I felt a hand touch my wrist and decided it was time to up my game. I latched onto the wrist and wrestled myself up to a sitting position in one fluid movement while at the same time wrapping my arm around the neck of the woman.

  “What the hell is…” I started to say before I let my arm collapse as I made myself slump from the bed. “What… happened… to… me?”

  “Ain’t never seen one wake up that fast,” Barney laughed. “I told ya they would be fighters.”

  “Holy crap,” the woman gasped. “I about had a heart attack. Help me get him back on the bed.”

  Together the woman, who seemed to be in her mid-sixties, and Barney sat me up on the bed. I wobbled about a bit so they would think I was unsteady.

  “Someone going to tell me what is going on,” I mumbled roughly.

  “Easy there AG my boy. I took some liberties with ya before inviting ya into my home,” Barney said in a voice that was not unkind.

  “What the hell does that mean you little bastard?” I croaked.

  “It means you are now the guests of the Donalite Liberation Movement and if you want that status to remain pleasant you better stop attacking my doctors.” The voice was a nasally one belonging to an average height man who had entered the room while the others were helping me back onto the bed.

  The newcomer was in his mid-seventies. He looked like the type of man who might have once been in shape but had long ago let himself go. His nose was bent in a way that indicated his face had been on the wrong side too many fist fights.

  “Donalites?” I threw as much confusion into the name as I could.

  “My name is Domhnall Jon MacLeod. You are, for the moment, my guest. Whether that designation remains true for an extended period of time is completely dependent on you.”

  “In what way,” I asked.

  “All in good time Marine.”

  I visibly winced. “I’m not a marine… not anymore.”

  The other man just smiled. “Once a marine… always a marine.”

  ***

  Duffy and then Hedy were ‘revived’ next. I have to admit, Duffy deserved an Oscar for his commitment to his role. At one point, he signaled his AI to stop his heart briefly which put Doctor Chapel in a panic as she scrambled to resuscitate him.

  Given that Duffy had taken it as his personal responsibility to consume as much of Barney’s tainted peach liqueur as possible… ostensibly to protect Hedy and I… it made a certain sense that he would have the hardest ‘simulated’ recovery – at least that was what we were hoping the Donalites would believe. It also gave the doctor a reason to keep him in their medical center while Hedy and I met with Tic which was what Domhnall preferred to be called.

  Tic was an odd nickname but somehow fitting. Ticks were bloodsuckers that bled the life out of everything they latched onto. If his plans and ambitions were allowed to proceed unimpeded, I suspected he would do the same for humanity and the Galactic Coalition. The more I got to know the man over the next few days the more I became convinced, he wanted power for powers sake… not any noble Earth-First cause. He simply told his adherents what they wanted to hear so they would follow his lead.

  While Duffy remained in what was serving as the medical center, the rest of us were taken on a brief tour of the massive asteroid we were inside of... this was unavoidable as we made our way to the Donalite leader’s office.

  By splitting us up; the Donalites were forced to devote personnel to watch us in multiple locations. If we needed to take action this might end up working in our favor. What our captors did not know was that the crew of the Kara were in constant contact with each other via a set of Quantum entangled communication nodes hosted in our marine augments. Thanks to our embedded AIs, these QComms allowed us to selectively hear and see what each of the others was seeing and hearing. In addition, we had set up the Heshe AI on the Kara to record all of our sensory feeds… these were even now being fed back to our team on the GCP Puller.

  It turned out that splitting the team up was an unnecessary precaution… but hey… you can never tell when you are dealing with fanatical psychopaths. Make no mistake, it didn’t take me ten minutes with the man to know that Tic MacLeod was three cards short of a full deck and totally clueless about it. Worse, he was the type of man who believed his own malarkey and was gifted in his ability to sell it wholesale to others.

  The room we met in was a replica of the United States President’s Oval office. It turned out that in every facility in which the man had a dedicated office this same replica was present. In my mind, this spoke to the ego and ambitions of the man we were meeting with. He claimed he was a direct descendant of America’s eleventh president, a man named James Knox Polk. My AI pulled up a summary of the man in question. Surprisingly Polk had been an effective president. I doubted the same would be true for Tic should he ever obtain the office. My thoughts were interrupted when the Donalite leader sat on the corner of his desk and looked at us.

  “So what to do with you two and your friend in the infirmary?” Tic said.

  “I like that you’re thinking along the line of having options,” I said just a little too glibly.

  Tic nodded. “On the one hand, the safest thing for our organization would be to plant you some place where we would not have to worry about you causing trouble. We wanted your combat shuttle and we have that.”

  “By ‘planting’ can I assume that means under the dirt... in a grave?”

  The Donalite leader nodded. “As I said, that would be one option.”

  “I think I speak for the entire crew of the Kara… we would be most eager to explore other options.”

  Tic’s thin lips twitched in a brief smile. “I thought you might.”

