Mercurial: Ace Evans Book 5 (Ace Evans Series), page 2
He would have normally sent word that he had accomplished the mission and was heading back, but he was under orders not to transmit verbal communications, and the Silent Partner had already passed through the second space tunnel. The navigation system on his Titan MBS showed that it would take him a little over two hours to reach the tunnel. Alex could only hope that the Silent Partner was waiting for him on the other side. He had four hours of air left in the suit, but that might not be enough to reach help if he was abandoned.
CHAPTER THREE
Nyx was running. The old Mora class warship was bulky and designed for space battles where the greatest threat to a ship’s crew was a compromised hull. To safeguard the crew, the ship was built like nesting dolls, so that the outer sections could be sealed off, to save the people working in the interior sections. Essentially, there were no straight lines, no lifts, no easy way to move from one part of the vessel to another if they weren’t side by side. The command center was built in the center of the ship, and the Operators’ ready room, where Nyx was spending most of her time, was on the lowest deck, between the weapons cluster on the belly of the ship and the MBS hangar bay.
Up and in, that was the only way to proceed. The ship had narrow stairwells, and none that went more than one level. After going up one set of stairs, she would have to jog down a corridor to another stairwell. As a Controller, physical conditioning wasn’t a high priority. She did her best to stay fit, but it wasn’t really difficult at her age. Running through the Drachma was beginning to take its toll. She could feel her legs burning and she was out of breath by the time she reached the command center.
The bridge was in the very center of the ship and was set up like a wheel. The bridge was the central hub, and out from it were the compartments for every system on the ship. Communications, Fire Control, Navigation, Engineering, and Life Support all had stations on the bridge and narrow passages that led straight to the equipment that was necessary to run each system. The newer vessels were built with a greater emphasis on surveillance, while the Mora class ships were built for battle. They had large, dual-fuel engines, and twice the number of maneuvering thrusters. They also had more guns, although they were primarily laser weapons.
Nyx had learned as much as she could about the ship after coming aboard as acting chief of Operators. She had studied every level and had a good grasp of where everything was stored on the big ship. The only drawback to the vessel—in her mind, at any rate—was the lack of aesthetics and the difficulty of getting from one place to another. The decks were all bare metal grates, even in the central levels. The walls were metal and painted a depressing beige in most places. The lighting wasn’t as bright as she would have liked and made the narrow passageways seem even more confining. Some of her Operators were already complaining about the vessel, but she was confident it was stout enough for any trouble they might run into.
The doors to the bridge stayed closed. Opening them was a simple matter, but the default setting on the heavy doors was shut, which forced her to stop and wait until they opened to admit her. She used the time to catch her breath.
When the doors slid apart, Nyx walked in boldly. The bridge wasn’t really a space she was comfortable in, even though she probably could have worked any of the consoles just as well as the officers at their stations. And her rank as acting chief didn’t give her any special privileges on the ship. It was Executive Vice President of Security Loman Haley’s open-door policy that made her bold, and the specific assignment he had given to her.
“I got a message,” Nyx said.
“It’s about time,” Loman said. “What’s it say?”
“That he’s okay,” Nyx said. “You were right about Lynn Faulk. She has him on the Silent Partner. He’s been tasked to disable another ship. He claims it’s one of Faulk’s partners.”
“She’s using him to take out her competition,” the VP announced.
“Alex says that if we can get to the Gobal Sector,” Nyx said, checking her PIL to make sure she was getting the information right, “that we can save them.”
“Noble, but that isn’t really our responsibility,” Lieutenant Jones said. He was standing at his station not far from Haley’s command seat.
“We should always clean up our own messes,” Haley said. “If Faulk is using Alex to take out one of the other members of her group, she won’t hesitate to throw him under the bus if things go south. The last thing we need is another news story involving CDF personnel attacking an innocent civilian vessel.”
“And Alex thinks the owner of the ship will talk if he owes you his life,” Nyx added.
“That’s smart thinking on his part,” Haley said. “At least we’re heading in the right direction, then. Nav, what’s our ETA to the Gobal Sector?”
“Twenty-seven hours and forty-two minutes,” the navigation officer said. “If we aren’t forced to stop along the way.”
As the navigation officer was speaking, Nyx’s PIL buzzed and she looked down at the device.
“Sir, I’ve got an update.”
“Read it,” Haley ordered.
“It isn’t text. He’s forwarded video files.”
Loman Haley cocked his head to one side. “Can we get those videos on the bridge screens, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir, Commander,” Lieutenant Rory Jones replied.
Nyx waited until her PIL was synced to the bridge computer display systems. Then she played the first video. It was an image of a small room. A tall man with silver hair was nursing a dark-colored drink in a crystal tumbler. He leaned against a small wet bar directly across from the camera, which looked like a security feed.
“That’s Francis Parleon,” Loman said.
A door slid open, and Lynn Faulk walked into the room with two other people. Nyx didn’t recognize any of them, but it quickly became clear who Faulk was.
“Is this room secure?” the woman asked.
