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  “If you ever served in a rifle company, you would,” Diosa suggested. “It’s heartbreaking after a deployment.”

  “You’re referring to disappointment,” Walden ventured. “In that case yes, I’m frustrated. We have a wealth of communications from Nesta 4th Deallus. He is prolific. Yet, all the intercepted messages have been decoded, gone over for intelligence, studied for ciphers, and filed away as useless.”

  “An Admiral in the Constabulary fleet sends an overwhelming number of messages and none have military significance?” questioned Diosa. “How can that be?”

  “Admiral Nesta is head of their Disbursement Office,” Walden informed her. “All of his messages are directed at different ships with orders to release petty cash to the crew. If he sent full pay directions, we could estimate the number of officers, troops, and sailors on each ship. But he doesn’t. All they can find are general percentages of an unknown whole sent to an unknown number of ships. The information is so scattered the analyst have regulated them to a slush file.”

  “Yet we know an operator for the Empress who set up a clandestine organization on a Galactic Council world considers Nesta 4th Deallus his boss,” Diosa reminded Waldon. “I’d like to spend some quality time with the Admiral.”

  Walden dropped the uneaten portion of his sandwich, spun around, and began furiously typing on the keyboard.

  “Was it something I said?” inquired Diosa at his abrupt response to her statement.

  Walden raised a hand and signaled with a finger for her to wait. More phrases were passed from screen to screen and filtered until the far right monitor displayed columns of times, date stamps, and ID numbers.

  “I need to cross-reference them later but, I believe the key is in the time,” Walden announced as he leaned back and admired the data. “Nesta sends so many missives no one has looked at the times. There is a discrepancy between the times noted in the messages and when they were intercepted. Early on, a specialist excused the difference as a function of Constabulary clocks and Realm chronometers.”

  “That’s logical,” Diosa added.

  Walden’s hands flashed over the keyboard and the numbers shuffled until they were separated into groups of the same time. Entire blocks were identical down to the second.

  “What you’re seeing are times noted on the messages. But they weren’t sent and intercepted at those times,” Walden pointed out. “I believe the receivers know the time signifying their messages and ignore the other as cover.”

  “Like an operation on Uno?” questioned Diosa.

  “Constabulary warships and, yes, their assets on planets and Stations,” confirmed Walden. “But I don’t have the key to finding which message is intended for a specific location.”

  “What would you need?” asked Diosa.

  “A sample of hard code from a Constabulary naval vessel,” Walden responded. “So far, all we have are their fighters and patrol boats. In every engagement, any large vessel in danger of being captured has self-destructed.”

  “Command has an entire hard drive from a Constabulary escort ship,” Diosa announced. Then she got contemplative. “My team went in and took it. I lost a good Striker on that mission.”

  “Is that where you lost the eye?” inquired Walden.

  “No. But the neurologist believes the living stem cells from that surgery allowed my optic nerve to mutate,” she replied. “Find that hard drive and you’ll have your code.”

  “I’m going to drop us out of exterior drive and send Eiko a message to locate it,” Walden informed her.

  “Excellent, Poet,” agreed Diosa. “Another sandwich? Or will you be sticking with energy bars?”

  “A sandwich, please. Those bars are repulsive.”

  “Then why eat them?”

  “Convenience. I was busy.”

  Chapter 11 – Home, Hearth, and Hardware

  The Talon flashed over the Uno and Dos transition zone. Under external drive, its two occupants had no visual reference or communications to the outside to actually verify the crossing. A simple line on their navigation chart glowed for a second then faded as the ship moved beyond the boundary. Removing the lower deck did create one drawback. Military gunboats and some yachts towed a sensor antenna. The Talon had no room for the massive cable of a towed array.

  Five days later, Walden called Diosa to the command deck. She found him sitting in the elevated pilot’s seat with his legs crossed and a carton of food in his hand. He had nothing to monitor as all of the screens glowed with streaks of flowing yellow ions.

