Chapter 16

Lee took a sip of coffee while he reviewed their final mission preparations on his datapad. He wasn’t a regular coffee drinker, but this morning he needed the jolt.

He heard magboot steps from behind him on the command deck. Tarrek approached with a half-business face. Lee tried to avoid staring at the other half. “Morning,” Lee said with a little more enthusiasm than he’d intended. Must be the coffee, he thought.

“Morning, Lee. Intel says they found Vilant’s position.”

“So, where are we headed?” He took another sip.

“We got reports from other cells that she’s holding station near an advanced research facility called Wagner Park, in the Syev system.”

“Syev? Huh, that’s remote.”

Tarrek nodded back, “Seems a nice tucked away corner for Duryss to keep his secrets.”

“Nothing there but pockets of colonists and terraformers.” He took another sip and thought for a moment. “Well, on the plus side, that’ll make it easier for us to go unnoticed.”

“It’s low security. We won’t have any problems, but still need plan our route. It’s short enough for direct jump in, but we don’t want traces back to our cell on return trip.”

“Right, so we need to come back through another system.” Lee swung his chair back to the nav panel and pulled up the astrogation chart to take a look. A holofac projection of nearby systems leapt off the display. He plotted a route to Syev, or rather, to HR 1385 as it was listed on the charts. He motioned Tarrek to take a closer look and pointed to a yellow star off the direct path. “Ain?”

“Not familiar with it. What’s there?”

“Nothing. No one. It’s uninhabited.”

Tarrek shook his head, “Too easy to trace us back here. Our wake signal will stand out like a neutron star.”

“Hmm,” Lee scanned the display. He scanned the area local to Syev and stopped near twin blue stars. “What about Kap Tau?”

“I like it. Lots of traffic. Easy for our jump signatures to get lost in noise. When we return, we can route through Ain and Kap Tau. Throw off anyone following.”

“Paranoid?”

“Protective. Send nav plan to Becke and Warrick.” Tarrek reached back to pull his datapad out, “Oh, and I’ve got hack program to upload in your ship’s recon controller.”

Tarrek handed him a datapad.

“Ahh, let me take a look.” He examined the data pulled up on the datapad’s display. The number of intrusion tools showed how sophisticated it was. “Someone paid a lot for military-grade intrusion tech. Multi-threaded parasite routines, EXer, and Fractal Hemorrhage viruses. Looks like a Federal Intelligence kit. How fast is it?”

“Not very, but is,” he seemed to pause to find the right word. “Reliable. It has enough intrusion tools to break most systems. You’ll be sitting out there awhile. Good thing you got stealth-tech with turbo. If it gets hot, you just gotta run.”

Lee nodded, “Or use my own programs.”

“This isn’t datapad hacking.”

“No, but I’ve done some data running before. I can handle it.”

Tarrek scowled, “Don’t be cocky about it. Don’t take unnecessary chances.”

“What happened to ‘whatever it takes’?” Lee gave him a smug grin.

The corner of the right side of Tarrek’s face pulled back to a bit of a smirk. Lee thought it looked like he was trying to scowl a bit, too, though it was difficult to differentiate from his usual facial scowl.

“Look, I’ll get the job done,” Lee placed the datapad on his console and swiped over it toward the system panel. The display showed the progress of uploading the hacking toolkit.

“Hey gompchta, we all counting on you. A lot riding on this. Success of Resistance, better life for Hyades people…”

Lee waved him off and turned back to his console, “Yeah, yeah. I get it. I don’t need any extra pressure.”

Tarrek grabbed his seat and turned him back around to look him in the eyes. “You promise me you won’t do anything stupid?”

“Hey, what’s with you, man?” Lee became annoyed at his insistence.

“You know what this means—what it means to me.”

Lee met his stare, “To us, both! We both lost brothers, remember?”

Tarrek seemed to ease a little. “Right.”

“Besides, you’re the one that needs to be careful.”

Tarrek had a questioning look on his face.

“Watch your back with Dekker, alright? Don’t trust him for a second.” Lee gestured with his head in the direction of the Para Bellum parked beside them in the cargo pod.

Tarrek adjusted the beret on his head. “I don’t trust anyone,” he said and walked out of the command deck.

“Works for me.” Lee turned back to the nav panel to finish the flight plan.

