Shell Game, page 23
part #15 of The Last Hunter Series
It really depends on how difficult it looks like it’s going to be. We’re not miracle workers. We’ll do the best we can and hope that’s enough.
Once the waiter had delivered her to-go coffee and the pastries, she packed her tablet away and headed back toward the rooms they were using. Now that Garibaldi and Albertson had been discovered missing, there would be some chaos that they might be able to take advantage of. It would mean acting sooner than they might otherwise, but the opportunity was too good to pass up.
As she was getting close to the suite of rooms they were using, she spotted Patrick in the hall pushing the laundry cart. He inclined his head toward her and kept going away from their rooms.
For her part, she ignored him. After all, she didn’t want to draw attention to his presence by speaking to him or overtly making any gesture toward him. The corridor had several people walking down it, and anything that was out of the ordinary might stick in their memories.
It looks to me like he’s getting rid of somebody, so we might arrive back to find that Garibaldi has already left the building. I wonder where he’s going to dump the body.
Pretty sure. I guess we’ll find out shortly.
She used her key to get into the suite of rooms they were using and found the Marines seated around a small table in the entryway. One of them gestured toward the door. “Mister Tebbe left just a few minutes ago. He said he’d be back in about half an hour.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I’ll be in here if you need me.”
She let herself into the next room and found that Governor Albertson was slumped in her chair, but the other seat was empty. “Score one for me. He’s off dumping Garibaldi’s body. I wonder if she’s dead, too.”
“You’re probably right. Still, I’ll feel better if I check.”
Two fingers to Albertson’s neck felt both her pulse and her body heat. She was unconscious but still alive. That was good enough for now, as they still had questions for the woman.
If it was indeed possible to break into the secret police prison, maybe they would take her along and stuff her into a cell. That would certainly cause a lot of questions and more than a bit of chaos that they could probably use to their advantage. It would also be hilarious.
She settled into one of the seats and opened the package of pastries. Since Patrick wasn’t there, she’d just eat his. After all, he who snoozes loses.
31
Derek let the chaos wash over him and tried not to smile. He’d effectively taken the attention away from himself by activating the sabotage drones and killing the power. Worse yet for the enemy, all the ship’s systems were being affected. He knew that without even being told because several people attempting to use their communications devices were being stymied. That meant the communications network was down. That lack of ability to communicate with one another was really going to hurt them over the next few minutes.
Vassen followed his lead, looking around at everyone around them reacting to the changes. The woman who was escorting them said something to him, and Vassen tapped Derek on the shoulder. “Our escort says that we need to leave.”
“Okay.”
The briefing room was emptying rapidly as everyone headed toward their duty stations or back toward the landing bay. Derek made certain to move slowly to allow plenty of other people to get in front of them. It wouldn’t do to have too many witnesses when it came time to act.
Their escort also seemed to realize that they wouldn’t be leaving the compartment very quickly and paused to allow the crowd to thin out. The three of them stood near the main exit until almost everyone had finished departing before they also joined the last of the members to leave the compartment. The corridor was emptying as everyone headed in different directions.
Derek was somewhat surprised that the gravity systems were still online. He hadn’t exempted them from being taken down and would’ve expected them to already be offline.
As if prompted by his thoughts, the gravity chose that moment to go out. Luckily, he was close enough to one of the bulkheads to grab a fixture and keep himself steady. He reached over and tugged Vassen to join him. He didn’t have any hands left for the escort—not that he would’ve helped her get her footing anyway—and watched her drift away slowly as she reoriented herself and looked at where she could get a hold of something.
It took her another minute to reach one of the bulkheads and secure herself, and then she looked back at Vassen and him. “We will continue to the landing bay. Let’s give the corridor a few minutes to allow personnel to get to their duty stations. I apologize for whatever is happening.”
“An emergency always takes precedence,” Vassen said. “Whatever is happening, it needs to be dealt with, and if that delays us returning to our cutter, that is more than acceptable. If there is any assistance that I may provide, you need only ask.”
“I appreciate that, but it is unnecessary. Now, the corridor is clear enough for us to continue. This way.”
Rather than heading toward the lift, she found the stairwell next to them, and they joined the personnel inside it. They started up, and Derek began considering how they would get rid of the woman. With so many people around, shooting her was out of the question, yet they couldn’t simply disappear, or it would raise an alarm.
Maybe the simplest thing to do would be to actually return to the landing bay and act as if they were preparing to depart. Otherwise, they’d have to find some way to disable or kill the woman without anyone being aware of what happened. Right now, the Tardans didn’t know what was happening, but if violence broke out, that would certainly focus their attention on potential intruders. If, of course, it wasn’t already high on their minds.
In the end, the decision was taken out of his hands because they never had an opportunity to get the woman alone. Getting back to the landing bay—even with no gravity—only took a few minutes, and they were shortly next to their cutter.