  “We do have a galley,” Diosa commented. Seeing the relaxed state of her pilot, she flopped down on the short couch at the navigation station, tossed her legs over one arm, and stretched out. “If I knew we were having a picnic on the bridge, I’d have brought chips.”

  “I’m sorry. Do you want to go and get something to eat?” he inquired.

  “Unnecessary. What’s on your mind?” Diosa inquired.

  “I’m anxious about the Constabulary hard drive,” he admitted. “If I had the line codes, I could be working on the Admiral’s messages.”

  “Fine. Drop out of external, contact Eiko, and have him send the data,” Diosa urged. “And advise him, I’m still not going to tell him our plan.”

  “He isn’t happy with your attitude,” Walden said. “Besides, we really don’t have a plan.”

  “We’re following leads,” Diosa replied. “That’s our plan.”

  “It’s hardly a strategic approach,” Walden remarked.

  “Without a solid objective, we’re limited,” Diosa replied. “If we had followed someone else’s scheme we wouldn’t be hunting Nesta 4th Deallus.”

  “Good point. I’ll ask Eiko for a download then plot a new course,” Walden stated. “It shouldn’t be more than a few hours but the delay throws off my original calculations.”

  Walden placed his carton on the edge of a shelf and powered up the internal drive. Diosa watched the food container as the spaceship evolved, waiting for it to spill if the transition between drives caused a snap. The Talon evolved smoothly and Walden sent the message. Then he scanned the astronomy charts, entered powers and distances into the computer while he waited.

  Diosa left to do some reading and returned four hours later.

  “Eiko could be sleeping,” suggested Diosa when she found Walden still at the navigation screens.

  “Or in a meeting,” ventured Walden. “I’ve located a window of opportunity before our first dogleg. But the path between the planet and an asteroid will close up in another hour. If we miss it, it’ll add another two days and an extra turn to our trip.”

  “This pilot and navigating thing is all you,” Diosa said as she retreated through the hatch. “Let me know if you need any heads broken.”

  ***

  Sweat dripped into Diosa’s eye, the goggle protected the other one, and her breath came in gasps. Inside the York 5000, the retired Marine ran against the gel keeping her heart rate far above the level of a casual trainer. Since joining the Marine Corps and later as a Striker, stamina had allowed her to excel and successfully complete the toughest of assignments. At the moment, it wasn’t conditioning keeping her at the pace. It was the vagueness of the current mission.

  The door to the shipboard gym opened a crack.

  “Warlock. Are you decent?” Walden inquired. A blast of hot and humid air smacked him in the face. Cool air flowed into the compartment.

  “Not since I learned to walk,” Diosa replied. “Come in, you’re letting my atmosphere out.”

  “The ambiance is stifling,” Walden complained as he stepped through the hatch and closed the door.

  Immediately, he began sweating. A towel soared across the room and landed on the pilot’s head.

  “Speak to me Poet and take my mind off the pain,” urged Diosa.

  “Sorry Warlock. All I have is pain,” he responded while patting his face dry.

  Diosa switched off the running machine, grabbed the bar above her
head, and extracted her legs from the hip-high boots. Once free, the Marine did twenty pull-ups before vaulting over the machine and landing in front of Walden.

  “Don’t keep a girl in suspense, Poet. Spit it out.”

  “The hard drive is missing. Vanished, evaporated, dematerialized,” he blurted out. “Eiko can’t locate the Constabulary computer.”

  “My Striker team paid for that device in blood and pain,” Diosa growled. “And you tell me it’s missing. Explain before I turn this crate around and go back to Command and dismantle the Station.”

  “When it arrived on Command Station, a few communications experts pulled enough data to confirm it was from an Empress warship,” recounted Walden. “The Navy used that information to mobilize the fleet and set up the blockade. But Intelligence wanted a full computer forensic investigation. The hard drive got labeled and sent to a loading dock to be shipped to a facility on Uno. It never reached the lab.”

  “Did it even leave the Station?” demanded Warlock.