The deck of the cargo pod on the Athos was abuzz with activity. Maintenance crews were running, and autoloaders were skittering about. They were all focused on getting the Para Bellum and Nightcrawler stocked with supplies. Lee watched one of the maintenance technicians banging a tool against the deck in apparent frustration. It reminded him of how thrown together the Resistance fleet was. They were scrappy and determined. He liked it. Being part of it made him feel more content somehow—more complete.

Xohn walked into the upper command level, donning a black and grey flight suit. It seemed a strange, but somehow fitting look for him. “Everything down below is ready,” he said, then shivered.

“Are you cold?”

“No, no. Just,” he paused and seemed reluctant to say it. “Nerves, I guess. Terminals and workbenches are where I work. I don’t do missions.”

“Hey, that’s all you need to do, right? You stick to the terminals and workbenches. We’ll be fine. Keep the ship alive, I’ll keep you alive. Deal?”

He heard Xohn swallow hard. “That I can do.” He nodded before heading down the ladder to the lower deck.

“Alright partner, then, what do you say we get this little adventure started?” It was a strange phrase for him to say. When did he begin to think of Xohn as a partner?

Lee tapped at his controls and threw his flight chair straps loosely over his shoulders. In rapid, practiced fashion, he navigated his system panel to start the full pre-flight systems check. It was tedious but necessary. After verifying all the flight controls responded correctly, he opened a channel.

“Athos Control, this is Nightcrawler, ready to depart.”

“Acknowledged Nightcrawler. Standby for the tow-arm.”

Moments later, the Nightcrawler shook around them. The arm hauled them outside the cargo pod releasing them to the vacuum of space. Undocking a cargo-ship-turned-fleet-carrier was a surprisingly smooth affair, all things considered.

Lee maneuvered them a safe distance away to wait for the Para Bellum to join them. He spent the time checking the configuration of the Nightcrawler’s hardpoint fire control and power management. There were some utility modules power cycling on and off. The COVAS hadn’t announced a problem with the main power generator, so Lee assumed it was something else.

“Hey, Xohn?” he called on the intercom to the deck below. “Any idea what’s going on with the port shield booster and pulse wave analyzer? They keep losing power and…”

“It’s probably the ThermARC integration.” Lee could hear the sigh under his breath. “The bypass route into main power overloads the primary systems power distribution to the utility subsystem, I think.”

“Right, I know it’s a power issue. Is it an easy fix you can do en route, or are we stuck here?”

“Hmm, I’ll have to head back down to the power distributor to take a look.” There was another sigh. Lee could hear his exasperation. “And my tea I just sat down with. You know the Nightcrawler is an ancient, cobbled together, barely functional relic.”

“Hey! She’s got it where it counts,” Lee shot back. “She can still keep up with the Para Bellum. You said it’s your ThermARC causing the problem.”

“No, it is the bypass I had to invent on the fly to tie it into your cross-wired mess. A regurgitated dog’s dinner is what what I have to dig through down there!”

“Just get down there and make it work, will ya?”

Lee heard the movement below and Xohn’s resignation as he responded, “Yeah, I’m on my way.”

A flashing signal on the sensor display showed the Para Bellum closing in. Lee pulled up the astrogation chart to load their flight plan. Off to the starboard, the Para Bellum arrived flying in formation beside them. He opened an encrypted tight-band channel to them, “Hey guys, heads up, we’re doing some last-minute, uh, fine-tuning on the prototype. Keeping open comms. I’ll let you know when we’re ready.”

Jackson’s voice responded over the comm system, “Got it, Lee.”

“Hey, you daft vacking guffstain, ship names only from here on out.”

“Whatever! Right, just settle down. Acknowledged, Nightcrawler*.”*

A flashing indicator on the system panel got Lee’s attention, followed by the COVAS announcing, “Power plant capacity exceeded.” The sudden electrical chunking sound of the shields going offline startled him. It was followed by a low-pitched wind-down of a total system shutdown.

“Well, this is fun,” Lee commented to himself.

With the systems off, the running-lights of other ships glided through the star-strewn backdrop. In the silence with nothing but his breath, he stopped to admire the beauty of the rusty backlit clouds from the galactic core.

A stab of worry about the mission hit him all at once.

He closed his eyes, and Vic’s assuring words came to his mind. “Keep your head out there. You’ll be okay, partner.”

