Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Turmoil (26 page)

"I did,
Captain, and it's a biggie."  Loren paused a second to gather his breath,
then let it all fly.  "We weren't attacked by Drisk; they were Primans
wearing prosthetics and using a very advanced biosign spoofer."

"Well,"
Elco stammered in response.  "I suppose I can honestly say I didn't see
that coming."

"We didn't
either, but then we noticed all the bodies had one of these."  Loren
pulled the ring from an inner jacket pocket and held it up between thumb and
index finger, staring at it as if it were the most beautiful diamond in the
cosmos.  "This little thing was concealing their life signs.  With them
on, the bodies all showed as Drisk; with them off, they all came up Priman, no
doubts."  He set the ring on the desk in front of Elco, who could only
stare at it. 

Elco was recovering,
gears turning in his head.  "How many people know about this?" he
asked.

"You, me, Cory,
Merritt, Web, Captain Romica- the military police detective in charge of the
investigation- and the coroner.  Captain Romica seemed to understand the need
for secrecy; she's having the coroner classify and put all the bodies on ice
for now.  I can't claim to know when the people of the Confederation at large
need to be told, but for now we need to keep this as quiet as possible, because
we have an advantage."

"Having an
advantage usually implies we can do something about it," Elco continued. 
"What can we do?  I assume by the shifty look in your eyes that you have a
plan."

"Of course I
do," he replied with a grin.  "You know who else has one of those
rings?  Ms. Tana Starr, advisor to Senator Dennix himself."

Elco reacted
immediately.  "That's quite an accusation.  But for the sake of argument,
if she
is
involved, perhaps we need to move in and put her in chains
right away.  She could be a danger to the Senator."

Loren held his hands
out, palms up.  "I thought of that, but it doesn't make sense.  She showed
up, the Senator started getting odd in his positions and policies, then Velk
somehow gets transferred right here, and the prison break had an inside
source.  I think she's using the senator.  But she can't know that we know yet,
which means we can watch her to see if she leads to either the Priman
operatives that rescued Velk or some other intelligence windfall."

"It's a
consideration," Elco allowed, "but look at it from the perspective of
somebody who's a big fan of the Senator.  To them, we're allowing an enemy
agent direct access to him, and effectively using him as bait to keep Starr out
in the open so we can track her in the slim hopes of finding Velk."

"That's about
it," Loren said with a straight face.

"Ok, let's keep
playing the game," Elco continued.  "What would you do?"

"Simple,"
Loren said.  "I'm assuming Starr had something to do with the breakout. 
If she did, then sometime very soon she'll probably be in contact with the
operatives in some way.  They'll need help getting out of the city and off the
planet.  We watch her.  In turn, we probably find these operatives.  Then we go
in, make a mess of them, and recapture Velk.  After that we go arrest Starr at
noon in the capitol building in front of the whole planet."

"Now you're
just fantasizing," Elco said with a wry grin.  "Alright, I'll allow
that you are probably on to something.  The problem is that you can't let
anyone in on this for fear of another Priman agent finding out and alerting Ms.
Starr, should she in fact be in league with the rest of the Primans here.  How
will you manage to do this without any support?"

"We'll have
Avenger's sensors," Loren said easily.  "You can keep an eye on the
whole city; video, audio, info feeds, that sort of thing.  Nobody on the ground
has to know we're doing this."

"There is the
small matter of Avenger being ordered back out to the naval yards and away from
the planet," Elco added, a look on his face that said he was dreading what
Loren was going to reply with.

"We'll just
need to come up with a reason to stay right here in orbit for a few days,
that's all."  He was all smiles.

"You're going
to give me an ulcer.  Or maybe just make the one I already have bigger." 
Elco leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking a bit as it stretched. 
"And you have enough manpower to do this?"

"No; Web is
calling in Halley right now."

"Dare I ask why
he thinks she'll just show up in our hangar?"

"He's convinced
she's in the Delos system," Loren replied with a shrug.  "He knows
her pretty well; he might be right."

"Five people to
watch Tana Starr," Elco mused.  "
You
can't be out in the open
because she met you today, so that leaves four.  Is that enough?"

"It has to
be," Loren stated confidently. 

