Shell Game, page 10
part #15 of The Last Hunter Series
“I suspect that they marked the door and locked it up as a warning to others,” Patrick said as he set the security lockout on the kitchen counter and pulled out the tape to join it. He was wearing gloves, so he wasn’t particularly concerned about DNA being left on what he’d touched. “The secret police operate by instilling fear into everyone around them. They may not be operating at the highest levels because of the invasion, but they can’t stop themselves from doing this kind of thing. Let’s search the rooms and make sure there’s nothing here.”
They separated and began searching the quarters. He started in the kitchen because it was an unusual location to hide things, and the really smart people could do so without too much trouble. Not that he thought the person who had lived in this apartment had needed to do something like that, but it never hurt to check.
After half an hour, he met Lisa back in the entryway and shook his head. “Sadly, I’m afraid there’s nothing for us to find here. If we want to speak to this individual, we’ll have to rescue him from wherever he’s locked up, and I’m uncertain that’s the wisest course of action. He doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who would have information about the Poseidon Group. Why take the risk of breaking him out?”
“I think we can be pretty confident at this point that he hates them,” Lisa said. “If they’ve roughed him up and kept them there for a while, he’ll be willing to tell us what they’re up to. Also, the fact that they felt the need to arrest him in the first place indicates that he’s been doing things they don’t approve of, or he has information that they’d prefer to keep quiet. Either one of those things, combined with the fact that I believe we can get him to talk to us, would be useful. He’ll know other people that feel the same way, too.”
“That might be true,” Patrick said with a nod. “Unfortunately, someone turned him in. That means at least a few of his friends might be working with the Poseidon Group or have been nervous enough to inform on him. His contacts won’t be trustworthy.”
“Well, we can combine rescuing him with breaking into their computers. I’ll have to do the latter anyway to figure out where they’re holding him and come up with a plan to break him out. Are we going to leave the lock in here or put everything back the way we found it?”
He grinned at her. “Oh, I think it would be much more entertaining to let them eventually figure out that someone was in here. They’ll suspect that it’s one of his associates if they believe that he’s actually conspiring against them.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t you think that’s heaping more trouble on him that he doesn’t need right now? The man is in prison for being opposed to their rule, and now you want to raise the heat on him? That’s not very sporting.”
He stopped, crossed his arms, and considered what she’d said. She wasn’t wrong. His normal devil-may-care attitude probably wasn’t that conducive to the well-being of everyone around him, he supposed. Perhaps this was a place where he could make a gesture toward fitting into general society a little better.
“Okay,” he said. “I can put everything back the way we found it, and no one will ever be the wiser. I’m not sure that will help in any way, but since you want to do it that way, I’m willing to accommodate your desires.”
“Thank you.”
He retrieved the lock and the tape before the two of them exited the apartment, locking the door behind them. Once they were in the hall, he set her to watch for other people, put the external security system back over the lock, and activated it. Once that was done, he put the tape back in place and stepped back to give the door a good look.
His memory wasn’t perfect, but unless they were comparing the door to what it had been before via photographic evidence, no one should be able to tell that it had been tampered with.
He turned to face her and gestured down the hallway. “I think we should get something to eat and discuss our next steps. Once we know what we intend to do, we can move into the shadows and see about getting the information to liberate your foundling. Also, I need to sign the updated paperwork for our workspace.”
“He’s not a foundling,” she objected. “He’s a person and deserves a little respect because he stood up when other people didn’t.”
“There’s an old saying from Earth that I think applies,” Patrick said with a lopsided smile. “The nail that stands up is struck down. Sometimes, it’s best to blend in with everyone else and make your moves in the dark where no one can identify you. In any case, if he’s still alive, we’ll see what we can do about rescuing him before we take other actions. If nothing else, it’s my good deed for the day.”
Lisa shook her head. “You’re incorrigible. Let’s go get something to eat and then do your paperwork.”
He allowed her to take the lead, and the smile slipped off of his face. What they were about to do next had a lot of risk attached to it because there would be no easy way to evade the secret police if they inadvertently stirred them up. That would be problematic, and they’d need to be very careful not to reveal themselves.
Even so, he looked forward to the hunt. People who were up to no good were about to die, and he was going to kill them. What wasn’t to like about that?
13
Jack sat behind the control console aboard Specter and examined the data being pulled in by the passive scanners. They’d arrived in the general area where the prospecting ship was supposed to be operating but hadn’t seen any sign of the vessel.
He’d been afraid of that because there was no guarantee that the information in the database they’d queried was current. For that matter, it was entirely possible that a canny prospector might send incorrect information so as not to reveal where they were really searching for the big find. Unfortunately, there was no easy way to figure out where they might have gone if they weren’t where they were expected to be.