Power restored, and the restart sequence clicked away across the terminal, but Lee was captivated by the stars. He could almost feel Vic’s spirit with him. The ship came back alive around him.

A comm request beeped. He opened the channel and heard Tarrek’s voice, “Hey, you guys okay over there?”

“Yeah, yeah, everything’s fine. You guys ready?” He muted the channel and opened the ship intercom to Xohn, “What’s going on down there, are we good to go?”

“We’re good, I think” There was still uncertainty in his voice.

“You think?” Lee slipped into mimicking Xohn’s accent.

“Ready over here, Nightcrawler,” came an edgy reply from Jackson over the comms.

“What do you mean ‘you think?’” Lee asked back over the intercom.

“A rudimentary surge relay I wired up will dump the extra power into the capacitors, I think.”

“What, how? I had no idea that’s possible. Xohn you’re incredible! Wait, why do you only ‘think’ we’re good to go?”

“It is hard to know if it will always work. As I said, it’s quite crude, but it should work enough for the mission.”

“What happens if it doesn’t work?”

“Ehh,” Xohn cleared his throat. “Let’s just hope that doesn’t happen.”

“Alright, good enough for me, I guess.” Lee unmuted the comms, “Para Bellum, time to leave. Warm up your engines.” Then he spoke to the intercom channel, “Xohn, strap in.”

The sound of the power build-up rattled the ship.

While the jump drive charged, Lee gazed back into the deep. He could feel the nervous excitement of what they were attempting to accomplish. It was the same sort of nerves as any of his most dangerous smuggling contracts, except this time it wasn’t for himself. This was for the entire Resistance, for everyone who lived in Hyades under Duryss and his underhanded actions—to strike back at the one who orchestrated the events that lead to the death of his friend and mentor.

As the jump tunnel stretched before him, he thought back to his old friend. This is for you, Vic.

They emerged from hyperspace to the soft white glow of the Syev star. While maneuvering away from the star, Lee worked on locating their target in the nav panel and called Xohn over the intercom. “Alright, partner, let’s see what you can do.”

“Bringing it online.” He heard Xohn through the intercom, followed by quiet, nervous whispering, “hold together, please hold together-”

“Are we good?” Lee’s voice betrayed his concern.

“We’ll see. Switch on silent running.”

“Going cold,” he said over the open comms and intercom at the same time.

Lee switched the ship to silent running.

The ship’s temperature decreased, and the heat signature flatlined. Much to his delight, no side-effects, no malfunctions.

Tarrek’s voice crackled over the encrypted comms channel, “We’re en route. We’ll go make noise. Wait for our signal for dropping.”

“Heading that way now. Good luck and good hunting Para Bellum,” Lee answered back. As he set the Nightcrawler’s nav target, he heard the movement in the lower command deck. Xohn had returned to his seat.

“We’re a couple minutes out from Wagner Park. Strap back in, just in case.”

“Will do, Lee.”

“The ThermARC is working perfectly. No heat signature, and the temp is still dropping.” Lee said, noting the frost appearing around the canopy’s structural frame.

“It is a very good result I will admit.” He could hear the pride through his accented reply.

“Once they give us the signal, we’re going to drop as close as we can get to 30 klicks. We need to make sure our wake signature is well out of their sensor range. Then we’ll have to cruise for a few minutes to get in close. If the Para Bellum does their job right, they’ll peel off any patrols so we can slip in undetected.”

“Yes, from the briefing I remember. The ThermARC performance and power I’ll be keeping under constant monitor.”

“When we get in there, I’ll also need you to keep an eye on sensors while I’m focused on hacking the transmitter.”

“H’oke.”

“Is that an ‘okay?’”

“Yes, it is ‘okay.’”

“Okay, I need to be sure we’re on the same page here,” Lee held the throttle.

Their system transit was smooth. After a minute or so, the wing beacon for the Para Bellum disappeared off of sensors; Jackson and Tarrek started to engage patrols.

The Nightcrawler’s approach brought them close to a small rocky moon. An even smaller satellite orbited the moon, both locked around an unremarkable ringed gas giant. A single, but substantial, ring adorned the world and gleamed with reflected starlight. Lee decelerated to ensure they didn’t overshoot the target as they neared the effects of the substantial gravity well. The planet disappeared behind them, replaced by the sandy-colored rock of the larger moon. Only a sliver of its tagalong grey, rocky companion was visible.