"So, I need to
sabotage my own ship.  I also need to let Admiral Bak in on this.  You know
he's going to give birth to a life sized battleship when he hears there are
Primans running around on Delos."

"We could use
another battleship," Loren replied.

"I'll keep the
ring in my safe here," said Elco, "but
you
get to be the one
to show it to Admiral Bak when we talk."

Chapter Twelve

Elco told Loren to
report in as soon as he heard from Halley.  They also agreed that Loren and the
others would leave in the morning for the surface.  They'd find a way to start
watching Starr tomorrow, so they'd probably be up much of the night planning
and gathering supplies.

After that, he put
his uniform back on and adjusted everything perfectly.  He left his quarters
and headed to the Engineering spaces all the way aft.  It was a ten minute
walk; he figured he needed the exercise so decided to go the old fashioned way
instead of taking a lift car.

Unlike the rest of
the ship, Engineering rarely slowed down.  If the powerful engines were making
power, there needed to be plenty of crew there to monitor and shepherd the
mighty powerplant along.  Elco also knew his Chief Engineer would still be up,
not content to turn over his engines to someone else until he was sure they
were in top shape.

Elco wandered
through the engineering spaces, taking in the sights and sounds.  It was a more
utilitarian area than the rest of the ship, with fewer cosmetic touches and the
faint smells of lubricant and coolant in the air.  He eventually arrived at the
main compartment, which featured a whole wall of diagnostic displays, a
corridor which lead to among other things the Chief Engineer's office, a series
of tables and workstations, an arch which lead to a machine shop, and an access
hatch to the further innards of the engines and power generation machinery.

"Captain,"
Elco heard a voice behind him.  It was the Chief, a man Elco had come to admire
for his ability to break the mold of what a Chief Engineer should look like. 

It used to be that
Chiefs were large, gruff and weathered folks, men and women, any species who
felt the urge to try and master the mysterious process of defying physics by
administering engines that pushed a ship faster than the speed of light.  Years
back, they were often brawlers, and carried three tools: a can of spray tape, a
hammer, and a bigger hammer. 

The human in front
of him was none of those, and was more representative of the new generation of
engineers that served with him.  Chief Engineer Andros Fyr was short; a full
head less than Elco.  While not scrawny, he was definitely smaller, younger,
and was more often to be found trying to hack the operating system's software
to make improvements than manhandling the machinery.  Elco had wondered how the
man would do when he'd first come aboard, but had quickly learned to respect
the man's abilities, not to mention the fact that, despite his smaller stature,
there was nothing he wouldn't try to do if need be.

"Chief,"
Elco said with a smile as he turned to face the man.  "How are the
engines?"

"Coming along
nicely," he replied.  "We're pretty much down to doing routine maintenance
again; most of the repairs are done and we're just finishing up testing."

"Wonderful,"
Elco said, though something about his tone suggested it wasn't.

"You seem
troubled by this happy turn of events," Chief Fyr stated quizzically. 

Elco's lips compressed
into a thin line.  "You are aware that with the engines fixed, we're
scheduled to break orbit and head out to the shipyards tomorrow morning."

"Of course, and
we'll be ready."

"I need us to
not
be ready," Elco said slowly, looking around to make sure there were no
other crew in sight.

"You will
understand if I admit that sounds a bit counterproductive, I hope?" Fyr
asked.

"Oh yes,"
Elco allowed.  He put his arm on Fyr's elbow and steered him towards the Chief
Engineer's office, then let the hatch shut behind them.  They could monitor the
main compartment through the large window in the office wall, and Elco stood
with his back to it as Chief Fyr leaned against his desk.

"Chief,"
Elco continued, "Avenger needs to stay in orbit.  It's part of a very classified
mission that I need to keep compartmentalized, so I can't tell you why, and
nobody can be allowed to piece together that it was done deliberately.  It's
not even officially a mission.  The crux of the matter is that we need to stay
here, and we need to not be able to move under our own power for a matter of
days.  What can you come up with that would fit the bill?"