Their escort gestured for them to get inside. “Communications are down, so as you find an opportunity to depart safely, please do so. I must get to my duty station. Safe journeys.”
“Safe journeys to you as well,” Vassen said.
The two of them watched the Tardan officer make her way back out of the landing bay without saying anything or moving to get inside the cutter. Once she was gone, Derek gestured for Vassen to accompany him to a smaller hatch leading into a different part of the ship. He’d taken the precaution of reviewing the deck plans of this class of ship and knew that that particular hatch led to a maintenance bay for working on small craft. From there, they could get into some of the less traveled corridors and make their way toward the bridge.
The compartment was occupied, but the two Tardans there seemed to be focused on working on a communications unit. Derek had no idea what they hoped to do with it, but he was happy to let them spend their time doing it. They made it all the way across the compartment and out the hatch on the other side without either of the Tardans glancing over at them.
“Where now?” Vassen asked once they were in the corridor.
“The bridge. It’s going to be occupied, but I believe you can manage to get what we’re looking for. The admiral’s personal office is just off the bridge itself, and there is a back way in. It’s probably guarded, but we should be able to take care of the guards.”
“I’m uncertain how this will play out, sir. It’s just the two of us against an entire ship full of people. Surely, they will be on guard against intruders after having lost all their primary systems.”
“Depending on how long this takes, they might very well have external enemies to be worried about if the admiral attacks as he planned. With as much time as has passed, we can hope that that’s the case. Some of those small craft will have exited the ship and probably seen the fighting by now. If everything has gone according to plan, our own fighters should have made an appearance and begun shooting up the rest of the Tardan warships.”
“Let’s get into position and see what we find,” Vassen said. “Whatever we need to do, we’ll do it, but I hope to avoid getting into a shootout with heavily armed Marines since we only have pistols. We are woefully under-equipped for a fight like this. Subterfuge was always the plan.”
When they made their way up to the appropriate deck, they found that confusion reigned supreme. Personnel were still dragging themselves down corridors, and there was a lot of shouting coming from the bridge itself. He could tell that because the hatch was still open. Apparently, something had gone wrong with it as well. He’d always thought those types of systems had their own power supply, but the Marines were trying to get it shut by hand, and it didn’t seem to be going well.
That proved useful because the Marine guards who would normally be at the entrance to the admiral’s office were assisting them. Their attention seemed firmly focused on securing the bridge rather than guarding the office. Perhaps they assumed that their mere presence would be sufficient because it was only several dozen meters away from where they were working.
Moving as quietly as possible, Derek and Vassen used the manual controls to open the hatch leading into the admiral’s office and slipped inside. Derek stayed right there at the hatch, allowing his head to come out just enough to keep an eye on the Marines. If they looked like they’d finished their work and started coming back in this direction, the intrusion would become significantly more violent.
Vassen floated directly across to the admiral’s desk as if no one would see him. That wasn’t an unreasonable expectation, as it seemed like they were trying to get some of the controls on the bridge functional, and the admiral was busy screaming at his people. It wasn’t the best look for him, but it was certainly distracting the rest of the crew.
The admiral’s desk was set up very much like the one Derek had seen before, and sitting atop it was the equipment used to control the Locusts. Basically, it was a computer that would take orders and map them out to pre-recorded commands using the appropriate encryption and then forward those to the communication systems as directed.
It was secured to the desk by a magnetic strip that Vassen simply deactivated. Then, acting as if he didn’t have a care in the world, he picked up the entire thing and floated back over toward Derek.
For his part, Derek opened the hatch wide enough to allow his associate to float right through and then followed him out. He assisted the Tardan in getting himself oriented, and then they started down the corridor toward the main bridge entrance. He’d have gone the other direction, but that was a dead end that opened into other control areas, and he didn’t want to be trapped there.
Bold as brass, the two of them floated right past the Marines who were just in the process of sealing the bridge. Derek kept his back to them, but he saw Vassen incline his head as they floated past.
They’d made it almost all the way to the stairs, when he heard an alarm go up behind them. He wasn’t sure if one of the Marines spotted the open hatch leading into the admiral’s office or if the admiral himself had noticed that his equipment was missing. No matter the case, it was time to get the hell out of here.
Once they were safely in the stairwell, they sped up significantly and headed toward the level with the small craft bay. Since there was no internal communications network functioning, it wouldn’t be a problem getting ahead of the alarm.
That didn’t mean that somebody couldn’t chase them, however, which turned out to be exactly what was happening. The hatch that they’d come through to get into the stairwell banged open, and he heard Marines shouting for everyone to stop moving as they came in. By that time, he and Vassen had made it a few levels away, and they did not stop.
When they reached the level with the small craft bay, they exited and sped toward their cutter. Time was no longer on their side, and the bold theft that they’d executed would all be for nothing if anyone laid hands on them. He was more than prepared to shoot anyone they got in their way but would prefer not to draw that kind of attention.
