The Belt - Complete Series, page 84
Luca hesitated in her response. True, this had been her game plan, to decamp to Athena’s mountain fortress, but they had yet to address the Damoclean sword that hung over Luca’s head. “Why are you so concerned about my safety, all of a sudden, when you still have a fail-safe if I should happen to fall into the wrong hands?”
This time the ovoid’s luminescence dimmed, its shimmer muted and dulled. “You understand that this was a necessary precaution, one predicated on the machinations of our mutual enemies. It was nothing personal.”
“Was?” Luca queried.
“I say was because the situation has changed. New developments have occurred that have opened pathways for alternative futures.”
“Like what?”
“Like you arriving in Earth orbit, for one. But there are others.”
“So it no longer matters? Is that what you’re saying?”
“I am saying its relevance has diminished. However, the longer you remain exposed in orbit, the more these pathways close. So please, take the ship’s shuttle and get out of there as soon as you can.”
Please? Luca wondered. She couldn’t be sure, but she couldn’t remember the QI ever using that word. Things must be getting serious, she thought. “Okay. I’ll leave immediately.”
“A wise decision. I shall look forward to your arrival.” The connection closed, and the shimmering ovoid hovering over the holo-table evaporated.
New pathways. Luca considered the QI’s words. It was being vague about what exactly it meant, yet that wasn’t unusual. What was much more seismic, however, was the indication that the antimatter device it had surreptitiously planted in her neural-lace was no longer required as an element in the QI’s worldview. This was unexpected; Luca had not considered this, and now that there was a distinct possibility that she could rid herself of it, she felt…uncertain. Her actions going forward would have grave consequences should she fail in her quest to destroy the VanHeilding Corporation, not just for her but possibly for all of humanity.
She deactivated the holo-table, then instructed the ship to maintain its current orbit. Finally, she floated out of the bridge and on toward the shuttle storage bay.
6
ESCAPE VELOCITY
Dakota’s sense of time was way out of kilter, so he really couldn’t tell how long he had been waiting for the plan to go down and for him to be released. Has it been an hour, two hours, more? he wondered. Yet as the minutes passed and nothing happened, he grew ever more concerned that something had gone seriously wrong.
He had tethered himself to the rear wall of the lockup, facing the door, the plasma pistol that Tamires had given him gripped tightly in his hand—waiting. Every now and again, he would change hands so he could clear the sweat from the other.
“Where are these guys?” he said to himself. Maybe it was time to take matters into his own hands. He considered just blasting the lock off the door and getting himself out. But instead, Dakota waited. They will come, he thought. He just needed to be patient.
But Dakota’s patience finally snapped when he heard the whomp, whomp of plasma fire resonating throughout the ship. It sounded to him like it was coming from one of the upper decks, reverberating down through the air vents. Something had gone wrong for sure, and now a firefight had broken out. There was no way he was staying locked up in here if there was fighting to be done. He dialed up the plasma weapon, took aim at the door, and blew a hole in it where the locking bolt used to be.
Dakota pushed out into the main cargo hold and propelled himself up to the hatchway for the upper deck. He opened it very slowly, stopped, then listened. Whomp! Whomp! More plasma fire…close…coming from the direction of the primary docking port.
He poked his head around the hatch door and scanned the interior of the secondary cargo bay. This was a smaller space than the main bay, used primarily to store crew supplies. An elevated gantry bisected the bay, leading to the crew quarters at one end and the primary docking port at the other.
Several crew had taken cover behind some hastily arranged crates below the gantry, firing plasma blasts at several others who had crowded into the docking port tunnel. Dakota had no idea what was going on, nor whose side he was supposed to be on.
He dialed down his weapon, then began moving to a better position using storage crates as cover wherever he could. Finally, he saw Aeon poke her head up from behind a charred and battered create that had been wedged into the dock entrance. “Screw you,” she yelled as she laid down plasma fire. This was met by a corresponding barrage that hit everything except the intended target. However, the crate she was using for cover was fast becoming a red-hot, smoldering blob. But at least Dakota now had an understanding of the situation, and more importantly, a target to aim at.
He quietly propelled himself out from behind cover, moving to a more elevated position on the gantry, and opened fire. Three well-aimed blasts later and the three crew members were tumbling unconscious across the cargo bay. Part of him felt a pang of guilt as he watched their limp bodies cartwheel around the open space. They were his crew after all, and all they wanted was to get paid. But he shook it from his mind; there were bigger issues at stake now, and there was no going back.
Aeon poked her head up, followed by Brooker and a few others. “Captain. What took you so long?”
“I thought you were supposed to be rescuing me? Not the other way around.” He floated over.
Aeon gestured at the bodies. “There was a slight problem in the plan. Jarvis betrayed us.”
“What? Jarvis? What the hell happened?”
Brooker jerked a thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the docking port. “Kendrix and his closest people left to meet with the Xiang Zu agents, so we reckoned it was game on to take back the ship. But Jarvis got cold feet, went scuttling after them to warn Kendrix of our plan.” As if to emphasize the point, a loud banging could be heard coming from the far side of the docking port door. “Now they’re trying to get back in.”