He called McDonald up to the bridge. When the Chief Petty Officer arrived, he turned to face him without rising. “At ease. We’ve arrived at the location where your family’s prospecting vessel was supposed to be, but unfortunately, it isn’t here. Do you have any idea if they are intentionally misdirecting with the information they give the government so as not to reveal where they might truly be operating? I probably should’ve asked that ahead of time, yet here we are.”
McDonald shook his head. “There’s enough high-grade ore scattered throughout the belt that we don’t really have to worry about claim jumping. If they said they’d be in this general area, then that’s where they should be. It’s possible they landed on a relatively large asteroid, and that’s concealing their location from the passive sensors. Or, they might have wandered a bit outside easy detection range. The only way we’ll find them is to look around.”
“We can do that. By the way, what’s the name of your family’s ship? Once we find them, I’ll have to signal them, and it would be helpful to make sure we got the right ship.”
“She’s called the Bangkok Hauler. I haven’t the slightest idea where the name came from, but the ship has been in our family for several generations, and my great-grandfather was well-known for his sense of humor and adventurism. There’s no telling.”
“Bangkok,” he mused. “It sounds vaguely familiar. I’m sure there’s an interesting story behind it. Thank you for your guidance. When the time comes to make contact with your family, I’ll want you standing next to me so they know we’re legit. You can feel free to stay here and sit up against one of the bulkheads if you like, or you can go get something to eat and relax, and I’ll call you once we find something.”
“It’s been a while since I had anything to eat, so I’ll go grab something in the galley, sir. Thank you.”
Jack called down to Tina. “We need to launch some probes,” he said. “McDonald says that his family is probably in the area, but they might be up against one of the large asteroids or perhaps have wandered a bit further away. How quickly can we search this area and be sure of finding them if they’re here?”
“Launching a spread of probes won’t take very long at all, and we should have decent information within half an hour,” she said. “I’d expect to pick up their fusion plant, but if they’re on the wrong side of a large asteroid that’s made of nickel-iron, that would block us from picking them up.”
“Launch the probes and keep me informed. Romanoff out.”
Lacking anything else to do, he began tallying up the large asteroids in the area. As the probes began sending information back to the ship, he added that information to what he was compiling.
If they didn’t pop up, he would have to circle around some of the asteroids and see if he could pick up a reading from their fusion plant. If he wasn’t able to find them, that meant they would have to figure something else out. Getting someone who had been here since the beginning would be best, but if they were unreachable, then it didn’t matter. They’d need a new course of action.
As time passed, without them picking up any indication of the prospecting ship, he started to become more concerned that something had happened to them or that they had simply relocated without informing the system authorities. Even though McDonald said they weren’t in the habit of concealing their location, he wasn’t willing to take that at face value. Their operating parameters might have changed after the invasion, so he had to keep an open mind.
The comm on the arm of his chair signaled, and he answered it. “Romanoff.”
“Tina here. I haven’t found the ship, but I think I found them.”
“If you haven’t found the ship, then how could you have located them?”
“One of the probes picked up a very faint signature of what could be a fusion plant emanating from a moderately sized asteroid. It’s not completely metallic and seems more like a conglomeration of several different asteroids that have attached themselves together over the eons, but there’s enough metal in it to play heck with any readings coming from it. Nevertheless, I think their ship is inside it. In other words, I think they have a hidden base.”
He felt both of his eyebrows rise. “That’s a lofty achievement for a prospecting family. Wouldn’t they have to claim the asteroid and then make that location public?”
“One would think so, but nevertheless, there is something there. How do you want to proceed?”
He thought about that for a few seconds, sitting in silence with his lips pursed. “We need to check it out. It’s almost certainly not the Tardans or even the kingdom forces. Though now that I think about it, it wouldn’t shock me if one of the spy ships from the kingdom hid themselves like that. If there are any of those vessels here, they’d want to get out of the sun and hide their presence.”
“It’s also a good spot for a prospector that needs a base. If they pull their ship inside, they are shielded from the radiation and heat coming off the star,” she said. “That would certainly make operating out here easier, and they could stockpile supplies so that they wouldn’t need to continually go in and replenish foodstuffs and the like.”
“That’s a good point and something I hadn’t considered. Have the probe get a good reading on that asteroid from every angle and forward the data up to me here. I’ll want to put it on the main screen and see what we’re looking at.”
“Will do. Chen out.”
A couple of seconds later, data began flowing into the console from the intelligence gathering center. The probe had already been orbiting around the asteroid, and it was easy to see from the visual information that the asteroid was indeed a conglomeration of several different kinds that had been drawn together gravitationally. Based on how well they seemed to be moving as one, that had likely happened a very long time ago.
About half of the combined asteroid seemed to be nickel-iron, and the rest of it was a darker color that was probably carbon-based. Some of the metadata that Tina had sent up indicated that it was likely a type C asteroid, so his guess was on target.