When they entered the small craft bay, most of the visiting cutters had already departed, so there were more people keeping an eye on him and Vassen than he liked. He didn’t let that stop them, though. They got to the cutter and sealed themselves inside without anyone actually trying to halt them.
As Vassen secured the equipment, Derek slid into the acceleration couch and brought the cutter’s systems to life. Without even running a self-check, he broke the magnetic coupling linking them to the deck and spun the cutter in the air. He caught a glimpse out of the corner of his eye of movement at the main hatch and turned to see the Marines that had been pursuing them entering. Their attention was firmly focused on his cutter, and they had their weapons out.
Small craft were meant to move slowly when inside a bigger vessel, but that calculus changed when somebody was shooting at him. He increased the thrust, and they flew across the small craft bay even as the Marines attempted to shoot them. A couple of warning lights came on and indicated that they had taken fire, but nothing critical seemed to be out of alignment, so he flew through the atmospheric screen and into space.
As soon as he was outside the ship, he brought the scanners fully online and saw nothing but chaos around them. Their fighters were invisible, but they had to be there because the vast majority of the Tardan warships were disabled and venting atmosphere. They weren’t shooting at any of the small craft—which was a blessing—so Derek set course away from the warships and accelerated quickly.
When they achieved sufficient distance from the flagship, he activated the communication system and began sending out a coded message. It was what was supposed to identify him and Vassen to Specter.
He expected Specter to respond, but a fighter appeared just a few dozen meters away, right outside the viewport. It was definitely one of theirs, and it waggled its wings before changing course. Following its lead, Derek headed after it. It stayed slow so that he could see it, which was good because he had no other way of knowing precisely where they were headed.
It seemed that the spy ship wasn’t ready to pick him up yet, but that was just fine. They’d escaped the battle, and now they could rendezvous whenever it was most convenient. Their part of this operation was done.
32
Patrick whistled as he walked down the corridor, pushing the laundry cart ahead of him. He cheerfully inclined his head at everyone he passed, and if someone smiled, he gave them a little wave. That reassured them that he belonged where he was and wasn’t doing anything wrong. They’d remember the cheerful maintenance worker but would likely have difficulty giving anyone a description of him.
He had the subdermal implants that screwed up cameras when activated. He’d done the same when they’d broken into Garibaldi’s residence. If anyone managed to get footage of him, it wasn’t going to be while he was doing something he shouldn’t. He should probably see if he could convince Lisa to get the implants as well. The surgery wasn’t too painful, and the benefits definitely made having them worthwhile.
Still, he didn’t believe it would be easy to convince her to make the change. Over the centuries that he’d spent inside the Confederation, he learned that the humans here were significantly different in certain respects from those where he’d grown up. Expediency wasn’t always going to work with these people. Just because a certain thing would be better for them didn’t mean that they would be inclined to go in that direction. If it were that easy, he’d have better luck convincing Lisa to become an assassin.
Thankfully, he’d known that wasn’t going to be possible early on in their relationship. And by relationship, he meant something much more complicated than most people had to deal with. Theirs had elements of professional behavior as well as personal. Frankly, even though he was attracted to her, it was her mind that he found most appealing. That, and her personality.
Not to denigrate her when it came to nighttime activities, but he had lived long enough not to be led around by his nether regions. Any kind of long-term partnership would have to be based on something other than sex. He was grateful that she had much to recommend her when it came to that. Not that she was anything less than stellar between the sheets, mind you.
He walked through one of the larger mall areas and, in moments, was surrounded by people going about their daily lives. Off to his left, there was a food court that was simply teeming with people. With all the different eateries present, the scents didn’t mesh with one another. Not in the least. They warred with one another, sometimes with less than delightful results.
Most people carting around a dead body would avoid this kind of location, but it was the quickest route to get where he needed to go. People would see him, but he was just another servitor doing his job. People noticed them, and then forgot about them, which was just the way he liked it.
Once he was out of the mall, he was in a more heavily trafficked area of the station, but he didn’t let that slow him down and continued toward his destination, his mind split between watching everything going on around him and thinking about Lisa and their future together.
The fact that she had been able to take the program he’d stolen from the Kingdom of Kastelara and break open all its secrets spoke to a deep understanding of all things computer-related. The fact that she had an alien symbiote gave her deep insights into Novarite and Tardan computer hardware and programming, as well as what he’d given her dealing with kingdom technology, made her an utter powerhouse when it came to doing anything with all those systems.
Admittedly, the first step was the program he’d given her, but she’d been able to dig out aspects of it that he had never even suspected existed. After all, why would they have given the spies and assassins working inside the kingdom a crippled version of the program? Who exactly needed more ability than they? That spoke to an unsettling fact. There was someone inside the kingdom who was making sure that those spies and assassins never got out of hand.
