Merkiaari Wars: 04 - Operation Breakout Page 17

  Kate dismissed the window and went back to work.

  Northcliff was an interesting place and she found herself wondering why she had never visited it before. Not that she had travelled to more than a tithe of known colonies, but Northcliff seemed a particularly apt place for her to have been sent while working for Bethany’s ISS. Espionage had been a large part of her job at one time, with various parties using her and those like her to stab a competitor in the back... sometimes literally. She was assassin trained after all and no one had ever sent her anywhere to make nice-nice. It made her sick thinking about all the times she knew, she knew, that her superiors were on the take and were sending her on unsanctioned operations.

  The Ten, especially Whitby, must love Northcliff. It was ripe for exploitation. It had no significant naval presence except for a small picket force, and although it was an Alliance member, it was also right on the edge of colonised space. All of which meant that a ruthless company like Whitby Corp. could pretty much do as it liked with very little regulation to hold it back. Northcliff was out there hanging on the edge of nothingness at the extreme edge of the Human sector. It was as close to being a real Border World as it was possible to be without actually giving up Alliance membership. Apart from the Shan way way beyond any current dream of Alliance expansion, there was nothing but the Merkiaari. Little wonder then that Northcliff clutched at the straws offered by corporations like Whitby Corp. Climbing into bed with them was a way for Northcliff’s government to gain at least some influence within the core.

  The idea seemed to be that with so much invested in their world, the corporations would pull strings on Northcliff’s behalf if for no other reason than self interest. It was a horrible way to purchase a little safety, but understandable she supposed. The thing of it was, Northcliff had never—and would never—gain what it hoped from the arrangement. Whitby Corp. was too big to fail just because one of the worlds it had interests in collapsed. As important as Northcliff was to its people, it was just another piddling little Border World to corporations that could buy and sell such worlds at will.

  Northcliff had aspirations no doubt. It had patterned itself upon successful colonies such as Thorfinni, Forestal, and even Garnet—though Garnet was an exceptionally hostile world in comparison to the others. All three had grown into the powers they were today through their industrial might. Industrial powerhouses they might be now, but back in their early years they had been convulsed by mini wars as corporations struggled and fought each other to dominate their chosen planets. That was pretty much over with on those colonies these days. The corporations now chose to battle it out on the stock markets, and rarely in the military arena anymore. Flare ups did still happen, but in the main back-stabbing was reduced to hostile takeovers or outbidding rivals in multi-billion credit deals, not military operations or black ops fought with mercenary armies... mostly. Northcliff was still at the beginning of its journey. In evolutionary terms, they were like the first critters just learning to crawl out of the sea and onto dry land. They had a very long way to go yet.

  The irony of course was that Northcliff was the closest Alliance world to the Shan. It was already becoming an important waypoint for ships wanting to visit them. Anyone wanting to make the huge jump had to stop at Northcliff for fuel and provisions. Any ship returning also had to stop to off-load cargo and refuel before proceeding on. There had been no way to foresee the discovery of the Shan, but had there been a way, Kate had no doubt Northcliff’s government would never have sucked-up to the likes of Whitby Corp. by deregulating its banks and implementing so many corporate friendly laws. She wondered if, over the next couple of years, the government might try to undo the damage. It would take very brave officials to try because accidents happened to people like that. She should know, she had often been tasked with creating them.

  “Richmond,” Stone said via viper comm.

  “Here. What’s up?”

  “I’m on my way out. Want to come?”

  Kate’s heart sped up and she swung her legs off her rack. She was armed and fully dressed already, and had been waiting for him to make a move. She was more than ready to get going, just not in the same direction as Stone.

  “Richmond?”

  “Is Gina back?” she said casually, but praying her friend stayed clear.

  “Not yet.”

  “I’ll wait here for her. I still have data searches running. Rain check?”

  “If you want, but you don’t have to stay aboard to monitor your run. We have net access anywhere on the station.”