Lee centered the projection of Wagner Park’s position in front of them. He managed the throttle to stretch out the timing of their approach to give Jackson and Tarrek enough time to draw all the patrols’ attention. Nearing to within a light-second, Lee throttled down to a quarter power. He felt the inertia pull his body into his flight chair straps from the quick change in velocity.

Their approach slowed, but the residual speed continued to tick down the distance. Lee was starting to get concerned for Jackson and Tarrek. They were rapidly nearing the drop zone, but there was still no signal from the Para Bellum. Just when he was about to risk raising them, their signal beacon appeared on his display.

Lee felt his heart rate rise. He shouted at Xohn, “This is it!”

“Ready!” Xohn shouted back. “Ready partner!”

Lee smirked, then dropped the Nightcrawler out of supercruise some thirty-six kilometers from Wagner Park’s signal. At max speed, with the extra power of the ThermARC, they were still about a minute of cruising time away. Like watching water come to a boil, the final leg of the transit seemed to take far longer than reasonable.

Space—there always seemed to be more of it than expected. Lee mused to himself.

Lights that didn’t move with the starfield became obvious beacons of some kind of man-made structure. A cluster of out-of-range-signals appeared on the port-side of the sensor display, with two steady signals ahead of them.

As they closed in, the objects grew large enough, Lee began to distinguish the shape of a long mega-ship and a longer, even larger structure beyond. He did a quick double-check that they were still running cold. The displays confirmed they were—no heat signature; and an insignificant temperature reading. If it wasn’t for the frost at the edges of the canopy, he wouldn’t have believed it.

They drew in ever closer to the mega-ship, the Vilant, with the research installation behind it and the sandy-colored moon beyond. Within a couple of kilometers, he could make out more of the details. He engaged the Nightcrawler’s data link scanner to map out the exterior of the immense vessel.

The angle of approach to the Vilant put them off of the starboard side and behind it. An enormous single-engine, larger than the Nightcrawler itself, put off a blinding blue-white light. The cylindrical main drive fuselage connected to the vessel’s superstructure through a cluster of narrow struts. A series of other cylindrical segments made up the rest of it, only broken at the mid-section by a matrix of storage capsules. Far at the bow was the larger diameter spherical primary hull—the operations center.

The scan located the transmitter array at the top of the vessel mounted on the first cylindrical section connected to the main drive struts.

Lee throttled back, slowing their silent glide to allow more careful and precise movements near the transmitter. Keeping the array in direct line of sight, he zeroed all forward momentum at around two-hundred meters from it.

“We’re in position! Close enough to kiss it. Deploying hardpoints.”

Lee saw their energy signature spike before flatlining again. He hoped no one noticed, or at the very least, hoped they would be dismissed as unidentifiable debris.

“Okay, here goes,” Lee said over the intercom.

Targeting the array, he released the recon limpet with preprogrammed payload from the hacking kit. The Nightcrawler’s internal audio systems replicated the pulse of the limpet’s operations. It even reproduced the Doppler-effect in pitch and volume with its distance.

Lee’s eyes followed the glow of the limpet’s small thruster until it made physical contact with the transmitter. The target panel shifted to a readout of the intrusion attempt and data collection progress.

There was nothing they could do but sit and wait. The progress readout inched forward at a painfully slow pace. Lee’s senses were all at high alert.

“How are we looking, Xohn?”

“Everything is still performing within expected parameters. Nothing concerning on sensors.”

The cluster of signals continued to dance out of range on the sensor display. Jackson was still keeping the patrols busy.

Lee returned focus to the hack in progress. It stalled at the intrusion process.

“It looks like we have a problem. They must have anti-intrusion defenses. Research vessels typically don’t have this kind of protection. Duryss must have had it upgraded with military-hardened systems.”

“What do we do?” There was a worried edge in Xohn’s voice.

“Tarrek said the hacking kit was slow but reliable. So, for now, we wait and see if it can break through, hopefully without triggering alarms.”

Out of nowhere, the ship’s computer began playing broken, crackled audio from an encrypted signal source the sensors picked up. Lee tried to localize where it was coming from. It had to be close by.