Dakota glanced over at the door. It had been hastily disabled with a bar jammed through the locking mechanism. “How many have come over to our side?”
“Angus, Dayiu, and around ten others.”
Dakota gave a satisfied nod. “That’s good, better than I had hoped. Where are they now?”
“Barricaded on the bridge. There’s a bunch of Kendrix’s people between us and them, and they’re not giving up control without a fight.”
“Do we have a secure comms channel to the bridge?”
Aeon tapped her earpiece. “Yeah, we can talk directly to Angus on the bridge.”
“Tell him, when I give the signal they need to break out and engage Kendrix’s crew—I want their attention focused on the bridge. We’ll come up from behind and take them by surprise.”
“Okay, got it.”
Dakota grabbed another plasma weapon from one of the floating bodies and checked its charge level, then noticed it was set to high power. “And listen.” He turned back to the crew. “Stun only, we don’t want to kill everyone. Remember, they’re still part of our crew.”
“And why the hell should we? They were trying to kill us,” Aeon protested.
Dakota gestured with the newly acquired weapon. “Yeah, I noticed. But it doesn’t mean we have to do the same. Unless, of course, someone needs killing.”
He kicked off from the gantry. “Let’s get to it.”
They gathered up the unconscious crew, removed their weapons, and bundled them into a similar lockup to the one Dakota had just escaped from. He would have to deal with them later, but for now taking them out of action was all that was needed. They then began making their way up through the main body of the ship and started quietly moving toward the section of the ship where the bridge was located. Dakota took the lead, and as he inched his way forward, he soon spotted Kendrix’s people. They were in the process of setting up a high-powered plasma cutter to get through the blast doors to the bridge. Kendrix himself was probably doing exactly the same thing at the docking port, setting up to cut his way back onto the ship. Dakota need to act fast. He gave several silent signals to his crew, indicating who to target and where to position themselves. Then he gave Aeon the nod to signal Angus to get the show on the road.
The crew setting up the plasma cutter were taken completely by surprise when the bridge doors slid open a crack. They rushed to scramble out of the way as a hail of plasma fire gushed out from the bridge. Dakota waved a hand for his crew to get busy and start shooting.
Once Kendrix’s crew realized they were now caught wide open, with nowhere to take cover, they ceased firing, put away their weapons, and slowly raised their hands. It was all over in minutes.
“Take their weapons and shove them in the hold with the others.” Dakota fired off the order to Aeon as he propelled himself through the now fully open doors and onto the bridge.
Angus gave him a smile and a mock salute.
Dakota smiled back. “Good work, Angus. Now let’s get the hell out of here.”
“And how do you suppose we do that? We’re still locked onto the waystation, and they’ve just brought in the heavy machinery.” Angus pointed to a camera feed from the exterior docking port showing an industrial plasma cutter being bolted into position.
“I want reaction thrusters and main engine power online now,” Dakota ordered.
“But, Captain…” Brooker began.
“Just do it.” He turned and looked Angus directly in the eye. “Trust me, this tub has a few secrets that even you don’t know about.” He strapped himself into the captain’s chair and activated the heads-up display. He checked the readouts to ensure the ship had reaction control, the small gas thrusters used to maneuver the ship for docking and undocking.
“Okay, everyone get ready.” Dakota tapped a command into his console—a command that he had never actually used before. It brought up a sequence of code that he prayed still worked. Then he hit initiate.
All around the outer rim of the primary docking port, explosive bolts activated in a cascading detonation, disconnecting the ship from the waystation. Like a bee sacrificing its sting, the ship sacrificed its primary docking machinery for the prize of escape. Yet, unlike a bee, the ship would not succumb to the same fate because its hull integrity was still maintained by an inner hatch.
“Take us out from the dock,” Dakota shouted over to Angus, who was now at the helm.
Reaction thrusters fired, nudging the ship away from the docking gantry, rotating it gently in the direction of the port exit.
“That’s one heck of a trick, Captain,” said Aeon. “I’m glad Kendrix didn’t know about it. The only problem now is we’ll have every ship in the entire sector after us.”
Dakota ignored Aeon for a moment as he concentrated on the camera feed on the main screen. The waystation dock scrolled past as the ship began to move out. “There,” Dakota shouted, pointing at a section of dock infrastructure brisling with communications antenna. “Aeon, you think you can hit that with a cannon blast?”
She took a moment to figure out what the captain was planning. “Sure, no problem.”
“Then do it. That’ll disable their tracking systems for a while.”
Less that a second later, a ball of bright blue plasma sailed across the ever-widening space between the ship and the waystation and slammed into the antenna array.
“Everyone strap in!” Dakota shouted. “Angus, full power to the main engine, get us the hell outta here.”
A deep, sonorous growl began to build from bowels of the ship as the main engines powered up. Dakota felt himself being vacuumed-packed into his seat as the ship accelerated out from the Gyzer Waystation and into deep space.