  Chapter 13: Olanda Prime …

  Becoming members of the Donalite Liberation Movement turned out to be easier than any of us had anticipated. As far as our meeting with the most senior of Donalite leaders, it simply turned out that we had gotten lucky. Our ship had come onto the scene while the Donalite executive board was in the Sol system. That this was unusual… was a surprise in and of itself. Prior to this point, most, but not all, of the GCP had been operating on the assumption that the radical “Earth First” movement was operating from within Earth’s solar system. This turned out not to be the case.

  As the three of us began working with the pirates, we confirmed our suspicion that the Donalites were indeed attempting to build a fleet of starships. The Kara, with her military pedigree, would be a welcome addition despite the ship’s diminutive size. Hedy’s knowledge of engineering as well as the Marine training that Duffy and I had received made us all very welcome additions to their organization. It seemed while their total number of adherents to their cause was impressive, most were the disgruntled and disenfranchised. Few had significant training or experience.

  The Donalites boasted of some five thousand members… most of whom were working or training at a remote base orbiting a planet called Olanda Prime.

  I wasn’t familiar with the Olanda system. It turned out that it did not appear by that name on any of the GCP’s star charts. A late night virtual meeting with Commander Savage established a new set of priorities. We were to discover, if at all possible, the location of this Donalite base.

  Again, the Donalites were very accommodating. Shortly after our third day of walking Barney and a few of the others through the various systems on the Kara… including Hedy’s modifications; Tic called me into his oval office.

  “Well now, your team seems to be fitting into things very nicely,” the older man said. “You getting comfortable?”

  I scratched the stubble that was beginning to grow out on my chin. “To be honest, I miss being on the move. I’m kind of an action-oriented type of guy. Give me something to hit and I’m a happy camper.”

  Domhnall chuckled softly. “I think that’s what I like about you. No nonsense. Get to the point.”

  He stood up and walked over to a 2d flat panel display that was indicative of the Donalite’s low-tech approach to life in general. He pressed a button on his desk and the panel came to life. It showed a six planet star system. There wasn’t enough exterior detail to help localize it. It could have been any of a couple billion star systems in this galaxy alone.

  “This is our current home base.”

  “Olanda Prime?” I asked.

  Tic nodded by way of affirmation. “There is an indigenous race of intelligent ferrets called the Ollies that inhabit several of the worlds in the system.

  “The little buggers are gifted artisans and craftsmen. When we arrived some five years ago we discovered they had a shipyard in orbit around their home world. They are strictly interplanetary with no hyperfield tech to speak of.

  “Our ship was a crippled early Bowman-class cruiser. We barely made it into a stable orbit around their planet. As a result of… liberating… the ship, most of the engineering and command crew were killed. We could barely keep life support going.

  “We established relations with the Ollies. They had never met an alien race. We convinced them we were part of a Galactic Coalition. We explained that the Coalition had started with the noblest of intents but had be usurped by a power-grab. We were fighting to free our people from tyranny. The long and short of it is… we got their help repairing our ship and establishing a base in exchange for some technological considerations.”

  I looked at the other man and raised an eyebrow. “Technological considerations?”

  “Nothing serious. The ferrets are omnivores but they like the taste of meat. Problem is they tend to wipe out other animals pretty quickly. Seems they never heard of farming. We taught them how to raise chickens. You’d think we were Gods visiting from the celestial plane. Each tribe started falling all over themselves trying to be the one that got set up with chicken farms first. Rather than just allowing us to use their shipyard to repair our ship… pretty soon it became a race to see who could build us a bigger and better shipyard first… for our exclusive use. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Tell me you’re not going to ask me to build chicken farms for some overgrown ferrets,” I said.

  Tic laughed. With his broken nose it was a strange sound but all the more fitting because he was a strange man.

  “Hell no man! I got farmers to do that. No I need you and your team to set up a training program. The ferrets are helping us build ships but we need people to fly’m and fight’m. That’s where you come in. We need you to train our people.”

  “You’re not seriously thinking about fighting the GCP? They are too big,” I said, “There are too many of them.”

  Tic smiled again. On him it was not a pretty sight.

  “Trust me. I know more about winning wars then all the GCP Admirals combined. Our plan is simplicity itself. All we need to do is provide a little push and let nature take its course.”

  ***

  The Kara was loaded in a shuttle bay that was barely big enough to accommodate her. We were hitching a ride inside a Hupenstanii freight hauler called the GCP Fast-Hop that had been liberated by the Donalites some six months before. Its ident beacon had been tweaked to not raise any red-flags. Supposedly, it was carrying a load of coffee from Brazil to the Hupenstanii home world. The darkly roasted beans were worth a small fortune on that planet. As far as the Hupenstanii were concerned the two greatest exports from Human space were coffee and cocoa, although perhaps not in that order.

  In reality, the Fast-Hop was going to be making the trip to Olanda Prime, after taking a few side trips to ensure she was not followed.

  The Fast-Hop was carrying a crew of eighteen plus passengers. The passengers included myself, Duffy, Hedy, Tic, his son –a spoiled brat named Jesse, Barney, Doc Chapel and a mechanic named Greasy.

  It turned out our resident rock rat, Barney, had never left the Sol system before and so, for four of us, this would be the first visit to the Olanda system.