  Kate checked her sensors. Stone’s blue icon was at the outer hatch waiting for her to join him. She closed her eyes briefly, feeling her loyalty to him and the regiment pulling her, but her love for her brother was stronger. It might tear her in half, but she knew which would win. She should widen her scan beyond the ship. Knowing her luck, Gina would just now be coming up the ramp and she would only succeed in exchanging one problem for another. She held off on that for now.

  “Yeah I know, but this way I can lay around and still call it work.”

  Stone laughed and she joined him for effect. She squeezed her eyes shut, hating herself for playing him, but knowing she had no choice. When he figured it out, he would be in a rage and she would be dead meat. Keeping one step ahead of him was a priority now.

  “Okay, make the most of it, Richmond. Tomorrow I want a report on everything you’ve found out. I better be impressed.”

  “I’ll polish it until it gleams. Promise.”

  She watched his icon on sensors as Stone left the ship. The moment he did, she left her cabin heading quickly for the bridge. She reached out to the ship via neural interface as she stepped into the elevator and prepared for departure. She was about to find out how hard a ship designed for a crew of twelve was to fly solo. On her way up she contacted Station Central and filed her flight plan insisting on a priority routing to bypass the outbound queue. The request was acknowledged and she was told to wait while they shuffled the roster. No doubt someone at Central was cussing her out for screwing the schedule to hell and gone, but her request wasn’t actually that unusual. Courier ships traditionally had priority because of their role in the Alliance. They were absolutely crucial to the free and fast movement of information from system to system, and that was critical to the economy.

  She entered the bridge and chose her seat at the helm. She could do any or all of this from her cabin if she wanted, and once in foldspace she probably would monitor things from there, but for the n-space leg of the journey she wanted to be on the bridge. She took her seat and strapped in before closing her eyes. She found it easier with her eyes closed. Stone said... anyway, she just did. She put thoughts of her friends away and locked the door on anything that reminded her of them.

  She brought up Harbinger’s navigation systems and sensors. At the same time she ran diagnostics on the drives and fusion room. She had the capacity, but already she felt her processor being stretched. She had never seen it use this many cycles. It was at 80% capacity and an automatic resources warning suddenly tripped. She ignored the warning flashing on her internal display. Reaching out through her neural interface to disengage external power caused a brief spike up to 82% and back.

  “What are you doing, Kate?”

  She jumped, and spun her chair to look toward the elevator, but no one was there. Her heart slowed when she realised Gina had used viper comm and was coming up the ramp toward the ship. She quickly changed the codes to the outer hatch, encrypted them, and turned back to the helm.

  “Hey, Gina. What’s up?”

  She accessed one of the dock’s security cams and watched Gina trying to override the hatch controls. Kate triggered the stand clear warning on the docks. The board above Gina changed announcing Harbinger’s imminent departure. The ramp disengaged and began automatically retracting. Gina was forced to scamper back down the ramp as the pressure doors rumbled into place sealing off the slip.

  “Dammit! You crazy cow
! What the fuck was that?”

  Kate winced. Gina rarely cursed. “Sorry about that. I’ve got somewhere I need to be.”

  The umbilicals disengaged and retracted leaving the station grapples the only connection to the station and the last impediment to leaving. They weren’t under her control. She queried Central, and was rewarded with her departure time and position in the outbound queue. She checked her time-line and put a countdown up on her internal display. She didn’t have long to wait. She rushed through her last few checks. Everything was ready. She watched the countdown intently.

  Clang!

  The grapples released the ship and Kate, eyes still closed and linked with the helm, pushed hard against the station with her hands. Harbinger reacted like the thoroughbred she was, and sprinted in reverse away from the danger of collision. God she was a good ship. Her anti-grav thrusters were powerful and precise. She was an absolute dream to fly. Kate flipped herself over and engaged her mains. It felt like going from a slow walk to a jog and then a sprint as she poured on the power. Harbinger’s main n-space drive was, like her foldspace drive, way overpowered for her mass. All courier ships were designed that way to minimise flight times. The only ships faster in n-space were navy fighters. Nothing was faster than a courier in foldspace.