The ship burned hard for over an hour, during which time Dakota set his mind to thinking about what to do next. They were heading in no particular direction, simply moving as fast as they could from the waystation before Xiang Zu, or anyone else, had had chance to track their vector. This, Dakota knew, would buy them time, but nothing more.
He had managed to get his ship back, but at the cost of turning half his crew into enemies, some of whom were locked up in the cargo hold and could pose a problem for him, as he couldn’t simply hold them there forever. For the crew that did support him, he offered nothing more than a vague idea of fighting back against the takeover of the asteroid belt by the Xiang Zu and VanHeilding corporations. In reality, that meant he and his crew had a bounty on their heads, and every scumbag mercenary in the system would be out to get them—dead or alive.
But he did have the one thing that could shift the balance of power: a quantum intelligence core. From the little he knew about these exotic machines, he knew that this core had been destined for New World One as a replacement to one that was destroyed on Ceres. But heading to the giant habitat now would be a very bad plan. There was absolutely no way to pull that off. Not even for a smuggler of Dakota’s class.
The more Dakota thought about it, the more he realized that his best chance was to head for the last big holdout in the asteroid belt—Elektra. It was where most of those who wanted to make a stand were heading. It was where his brother was, where a good deal of his crew had people.
Yet, to get there they would still have to run the gauntlet of any ships in that area recently commandeered by Xiang Zu, but that was a minor problem. The big problem, Dakota realized, was how to get the quantum core back online. No one on his ship knew anything about it, and he somehow doubted that any of the ragtag group at Elektra would, either. This was exotic technology; it wasn’t going to be as simple as replacing a power pack on a plasma pistol. What they needed were people who knew about these things, people who could get it operational. People he could trust.
The ship’s engines began to power down. Their manic burn to outrun any pursuers was ending. Dakota felt the gee forces lessen as the acceleration decreased. Slowly, the crew on the bridge began to unstrap themselves from their seats and move around freely.
“Nothing on the scanners, Captain.” Tamires raised her head from the screen she was monitoring and looked over at Dakota. “Looks like we got away scot-free. So, what now?”
“Should we lay low for a while, give ourselves time to figure out what to do?” offered Angus.
“We know what we need to do, and that’s get that quantum core integrated into the system-wide data-grid. That’s the only way of turning this war around,” Brooker countered.
“I say we head to Elektra,” said Aeon. “That where the fight is.”
“Are you serious? Elektra is going to be one big shitstorm very soon.” Tamires didn’t fancy the odds.
“Aeon’s right.” Dakota gestured in her direction. “That’s where the battle for control of the asteroid belt will be won or lost. It’s been building a significant resistance for months, it’s well-resourced, and well-armed.”
“That may be so, Captain.” Brooker sighed. “But do they have the technical know-how to get that core up and running and integrated into the data-grid?”
“Yeah, without that it’s only a matter of time before Elektra ends up like Eugina and all those other places,” Tamires said, reminding them of the stakes at play.
“What about Mars—why can’t they help?” Angus turned to look at Dakota. “Surely they see what’s going on out here?”
“Useless bunch of pussies,” said Aeon. “They don’t want to get dragged into a war.”
“Listen.” Dakota raised his voice to stop the arguing and get the full attention of the crew. “There is someone on Mars who can help us. Someone who has been fighting this war in one form or another for a very long time.”
“Oh yeah, and who’s that?” Aeon cocked her head at the captain.
“I’m talking about a person who ran one of the best mercenary crews in the system back in the day. And I know her because I was part of that crew. She also has a history with these QIs. So, if anyone can help us, she can.”
“Captain, you’re not seriously thinking of contacting Miranda Lee.” Angus looked stunned.
Dakota nodded. “I am. She’s our best bet.”
“No offense, Captain, but what makes you think she’ll believe a single word out of your mouth…after what happened the last time?” Angus let this question float in the air.
“Who’s Miranda?”
“What happen the last time?”
Several questions were now flying around from younger members of the crew.
Angus raised a hand. “Oh, Dakota’s right, there’s no question that Miranda Lee would be a formidable ally—if we could get her to believe we’ve the stolen QI core. The problem”—he looked around at the assembled crew—“is that the last words she said to our good captain here—before she kicked him off her ship—was that if she ever laid eyes on him again, she would tear his head off with her bare hands.”
All eyes turned to Dakota.
7
LIKE THE OLD DAYS
“How well do you know this guy?” Scott asked as he read down through the message that Miranda had just received from an ex-colleague of hers—a mercenary turned smuggler, turned pirate known as Dakota Baird.
It had arrived less than an hour ago and already a small team had been assembled by Aria, the quantum intelligence that controlled most of this sector of the solar system. Ever since an earlier attempt to reinstate a QI on New World One was stolen from a Martian transport ship and vanished without a trace, any news of its existence, no matter how dubious, was going to be a very big deal.
Miranda, Scott McNabb, Cyrus Sanato, and two security officials gathered around a large holo-table in a highly secure Martian government facility in Jezero City. A detailed 3D rendering of the solar system blossomed out from the table’s surface, enveloping almost the entire room. Their area of interest was the Elektra sector of the asteroid belt, within which an illuminated marker indicated the location given in the message.