Chief Fyr looked
down at the desking, lost in thought, then seemed to speed up as he worked
through the options.  "Well," he started slowly, gaining momentum,
"it can't be software; if there was a problem we'd just reload and
reboot.  Couple hours max.  So, it has to be a hardware problem.  But it needs
to be something we can fix on our own, not cause permanent or serious damage, put
the ship in jeopardy...." his voice trailed off as he did some mental
math. 

"We could dump
the reactor core," he said finally, looking back up to Elco.  "Call
it a coolant issue, stuck injector, whatever.  Back behind friendly lines like
this, we'd just open up the access tunnel and eject the whole thing out through
the keel and into space where it would cool down or finish consuming whatever
fuel is onboard."

"No damage to
the core?"

"No," Fyr
reassured him.  "That's how they take the cores out for overhauls anyway,
so we wouldn't tear up any lines or anything real inconvenient."

"And how long
to return to service?" Elco asked.

"Three days,
give or take," Fyr said with a slight shrug.  "It's not incredibly
hard, just time consuming, and there's not much that any of the orbital tugs
could help with, so we'd be pretty much left alone.  It's all hands-on
maintenance; getting it back in, cleaning it out, purging the fuel lines,
repressurizing it all, that sort of thing."

Elco just nodded,
hating to have to order the man to go through with it, but realizing that Loren
was right; this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take down the Primans
who'd freed Velk.  "Can you do it now?"

Fyr only hesitated
for a second.  "Any time you need, Captain."

"Now is a good
time," Elco said in reply without pause.

Fyr nodded and
walked out of his office to one of the larger monitoring tables in the
compartment and stood over it, tapping in some commands and gesturing over the
surface.

"Oh no,"
Fyr said in a deadpan tone, glancing at Captain Elco, "the reactor's
overheating.  The safeties are commanding an ejection countdown."  He
looked at Elco, who simply stared back.  A quick warning klaxon blared through
Engineering announcing the impending reactor ejection.  "Now would be the
time to stop me if I've somehow misinterpreted our conversation," Fyr said
quietly, but Elco just shook his head.  Fyr nodded once in reply, then sent the
command the computer was screaming for.

There were a series
of bangs, loud and resounding metal-on-metal crashes as blast doors shut
closed, severing connections and sealing the reactor chamber from the ship.  A
second later, Elco watched on the main diagnostic panel as a tiny holographic
reactor core popped out of the bottom of Avenger, halfway between the aft
hangar bay entrance and the business end of the engines themselves.  The lights
flickered once, briefly, as the ship's systems transferred automatically to
backup power.

"Alright,"
Chief Fyr said.  "We're on the backup reactor, loads are good.  Now I just
need to send some of my people out there to capture our wayward power
core."

"Let me know if
you need anything," Elco said, then clapped Fyr once on the shoulder as he
turned to leave the Engineering spaces.  "And, thank you."

The group had spent
the evening and night planning, finally taking a break just before the first
shift so they could all freshen up before meeting to take a transport to the
surface.  Loren and the captain were ironing out last-minute details, Cory was
setting up Avenger's flight roster for her planned absence, and Merritt was
prepping their ride.  Web had been given the task of gathering any last-minute
supplies he could think of, which brought him to his quarters for some items he
possessed which were, technically speaking, not standard Confed military issue.

Standing before the
hatch, he carefully crouched down and looked at the tiny blob of transparent
adhesive he'd placed in the seam where the hatch met the frame.  Anyone who'd
entered his quarters would have knocked the tiny dot loose as the hatch opened,
giving Web a heads-up that somebody had come calling.  He hoped that someone
would be Halley.  Regrettably, the adhesive was still in place.  Oh well, there
was one more intrusion detector he had yet to check up on.  He was beginning to
feel the faint whisperings of disappointment on the edges of his mind; the
thought that either he was wrong about knowing Halley's signature or her
willingness to get to Avenger quickly, even though she said she'd get there as
fast as possible when he'd commed her earlier.

He stepped into his
quarters, comm device in one hand as he grabbed some pyrotechnic charges off a
shelf with the other.  He heard a sound from behind him and spun in place.

"I was
wondering if you'd come back to your quarters or if I'd have to just go walk
into the hangar bay," Halley said with a smile as she emerged from the
shadows.  "I would gain so few style points if I did that, so I defeated
your old fashioned and very effective door gag and let myself in."

