with him. She thought about Simon sometimes during downtime between missions. She could hear his laugh and the sound of his voice when he spoke. He was so curious about her… about Vonya, she corrected. He was attracted to her, that much was obvious, but during her time aboard the Nebulon, she’d found that she enjoyed his company more so than anyone else in a very long time.
Teagan looked away from the holoscreen. When she’d seen Becker and Oscar in the Phineas Cluster, she felt a thrill at the thought that they might recognize her. She’d thought Toros Becker might have, but he hadn’t. She knew it was careless of her to tempt fate like that, especially after what she’d done, but she hadn’t known her actions would lure the Sentinels to that starbase. She’d been trying to neutralize Quinton’s access to the starbase so Union ships could take control of it from the DUC. In that scenario, the lives that would have been lost were only those who’d chosen to fight. Then the Sentinels showed up with a fleet of their own ships. Teagan had done the only thing she could have done. She was already off the starbase when the Sentinels came. Her eyes became tight around the edges and her throat thickened. She’d run away, leaving the crew of the Nebulon to their fates aboard the starbase. She thought they’d all died, that Simon had died. The thrill of using her skills in deception had been matched by one of the DUC’s finest agents, Maelyn Wayborn, and she’d come out the victor, but it was a hollow victory for her because she’d left behind something much more valuable than a starbase.
Teagan thought about her time aboard the Nebulon, living with its crew, and sometimes enjoying the fantasy that she was a Servitor traveling the galaxy.
She grabbed the data-dump device and powered off the holoscreen, heading to the showers. She’d spent almost forty-eight hours in a stealth suit, and the first thing she wanted to do was get clean. She needed to wash the mission off her skin. Hopefully, it would also wash away the nostalgia she was feeling. There wouldn’t be a future where she could indulge her foolish fantasy of lounging in Simon’s embrace.
The shower started off as hot as she could take, and she washed every inch of herself, but no matter how long she washed, she couldn’t dismiss the ghosts from her past. She changed the temperature of the water to cold and stood beneath it, stubbornly refusing to move. She exhaled forcefully and after a minute, she began to shiver. She stayed there as if serving some kind of penance, but what she really wanted was to forget. She should purge Vonya Irani’s alias from the computing core. Gritting her teeth, she slapped the controls and the water stopped streaming.
Teagan stepped out of the shower and began to dry herself. Greta had had one of the maintenance drones leave some clothes for her to wear, and she quickly dressed and walked toward the bridge. At the central workstation, she kept shifting in her seat as if she couldn’t get comfortable. After a few minutes, she sighed in disgust and stood up.
Teagan activated the main holoscreen and brought up her list of aliases, selecting Vonya Irani’s alias. A list of options appeared, and her gaze slid to the option to purge. Teagan swallowed hard and then shook her head. She made a swiping motion with her hand and the windows on the holoscreen disappeared.
A maintenance drone carried in a tray of food for her. She picked something at random and started chewing it, not paying any attention to the taste. The galaxy only respected the strong, but was Quinton right? She’d seen the reports across multiple systems. Her father served the Alliance because, for the moment, Quinton Aldren could protect him from Trenton Draven and the Collective. Teagan knew that much, but what if Quinton had been right? Were they all living in some kind of prison without walls? Even her? She’d always served the Union’s interests. One day she’d command the Union, but for now, she was a like a coil in a jump drive. By itself it wasn’t very effective, but when it was part of a group, it had the power to fold space and time. What if the machine that was the galactic civilization after the Federation Wars itself was wrong? Could it really have been designed to be as it is now? Teagan frowned at the thought, but it kept coming back to her. She could put it aside for a while, but downtimes between missions were tough. If the galaxy was going to change, she needed to decide what her role was going to be. Otherwise, she’d be stumbling in the dark in a world of someone else’s design, and that was something she couldn’t tolerate. She was in control of her own destiny.