When the visual model was complete, he noted that there was a large crack running down the surface of the carbon portion, and a check on the scale indicated that the asteroid was large enough for a small vessel to go into that crack without any danger.
The readings of a fusion plant became stronger when the probe was directly outside the crack, so there was indeed something in there. Now they just needed to figure out what.
He sent a brief message to Tina, asking her to send the probe inside, and watched as it slowly crept into the darkness and collected information. The crack was deep and wide, but soon after it went into the asteroid, the space inside widened out significantly, and off to one side sat a ship.
It was easy to tell at a glance that it was not of Tardan or kingdom manufacture. It was a hodgepodge design that had lots of exterior working arms, which likely meant it was a prospector. There was definitely something to be said for manipulating things in space without having to send your people out in vacuum suits.
In addition to the ship, something was built into the side of the asteroid. The vessel was connected by a pressurized tube from its airlock to what certainly seemed like another airlock. That matched up pretty well with what Tina had hypothesized. This was their secret base where they could hide away and not let anyone else know what they were doing.
He wasn’t certain what the legalities were, as the asteroid would have to be claimed for them to have sole rights to extract minerals from it, and he wasn’t certain that it would allow for a more permanent structure. Then again, he wasn’t here to enforce mining regulations. He wanted to talk to people that knew what was going on with the invasion.
Tina adroitly maneuvered the probe around until it saw the bow of the ship, and they had confirmation that it was the Bangkok Hauler. They had found their target.
He opened a channel throughout the ship. “Chief Petty Officer McDonald to the bridge.”
After about a minute, the hatch opened, and McDonald stepped through. He stared at the main screen and looked utterly confused. “That’s our ship, but where is it?”
Jack shot him a lopsided smile. “It seems that your family has made itself a little base. The ship is inside a crack on an asteroid. As you can see from the pressurized tube, there’s a more permanent structure mined out inside the asteroid itself. There’s no telling from out here how extensive it is, but it’s their home away from home. I do have a few questions, though. First of all, wouldn’t they have to report creating a base like this? I know you have to claim an asteroid to mine it, but does that authorize the building of something like this?”
“I think it can, but I’m no expert when it comes to that sort of thing. I left to join the Navy when I was in my twenties, so I wasn’t in the decision-making loop, and other than mining ore, my knowledge of how that sort of thing works is pretty thin. Maybe it’s legal. Maybe it’s not.”
“What do you think is the best means of getting into contact with them? How would they react to someone calling out of the blue or just showing up?”
“I think calling ahead is definitely better than just showing up, sir. Even though there’s not much trouble in the mining community, everyone is armed, and if someone shows up unexpectedly, there is likely to be a fairly aggressive response if they can’t explain their presence quickly.”
Jack nodded. That’s about what he’d expected. “We can work with that. I’ll go ahead and send a message through the probe, and then they can either talk with us or ignore us. If we don’t get any response, then we’ll have to figure something else out.”
“If someone comes calling, it’s polite to answer the door. I’d lead off with who you are rather than making it a mystery. They’ll probably be pretty nervous that you found them, but having me there will certainly go a long way toward diffusing any untoward reactions.”
“Step over here, and we’ll give them a call.”
Sending his transmission through a dedicated laser connection to a second probe that Tina had set to act as a relay for the first as it explored would allow him to seemingly make a radio call from the empty space inside the safe harbor that the prospectors had created for their ship. They’d no doubt wonder who the hell was calling them and where the ship was, and that would be where McDonald would come in handy.
In fact, it might be best if his subordinate made the initial overtures. Cut out the middleman, so to speak.
“When I open the channel, I want you to talk to them,” Jack said. “If it’s your voice and image, they’ll be more inclined to answer. Just break the ice and introduce me, and I’ll take it from there.”
With that, he pressed the button to open a channel, and the probe inside the bay began signaling on multiple frequencies. That would no doubt have everybody running around in circles as soon as someone detected it. Goodness knows he’d have found it unsettling if he was hiding.
He inclined his head toward McDonald, and the young man began speaking. “Ahoy there on Bangkok Hauler or in the base. This is Will McDonald calling. Is everybody asleep? What does a guy have to do to get a good meal around here? I’m starving.”
Seconds later, the screen came to life, showing the interior of a civilian bridge that was unoccupied except for a younger man—or older boy, more likely—who looked a lot like McDonald. Brothers? Maybe cousins?
“Will? Is that you? Where the heck are you? How are you calling us from empty space? I thought you were in the cluster?”
McDonald grinned. “You should’ve called Mom and Dad before you answered, Zach. There’s this thing called signal security. If you’re hiding, you don’t want to assume that anyone calling is friendly and let them know right where you are.”
The boy made a throw-away gesture. “Whatever. I know who you are. If you want to be cranky, I could just turn this radio off and pretend I never heard you. Then you can sit out there and yell into the void, and no one will pay any attention at all. Then you’ll starve.”