  “Kate! Where the hell are you going!?”

  She cycled through the bridge stations checking that all was well. She made an adjustment to her fusion room, increasing output in preparation for the jump. She didn’t charge the drive yet. There was no hurry. Navigation... she adjusted her outbound course to match her flight plan and eased into her assigned lane. She was gaining on the ships ahead, but they would jump out or she would before any reasonable proximity alert would trip. Environmental! She had forgotten to switch to internal atmosphere! Throughout the ship, ducts opened and began recycling the air and water now that the ship wasn’t using station resources.

  “Richmond,” Stone growled ominously and Kate stiffened. “Turn the ship around.”

  She swallowed, but didn’t answer.

  “Let’s talk about this. Whatever the problem is, we can deal with it. Together we can deal with anything this screwed up universe can think up.”

  If only she believed that.

  “Richmond, answer me!” She cringed at the anger in his voice. She initiated charging the foldspace drive and began calculating her jump. “Turn that fucking thing around now! That’s an order!”

  “Do it, Kate!” Gina said. “Please don’t do this to yourself, to us. Please!”

  She accessed viper comm and responded to both of them on her squad wide channel. “I’m sorry. He’s my brother. I have to do this.”

  “Rogue, Richmond. Think dammit. You’re going rogue!”

  “I’ve been thinking about nothing else since I found out! I. Am. Not. Stupid!”

  “Then stop acting like it!” Stone stormed. “I can’t let you go! I can’t!”

  “I know,” she whispered. “Gina?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t come after me. Please don’t let them send you against me. I... I can’t let them stop me. I’ll do whatever I have to do. I don’t want to hurt you. Don’t come.”

  “I follow my orders,” Gina said in a hard voice. “I’ll do what I’m ordered to do. Please turn around. We can fix this. I swear on my life I’ll help you get your brother. I swear it!”

  Tears leaked from her tightly closed eyes. The jump drive was charged and in the green. She input her destination and the comp calculated her jump point. She saw it appear on her system plot and she locked it in. The countdown began. She opened her eyes and flipped open the safety cover on the manual override. This one thing she would not handle via neural interface. If the comp failed to make the jump, she certainly wouldn’t trust it to follow her processor’s command to do so.

  “I can’t put this on you, Gina,” Kate said. “I’ll be doing some things that... let’s just say, I don’t think you’re ready for some of the things Stone and I have done in the past. I’m sorry. It’s for the best.”

  Ten seconds to jump.

  “Richmond, final warning. Turn that bitchin’ thing around!”

  “No.”

  Five seconds.

  “Listen up, bitch girl,” Stone said, his voice deadly calm and cold. His retro origins were showing. “I ain’t funnin’ wit’ yer no more. Turn yer carriage aroun’ or when I catch up wit’ yer, I gonna put a cap in yer fuckin’ head!”

  “Goodbye.”

  “Richmond! I’ll—”

  Foldspace enclosed her and cut her off from the last friends she had in the universe. She was rogue. The entire regiment, given the chance, would put her down for it. Stone would; even Gina would now, and Gina would have been the last person in her opinion to judge someone. It was done. She was on her way and on her own.

  Kate wiped her face on her sleeve, angry at the sentimental bullshit that had made her cry when not even her father’s death had managed to do that. She made herself think ahead to the mission, and not back to Helios where Stone was no doubt raging about her and promising retribution. He would come. She didn’t doubt he would come. She didn’t know how he would manage it, but she had to watch for him on Northcliff. She would keep her sensors on permanent over watch for viper emissions.

  Stone would have accessed her flight plan by now, and in his position, she would be checking ship departures looking for the next outbound trip to Northcliff. There would be at least some freighters going her way, probably with the Shan as final destination, but she had a huge advantage in speed. It would take her ten days or so to reach Northcliff, while anyone else would take at least a month. She frowned... unless he bummed a ride from the navy? No, she couldn’t see that happening. A ship like Warrior or Audacious wouldn’t provide taxi service, not even for a viper. Even if they did, they would still take something on the order of three weeks to get there.