  “Eiko has people questioning the dock personnel,” replied Walden. “If properly tagged any box will be shipped off a Station. There’s not a lot of storage area near loading docks. I assume it was lost in transit after it reached the spaceport. And I have a solid reason to believe that.”

  “Who was the shipper hired to move it?” asked Diosa.

  “As you’ve already guessed, Uno Global Transporters was hired to move the crate,” Walden confirmed her suspicion. “All the searching in the Realm won’t find that hard drive.”

  “But it does tell us one thing,” Diosa stated. “They have a traitor on Command Station.”

  “Eiko said as much,” Walden informed her. “He asked if you still wanted to continue the mission?”

  “Yes. We’re the only agents away from the military and the agency’s bureaucracy. And it seems the only ones who believe Admiral Nesta is the key,” Diosa explained. “Hopefully, we’ll follow the leads from him back to the spy on the Command Station, the UGT leader on Uno and, maybe, to other nests of vipers.”

  “I’ll message Eiko and get us underway,” Walden told her. “I was hoping that would be your decision.”

  “Did you really have any doubt?”

  “Most agents would pack it in and go home,” Walden explained. “Set up an investigation and spend the next four months interviewing people.”

  “But you said it before,” Diosa responded by pointing at the bulkheads. “We are home. Go crank it up.”

  “You don’t crank an ion motor…,” he stopped and looked at the smile on Diosa’s face.

  Walden raced out of the gym and Diosa walked to another piece of equipment. Although finished with her scheduled workout, the Striker thought better while exercising. And she had a lot to ponder as a crazy plan began to form in her imagination. On the first rep, the logical segment of her brain warned against it. But the primitive chunk of grey matter screamed in joy and by the second rep, Warlock was visualizing the steps necessary to complete the task.

  She heard the ion cannons rattling rather than felt it when The Talon smoothly evolved to external drive.

  ***

  Deep in the Dos sector, Walden adjusted the heading and aimed The Talon at their next turning point. On the deck, Diosa sat at the navigation station flipping through screens displaying the area of space along the blockade.

  “I’ve contacted Naval Movement Command and received permission to enter the fleet area,” Poet announced as he upped power to the internal drive. When she didn’t react, he proclaimed. “Good news, I’ve located a few extra cans. We’ll have clam chowder for dinner.”

  “That’s fine,” she said without looking away from the monitor.

  “Poet to Warlock. Come in Warlock,” he teased. “Whatever you’re thinking, I have the feeling I’m not going to like it. Care to share?”

  “What? Oh, not yet,” she told him. “I’m just surveying our area of operation.”

  “I thought we were going to exam scanning records,” Walden said. “Now we have an AOR?”

  Before Diosa had a chance to reply, the collision alarm clanged and Walden’s monitor snapped to a view of nearby space.

  “A Navy patrol boat just evolved off our port side,” the pilot informed Diosa.

  “Civilian vessel Talon, drop to cruising power and prepare to be boarded,” a voice on the overhead speakers ordered. “Do not attempt to evade or to eject any items.”

  “This is Walden Geboren, pilot of The Talon, we will comply,” Poet radioed. Then he glanced down from the raised captain’s chair. “Pretty dramatic. All they had to do was call and I’d have backed down and waited.”

  “Is this normal?” inquired Diosa. “As a Marine, I’m used to riding in the back with the luggage.”

  “Master of Transit handed us off to Movement Command so our origin and flight path are verified,” Walden informed her. “I have no idea why we’re being detained and boarded.”

  They waited silently in the corridor until the sound of an airlock clicked on the hull. Walden extended a pressure sensor and once the tube had atmosphere, he triggered The Talon’s hatch.

  Two combat Marines bounced down the flimsy airlock and sprang from the fabric a meter short of the port. They flew into The Talon, landed, and separated. Following the advance team, four more made the leap.

  “Galactic Council Marine Corps, do not move, sir, ma’am,” one ordered. “Is there anyone else on board?”

  While two forty-five over and under rifles pointed at Diosa and Walden, the other Marines moved fore and aft in pairs.

  “No. We’re the only ones on board,” Diosa replied.