“Absolutely,” Parleon said in a smooth voice. Nyx thought he looked as if he had stepped out of a holo-film. “My people are loyal.”
“This isn’t a joking matter,” the woman said. “If word gets out, everything we’ve been working for would be ruined.”
“Relax, Lynn. It’s just the four of us,” he held up an expensive commercial PIL and waved it around. “There’s no signal, in or out. We can let down our guard.”
“That’s foolish,” Lynn Faulk said.
“Let’s get on with this,” said a heavyset man in a conservative business suit that somehow looked sloppy on him. “There are still preparations to be made.”
“Of course,” Parleon said. “My people are ready. I’ve got dozens of influencers ready to start disseminating our story. The news agencies will be on board too. I can guarantee that.”
“My people are in place. We’ll begin destabilizing the private militaries of nearly two dozen megacorporations,” the woman said.
“Sigma Services have already begun making offers,” the fat man said. “We’ll have assets on hand within days.”
“Our own private army,” Parleon said.
“Don’t let it go to your head,” Faulk snapped. “We aren’t getting the best assets.”
“Why not?” asked the other female in the room. She was painfully thin and had a hooked nose.
“Because the best assets are held by the strongest companies, and they don’t share their military tech,” Faulk said.
“But you’ve gotten us what we need from Ahzco?” Parleon asked.
“Hiding munitions isn’t a simple matter,” Faulk said. “I’ve moved battle suits and weapons, but what we really need are people. They do us no good without Operators.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll get them,” Parleon said. “Soon we’ll have citizens lining up to join our cause.”
“Then I say we move forward with our plan,” Faulk said. “The timing is right and we have everything in place.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Parleon said, holding up his glass.
“Pause it,” Haley ordered. The picture on the display screen froze, showing the faces of all four people who were standing in a semicircle. “That’s Quintessa Vandross and Rubin Coifmere,” the VP said, pointing at the hook-nosed woman and the fat man. “They’re both financiers. Francis Parleon is a media mogul.”
“I’ve seen him before,” the communications officer said. “I mean, I’ve seen him online. There are stories about him.”
“He controls four major news agencies and has a lot of influence,” Haley said. “It’s his ship Faulk was meeting in the Gobal Sector.”
“The one Sergeant Evans was ordered to take out?” Lieutenant Jones asked.
“That would be my guess,” Haley continued. “This had to be recorded on his ship. He’s a fanatic about capturing everything and controlling his public image.”
“So your theory was right,” Nyx said.
“It looks that way,” Haley said. “Now all we have to do is get to the Gobal Sector, save the ship, and make sure Parleon knows that Lynn Faulk was behind the attempt on his life.”
“And if we don’t get there in time?” Jones asked.
“At least we have the videos,” Haley replied.
Nyx felt a surge of pride. They had the videos because of Alex. They had a chance to save Parleon because of Alex. She wished she could be with him, but she couldn’t help but marvel at what he was able to do, even while he was under Lynn Faulk’s boot heel.
CHAPTER FOUR
Alex had been flying toward the space tunnel for well over an hour. He occasionally switched his visual feed to one of the rear-facing cameras and zoomed in on the Starstruck, which was still in a spin and flying widely off course. The ship was sometimes hard to see with no running lights. There was a feeling of dread deep in Alex’s stomach at the thought that huge ship might never be found.
Flying in space was nothing like flying in atmosphere, which required constant attention. Once his course and speed were set in space, there was nothing left to do. Alex didn’t even have a teammate to talk to. His communication system wasn’t powerful enough to connect to the galactic network buoy near the Olympus Nebula space station. Which left him nothing to do but keep an eye on the Starstruck, which hadn’t changed since Alex had disrupted all her systems.
Ahead of him, he could see the markers that showed the edges of the space tunnel. Without his navigation system showing how close he was to the huge portal, he had no way of knowing if he was ten kilometers or a hundred or less than one. He checked all the Titan’s systems again. He had a little over three hours of air and power left. More than enough to get through the portal, which was only a few kilometers from his position, and then to the Silent Partner, if she was actually waiting for him on the other side.
It made sense that Lynn Faulk might abandon him. It was a convenient way to tie up a loose end. With Alex dead, there was no way to prove he had been acting on her orders. In fact, being in an Ahzco battle suit, it would appear that he was carrying out VP Haley’s orders. Not that being found was very likely. Space was full of junk—asteroids, rogue comets, quasars, debris from worlds that had blown apart from powerful cosmic forces. Not to mention all the trash that humanity was famous for abandoning to the far reaches of space—old satellites, wrecked ships, even just garbage. There were rules of disposing of old equipment and the waste produced by human beings, but no one was keeping track. Space was a wide, lawless void where people tended to do whatever was the most convenient in the moment.
Alex, lost in his own thoughts, almost didn’t see the ship emerging from the space tunnel in time. He had completely missed the flashing buoys that alerted vessels in the area that the space tunnel was in use. If not for his suit’s collision alert, he might have been killed. The system sounded, the alarm ringing inside his mind as if it were trying to scramble his brain.