  No matter how she cut it, she should have at the very least ten days to do something before Stone could possibly get there, and probably a lot longer. Still, that didn’t give her the luxury of hanging about. She accessed the helm and pushed her foldspace drive’s output up to 90% of capacity. Even she wasn’t brave enough to run it at max for the entire trip. She might push it a little more for the second half of the trip if things went well and she settled into running Harbinger solo without serious issues.

  She settled back and began cycling through the ship’s systems, making decisions and adjustments. She tried to ignore how alone she felt.

  * * *

  Helios Station, Helios, Border Zone

  “Goodbye.”

  “Richmond!” Stone roared. “I’ll—” Harbinger vanished from station sensors, and he withdrew his tap from the net.

  “She’s gone,” Fuentez said in a hushed voice. “She’s gone.”

  She sounded shocked, Stone wasn’t shocked. Pissed off, yes. Angry, absolutely. But shocked? No, not at all. He had planned and schemed to allow Richmond to perform her little personal project, even taking the ship was covered, but she wasn’t meant to go alone! That’s why Fuentez was here. Well, it looked as if Marion was wrong. Richmond hadn’t killed him, she had done worse. She had sidelined him as if he meant nothing to her. She had made him irrelevant! She was supposed to have killed him or marooned him here and stolen the ship with her best friend, not this!

  “We have to fix this,” Fuentez said.

  “Not we,” Stone replied. “Me.”

  “But—”

  “Shut it!” he snarled. “You were supposed to go with her! I told you why I wanted you here. I told you about her brother. Why are you still here and not with her?”

  Fuentez looked confused and hurt. Stone sighed and tried to think.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Fuentez said finally. “You said she needed help with her brother. Where’s she going then?”

  “Northcliff according to her flight plan.”

  “Northcliff!”

  He nodded. �
�She might have left that to throw us off. I’ll need to be sure of her destination before I go after her.”

  “But what are you going to do to her?”

  He gave her a pitying look. “What ever I have to do. Follow me.”

  Fuentez had to jog to reach his side. “Where are we going?”

  “Security. I want to know what Richmond learned that set her off. Her brother obviously isn’t where I thought he was. If he were here, Richmond would be figuring out a way to bust him out of the slam not gallivanting off like Zelda!”

  “You think he’s on Northcliff?”

  “If her flight plan isn’t false, she must think he is.”

  “We can’t kill her.”

  He stopped and turned toward her, aware his face was cold. “Maybe you can’t.”

  “But this isn’t a whig-out, she isn’t really a rogue! She’s just... she’s AWOL. That doesn’t rate a death sentence, Stone.”

  “She’s a danger. Anything she does that is traced back to the regiment will hurt us all. I can’t allow that.”

  He turned away and Fuentez followed in silence.

  * * *

  14 ~ A Deadly Gift

  Aboard Harbinger, on route to Northcliff, Border Zone

  Day 5

  Kate was going stir crazy. Her plan to monitor ship’s operations from her rack had lasted only three days before she started to get the feeling she was missing things. She hadn’t dared to sleep, her paranoia wouldn’t let her. She had access to all parts of the ship and all its systems via neural interface, but it wasn’t enough to settle her misgivings. The only thing that worked was inspecting the ship in person.

  “Bloody ridiculous,” she muttered to herself as she stalked angrily through the ship’s empty corridors towards engineering. She was angry at herself for giving in to fears that made no logical sense.

  Ridiculous.

  It really was. On the trip to Helios with Gina and Stone, none of them had felt the need to visit any area other than the bridge, their cabins, or the refectory. Neural inspections and diagnostics had sufficed for all systems just fine on the trip out, and they’d handled running the ship by taking turns to sleep. Maybe she was just tired, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she needed to visit each section at least twice a day.