“What is that?” Xohn asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe the Vilant’s transmitter is active, and we’re picking up the encrypted signal?”

“Will it affect the hack?”

“It shouldn’t. It’s just coincidental timing. Let me see if I can analyze it.”

He pulled up his signal analysis tools to see what kind of metadata he could glean from it. When the signal scan completed, he started to read out the findings.

“It’s a narrowband signal. It looks like it’s a data stream coming from the outpost. It’s… It’s using an Imperial encryption scheme. Why the screb are they using Imperial encryption?”

“Maybe they wanted state-of-the-art encryption?”

“We know Duryss had this ship outfitted with military-grade tech. That’s Imperial military encryption.”

“Imperial military technology on a corporate research vessel?”

“And the outpost! That’s a Sirius Corporation subsidiary installation using Imperial military encryption!”

“That is puzzling.”

A rapid ticking-beep sound began.

“Ah, screb! We’re in, but we tripped a trace.”

“Now what?”

“It means we cut and run with nothing or try to download as much data as possible before the trace locates the source of the breach.”

“So, what are you going to do?”

There was only one thing to do. They needed the data. It was their only shot at building a body of evidence against Duryss. Beyond that, they needed a map of his assets to scope out useful targets for Resistance strikes in the future.

“We’re gonna have to wait it out.”

Lee eyed the progress of the data copy process. Time was running out faster than the data was copying. He felt his pulse quicken. He had to do something. His mind raced.

Then he remembered the tools in the hacking toolkit and took manual control of the recon limpet. With a quick scan of the available programs in the kit, he located the perfect tool: a Shattered Mirror virus. It was designed to hide in memory as a noisy Red Herring intrusion routine. A Red Herring was an easy signature for scans to identify. But, each time the counter-trace found a Shattered Mirror’s Red Herring signature, it spawned several new copies of itself and logged a message.

Lee sent the Shattered Mirror to run under the privileged permissions that the hacking kit unlocked. The log messages piled up. The counter-trace was fast owing to the vast computing resources available on the Vilant. The messages scrolled fast enough, the display blurred with text. Lee locked eyes on the data copy in progress.

“We got it!” Lee was exhilarated by the narrow success. The counter-trace was caught up trying to purge each fake intrusion program it encountered, buying them just enough time. “Looks like lots of encrypted archives. But, no way to tell if we got what we needed without analysis. I wonder…”

“Wonder what?” Xohn asked nervously.

Lee looked out of the canopy at the installation in the distance, then glanced at the sensors. The indistinct signals were still out of range. Jackson and Tarrek were doing their job well. Maybe there was enough time…

“I have a bad idea. What if we flew over to that research facility to hack its transmitter?”

“That is a bad idea. The data we came for we already got–”

“Yeah, I know, but that just tells us what they’re sending to the facility. We don’t know what they’re getting from them. It’s the other half of the puzzle. We need their data too.”

He heard Xohn sigh, “I don’t like this. But, the ThermARC is still working. As long as it holds with no system faults…”

Lee didn’t wait; he pushed the throttle forward, angling the Nightcrawler to Wagner Park. He scanned the facility with the data link scanner to locate their transmitter.

The main section of the installation was a large cylindrical core with two large office wings that seemed to orbit it. It was connected to another structure by two extra long struts. The struts themselves were at least the length of the entire Vilant.

The Nightcrawler crept up to the transmitter and stopped a couple hundred meters away. Being so close, the limpet would only be detectable for a couple of seconds. Lee took a deep breath, then launched a recon limpet to begin the hack.

The intrusion took its time. It felt like it took even longer than breaking into the Vilant, but maybe that was just because they were pushing their luck.

“Uh oh, Lee,” Xohn’s worried voice came over the intercom.

“What?” Lee’s eyes darted to his sensor display.

“The Para Bellum… The Para Bellum was captured, I think.”

His own read of the sensors agreed. The indistinct cluster of signals was now a formation of ships around the Para Bellum. He cursed.

The ticking-beep of a trace sounded in the cockpit. Lee cursed again.

“Another trace?” Xohn said.

Before Lee could respond, an alert sounded. “Yes, and that means we were detected. That was too fast!”

The sensors showed three of the ships that had been escorting the Para Bellum had broken out of formation and were headed directly for them.

“Oh, vack!” Xohn cursed.