Alex saw the bow of a large commercial transport appear before him. He reacted at the speed of thought, firing all his starboard thrusters and sliding quickly to his left. Unfortunately, the transport was a big ship and he couldn’t avoid colliding with it completely. He rotated his legs up, drawing his knees toward his chest. As the ship came closer, he kicked out. The large metal feet of the Titan suit looked like articulated toes of a robot bird. They hit the hull of the ship and with the suit’s hydraulic powered legs, launched Alex away from the transport. The Titan battle suit was designed to absorb kinetic shock, but Alex felt the impact jar his legs and spine.
For a moment it seemed he would clear the ship, and he was waiting to see how his body would respond to the impact. His back was on the verge of cramping from the sudden shock to his spinal column. But as the commercial transport continued through the space tunnel, Alex was forced to bring his suit’s thrusters to full power as the multilevel passenger area was much larger than the bow. He angled away from the space tunnel, losing ground just to try and clear the large ship. After managing to avoid another collision, he had to move below the commercial vessel to keep from getting too close to the exhaust from the big engines located on the ship’s stern. The maneuvering thrusters were already turning the ship, but the main engines continued to blast superheated gas out the exhaust tubes as the vessel gained speed for its run out to the space station.
“No, no,” Alex said to no one. “I’ll wait. You go ahead.”
He ran a systems check while the big ship cruised past his position. Everything was in working order. The muscles in his back were settling down. One of the great things about zero gravity was the ability to relax one’s muscles completely. What he couldn’t relax was his concentration. That had been a mistake, and almost a deadly one. He checked the buoy lights, saw that they were off, and resumed his flight toward the space tunnel.
His sense of calm had been shattered, which only made him more nervous about the dangers of passing through the tunnel in his battle suit. The Titan was state of the art, and with his INC synced to the mechanized battle suit’s systems, it was truly like an extension of his own body. It had thick armor, carried powerful weapons in most circumstances, and could fly both in atmo and hard vacuum. But it wasn’t like a starship constructed to endure powerful cosmic forces. He knew it was a possibility that he could die flying through the tunnel, but it was also the only way that he could survive.
Training to be a CDF Operator included mastering his mind. Alex could compartmentalize his fear and focus on thoughts that allowed him to get the job done in the most arduous circumstances. He focused on the ship that should be waiting for him beyond the tunnel and flew straight into the darkness.
A ship normally transitioned through a space tunnel quickly, but the flight took Alex longer. He was in the tunnel for just under a minute, but it felt much longer. It felt like he was lost in a black hole, the weight of the darkness seemed to grow with every second. And then suddenly, he was out. He saw a star in the distance, planets too. Alex wasn’t even sure what solar system he was in, but he immediately felt better, as if just the sight of civilization, even if it was out of reach, was better than being alone in the darkness.
Well, it took you long enough. Did you take out the target?
“Roger that,” Alex said, suddenly wondering if getting lost in the dark wasn’t somehow better than working with Cordair. There was something slimy about the Sigma Services commander. “She’s disabled and off course.”
Alright, well, let’s not talk about it where we can be overheard.
There were no other ships in the area. Alex had spotted the Silent Partner shortly after coming through the space tunnel. She lay waiting for him a few hundred kilometers away. Alex didn’t think anyone was close enough to overhear them, but he understood that in a military operation, there was a need for confidentiality.
“Copy,” Alex muttered.
I’m sending you the trajectory data that will bring you back on board the ship. Good job, Lieutenant.
“Thank you, sir,” Alex said.
He was playing along, trying to sound accommodating. It wouldn’t do him any good to reveal his complete disgust for Lynn Faulk and anyone who worked for her. He needed to keep his true feelings, and the full extent of his abilities, to himself.
The nav system of his Titan battle suit sprang to life in his mind and showed a bright yellow path toward the Silent Partner. All Alex had to do was follow along, which was exactly what he planned to do. There would come a time when an opportunity would present itself. He wasn’t sure what kind of opportunity he needed. A chance to escape, perhaps, or take control of the massive yacht. Or maybe steal incriminating evidence from Lynn Faulk that he could pass along to his friends. Either way, he intended to play along and bide his time. If he was lucky, he would hit Lynn Faulk, and her minions at Sigma Services, without them ever seeing it coming.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Did he do it?” Lynn Faulk asked.
She was sitting in her office on the Silent Partner. It was a large room, with a massive desk that she thought made her look powerful. She loved all the trappings of wealth and influence. The desk was made of real wood, hand carved, and covered with a lacquer that made it shine in the carefully selected lighting of the office. She sat in a chair that looked like it could have been a throne for a powerful ruler from some ancient empire.
General Corsair, tall and handsome, stood before her desk. She enjoyed wielding her power over others, and if they were beautiful that enjoyment was so much sweeter. He looked impressive in his dark uniform and always showed her the proper respect. She wasn’t so foolish to think that he felt anything for her. He was a greedy, self-centered man, as were most men in her opinion, but greed was a useful motivator. She was paying him well—enough, in fact, to ensure his loyalty.