  “Weapons,” one reported from an aft compartment.

  He had found the weapons locker with Diosa’s arsenal.

  “Clear,” came from the bridge.

  Diosa stood waiting for the next words.

  “Weapons system,” the Marine who located the gunship announced.

  “Sir, ma’am, please turn around and place your hands behind your backs,” the Marine in front of them instructed.

  After they were bound and spun around to face the hatch, the other Marine spoke into his mic, “All clear, Commander.”

  “What’s going on?” Walden whispered.

  “Two Sergeants and four Corporals,” Diosa mumbled. “They’re military police, not part of a rifle squad.”

  “No talking,” barked one of the Sergeants.

  The Navy Commander attempted to march through the airlock. His effort at a grand entrance failed as the material flexed and rebounded under his rigid gait. A duck at the last second prevented his head from slamming into the top of the hatch. Awkwardly, he reached the deck, stooped over and off balance.

  “Your Marine escorts can show you how to cross an airlock,” Diosa offered.

  The officer ignored her and ordered the Marines, “Take them to the galley.”

  Diosa and Walden’s arms were grabbed and lifted to an uncomfortable angle. The harsh control served a dual purpose. It prevented the detainees from turning on the military policemen, and allowed the Marines to steer them down the ship’s corridor.

  “Sit them down,” the commander directed. He indicated the chairs on the opposite side of the table. “Then leave us alone.”

  Diosa and Walden were shoved into the plastic chairs and the Marines guided their arms over the chairbacks. As before, the arms zip-tied behind the detainees’ backs worked to limit their movement. When the last Marine left the galley and shut the door, Diosa let out a moan.

  “Are you in pain, discomfort, require luxation,” Walden asked.

  “My eye,” pleaded Diosa. “I need the goggle removed from over my eye.”

  The Navy Commander reached across the table, lifted it, and rested the goggle on her forehead. He didn’t say anything but locked Diosa and Walden with an intimidating stare. While he peered at them, Diosa read his ammonia, carbon dioxide, and blood pressure.

  No one spoke for an uncomfortably long time. Fin
ally, the naval officer broke the silence.

  “You people are in deep trouble,” he stated. “I may be able to help you. But you have to come clean with me. Let’s start with your names.”

  “How are we in trouble?” asked Walden.

  “You have military grade weapons including a sniper rifle,” the commander replied. “Plus, an armed gunship. Just what did you plan to do with all the munitions?”

  Walden inhaled preparing to answer when Diosa interrupted.

  “Why does Naval Intelligence care about us?” she inquired.

  The commander’s blood pressure shot up. Ammonia and carbon dioxide rolled off him.

  “I’m a fleet officer and I’m asking the questions,” he lied.

  “No sir. Fleet officers do not travel with military police escorts. And they know how to traverse an airlock,” Diosa responded. “If you wanted to arrest us and impound The Talon, you would have done it.”

  “I can have you taken off this ship in irons, right now,” threatened the officer.

  While his words were forceful, his vitals spiked again. The commander had no more authority than the military police under him. Although the Marines were a formidable force, their range was limited. But Walden lacked the knowledge provided by a bionic eye and his leg jerked displaying his nervousness.

  “What do you want, commander?” questioned Diosa. She twisted and shifted in her chair as if distressed or trying to turn and face her pilot.

  “Just what I said before,” the officer stated. “Who are you people and what are you doing?”

  “At this point we’re supposed to break down, open our hearts to you, and save ourselves,” Diosa exclaimed. Then she held out her arms, flexed her shoulders, and clasped her hands together in front of her chest. “Commander, what are you doing here?”

  Before he could answer, Diosa slipped two fingers under the sleeve of her shirt and drew out a short knife. Without looking, she swiped behind Walden’s back and severed his ties.

  “There are Marines right outside the door,” the officer warned.

  “My name is Diosa Alberich. GCMC, Master Sergeant retired, formerly of Striker Command,” Diosa responded. “If this was a hostile environment, you’d be dead before they entered my kill zone.”