"And here I was
beginning to wonder if I'd read you wrong," Web said with a grin that
matched hers.  He set down the flashbangs and stepped in for a long, tight hug
followed by a kiss that hinted at the longing of lost time together.

"I thought I
did a pretty good job of using something unconventional on the hatch," he
said after they'd separated. 

"Oh, you
did," she agreed.  "I haven't seen something like that in a long
time."

"What I want to
know is how you got it back on after you were inside," Web prodded.

"A girl has to
have some secrets," she replied slyly.

"Oh," Web
said, indicating the comm device in his hand.  "I did manage to catch you
in the act."  She looked at him doubtfully, and he showed her the screen,
which displayed a series of still images of Halley breaking into Web's
quarters.

"Still
images?" she said with a look of surprise.

"It seems like
you have a great handle on technology," Web admitted, "so I thought
I'd use something that only activated for a split second at a time versus the
continuous signal a holo or motion capture feed emits."  He once again
waggled the device, proudly reminding her that he'd actually gotten the drop on
her.

"It would have
been a posthumous victory," she warned.  "You realize I could have
killed you and boxed up your parts for shipping in the time it took for those
images to come in."

"You have some
repressed hostility to deal with," Web joked, and she playfully punched
him in the shoulder.

"Well, I
suppose there is something I can do to reward your efforts," she said
playfully.  Surprisingly, Web summoned up a hidden wealth of self-control and
grabbed her hands in his.  "There's no time," he said quickly. 
"I will take a rain check on that offer, with interest of course.  But we
need to get to the hangar and on the way to Delos.  Everyone else is there and
Loren can brief you on the way down."

"Wow,"
said Halley, her surprise showing.  "You must have something really
special in the works."

"It's going to
be
so
much fun."

"I will try to
not ask something obvious," Halley said slowly, "such as wondering if
you're really really sure about this information."  Everyone minus
Merritt, who was flying, was sitting in the cabin seats just aft of the flight
deck as they rode down to the surface of Delos.

"I wish there
was another explanation," Loren said with a sigh, "but no matter how
you look at this, those facts all line up one way.  Either Starr is a Priman,
or a sympathizer working for them.  And we haven't even discussed what this
might mean about the Senator.  Could he have some knowledge of this, be
complicit?"  The thought was staggering.

"We need to
keep this under wraps for now," Loren cautioned.  "Everything you
know gets reported when you go in for a debrief, right?"  Only Loren knew
about the true reaches of the detached SAR operative program, of which Halley
was a member.  Her nanite-enhanced abilities included a form of swarm memory
that provided a record of virtually everything she did.  It made for
bulletproof evidence when necessary.  The problem was that when she uploaded
some nanites to the storage facility, everything she knew would become part of
the database, and Loren couldn't have anyone else knowing about the covert
Priman presence yet.

"I'm not due
for a few days," Halley reassured him.  "Will that be enough
time?"

"It should
be," Loren replied gratefully.

"So,"
Halley pressed on, all business, "the question is, what do we do
now?"

"Put
surveillance on Tana Starr," Web said confidently.  "She's the key,
and practically speaking, she's the only real lead we have.  We see if she
leads us to anything interesting.  If she does, we take advantage of the
situation."

"Do we have any
rules of engagement?" Halley thought to ask.

"That's an
excellent question,"  Loren admitted.  "This is not even an
authorized mission.  Captain Elco bought us some time in orbit so we could
follow this, but there's no way anyone would authorize this sort of thing,
except maybe Admiral Bak."  He paused, fingers drumming on the beat-up
metal table between the club-configured seats.  "We're doing this on our
own, so we had better be damn well sure of our evidence before we take any sort
of irreversible action."

"I can provide
some funds," Halley offered.  "Enough to do what we need to, I
figure.  Just so we're all clear, then: we're on our own here.  The civilian
government would have a psychotic event if they knew we were spying on one of
their own, and the military can't afford to admit they want us doing it.  So we
need to be absolutely sure we have something concrete before we do anything.  A
good DNA scan and a blood sample would probably do the trick.   Finding the
Priman strike team and Velk would, of course, be even better."