  The biggest problem my crew and I had was finding time to be alone that did not raise the suspicions of the others in our party. Big Barney had taken to following us everywhere. His excuse was a professed fondness for Hedy. She finally put an end to his advances by claiming she and I were and had been an item. This was demonstrated by a sudden and quite passionate kiss that threaten to suck my spleen out of my chest.

  Hedy had warned me in a code grey message to follow her lead. I had no idea what she was planning but I, of course, felt compelled to comply with her instructions. Hedy was many things… smart, quick witted, funny and a great cook… what she was not… was hard to look at. As her right hand cupped my butt in the midst of the kiss I felt she might be over-playing things but hey… sometimes you just go with the plan and hope for the best. Oh, the sacrifices I make for king and country!

  ***

  After a marginally edible dinner prepared by Greasy and Jesse in the Fast-Hop galley… and following a protracted card game called Texas Hold’em, we finally decided we could risk retiring to the Kara for sleep. It would be the first time since becoming guests of the Donalites that we would be able to have a private conversation. At least that had been the plan.

  We had previously staked our claim to the cabins in the Kara. Greasy had protested but Tic had put a stop to it. Apparently the Donalite leader was intending to allow us to keep the Kara for an upcoming operation. What the operation was to be was the source of our current conversation. I had a bad feeling that it might involve additional ship acquisitions that, given our roles as active members of the GCP military, we might be hard pressed to carry out. Whatever discussions we were going to have, they needed to be soon as we were scheduled to arrive at Olanda Prime in the next twelve hours.

  Unfortunately, Big Barney, followed us to the Kara. I had a suspicion that the move on his part was deliberate… perhaps even at the behest of the Donalite leader. We were still relatively new members of the movement and a certain amount of distrust was inevitable.

  “I understand there be three cabins in yer ship. See’n hows two a ya have a thing going on… I figure that makes one of dim cabins available,” the rock rat said in a loud voice that carried through the shuttle bay when I turned to look at him. “Besides, me old bones could use a comfortable bed… not like dim torture racks they use to berth normal passengers.”

  I couldn’t fault his logic but his timing could not be worse for our purposes.

  I smiled and waved him through the hatch. “Welcome aboard. You’ll forgive me if I don’t share a drink with you… your track record is not stellar in that regard.”

  “You wound me boy!” Barney said while clasping a hand to his heart. “I did put in a good word fer ya dat keep ya from being spaced and all such stuff.”

  As we entered the Kara I subvocally signaled the ship’s AI to track Barney’s movements and to warn us if he left his cabin during the night. What happened next was somewhat unexpected.

  Barney used Marine hand code to tell us to carry on a casual conversation while he checked for bugs. Duffy choked when the little man brought out a class-one military-grade hand scanner and proceeded to sweep the ship like a professional. When he was done we all met in the galley.

  “Sorry for the deception chaps,” the little man said in a crisp English accent that was completely at odds from the rustic rock rat we were used to hearing. “It took me a while to confirm your identities… channels between services being what they are. If you check your QComms you should see a message from Commander Savage authenticating my credentials.”

  ***

  “So you are part of MI6... and attached to the GCP Counter Intelligence Corps?” Duffy said for the fifteenth time in as many minutes.

  It seemed Big Barney had been a covert operative attempting to infiltrate the Donalites for some time. MI6 had suspected the existence of a base of operations outside of the Sol system but had been unable to convince the powers-that-be within the GCP that this was the case.

  Barney’s task for the last nine months had been to determine and, if possible, locate said base. He had successfully infiltrated the organization. Sadly, he had been unable to get assigned to the extra-sol operations he knew were taking place. Absent that assignment he had no way of determining where in the very large Milky Way galaxy that base was.

  It seemed the very thing that allowed him to infiltrate the Donalites – his rock rat genetics – also served to make him more valuable to the pirates in the Sol system rather than at their remote base in orbit around Olanda Prime. That was until AG Stone and the Kara arrived. Barney had played his existing relationship with the Kara’s crew – however brief – into his ticket out of Sol.

  The Donalites needed the skills that the two marines and beautiful engineer brought to the table… but at the same time Tic had some well-founded trust issues with anybody as new to their organization as the three GCP operatives were.

  In a classic case of the fox watching over the hen house, Barney was assigned to tag around with them and report to the Donalite leadership if anything was amiss.

  After Duffy’s latest MI6 comment, Commander Bernard McKinnie, a.k.a Big Barney, looked over at me and raised his eyebrow. “Is he going to be a problem when we are out and about in the field again?”

  I shook my head. “Not to worry Commander, it takes him a few minutes to process a change of this magnitude… but once it’s worked its way through his system… he will be good to go. Trust me,” I said with a grin.

  “So let’s go over everything one more time,” Hedy said. “Once we arrive at the Olanda system, our instructions are to get a mark-one optical eyeball fix on the surrounding star pattern and transmit said information back to the GCP. From there we are to hold fast until an interdiction force can arrive.”

  “That is correct Chief,” the MI6 agent agreed. “However it gets a bit more complicated.”

  “I hate complicated,” Duffy said with a groan.

 

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