THE PRIZE: BOOK TWO - RETRIBUTION (40 page)

“I’ll be dammed! It’s a Military coup d'état.”

The Var were planning on taking out the Emperor, replacing him with one of their own. Of course the plan included eliminating Director Markoff, that was a given. The question was, were any of the senior officers or the Admiral in that fleet outside involved. If so, he had his leverage. It took over an hour until his found it and indeed Admiral Danoff and General Nassis were implicated. It was no wonder his nephew had blown his brains out. He knew the game would be over the moment Penn took a look in his safe. Taking the boys, they spent an hour copying and downloading the documents to memory crystals. Penn even videoed a short massage, trying to keep himself from smiling. Once done he ordered up a priority one message drone usually reserved for impending invasion, or outright war, and loaded the data crystals aboard. Unlike most message drones, this one had sufficient fuel to go all the way to Telluria Prime without the need to refuel or stop at every Nav beacon. That meant it could get there in half the time. As he watched the drone leave on its journey, Sergeant Brask entered the room and closed the door behind him. He’d taken off his armor, and surprisingly had come in without his weapon.

“Excuse me, sir, but can I have a word with you?” Penn sensed there was something behind his words, but felt nothing threatening coming from the big Estarian. For a moment, he looked uncertain, and wiped his hand over the cat-like fur on his head that passed for hair in his species.

“A few years ago, I was a Sub-Sergeant serving with a regiment on some bug hole of a planet. Can’t remember the name, but one bug hole planet was much like any other, except for the bugs trying to kill you.” He began. “Anyway, to cut a long story short, me and another Sub-Sergeant and a few troopers were the only ones left after a major dust up with the bugs, big white spider like creatures.” He shivered at the memory. Penn had to suppress a shiver himself, remembering the horse sized white spiders inside the pyramid. He’d always wondered where it had come from. He’d only seen one before that while doing a little job for Markoff. A rather sadistic Var he’d been sent to assassinate had one of the spider creatures in a large habitat. He loved to torment the poor beast from behind thick armored glass, giggling with sadistic delight as he thought up more and more ways to inflict pain on the creature. After the incident, no one could explain how the electronic lock of the door to the enclosure had failed one evening, permitting the spider and the Var to come face to face in his own living room. They said that you could hear him screaming from halfway round the planet. Ellis mentioning that she hated spiders, and the image in his mind when she said it was all the pyramid had needed to create one to scare the living crap out of both of them.

“Between us we managed to get most of the men out and back to base. The upshot was, we both got promoted to full Sergeant.”

“And your point, Sergeant Brask?”

“Well, you see, this hard ass bastard was a real mean puke, but I liked him. His name was Bane Jaxx.” Penn just managed to keep perfectly still, and his expression natural. Bane Jaxx was the Sergeant in the group that had gone into the pyramid with him and Ellis.

“I see, and?”

“Well, him and me didn’t see much of one another for a long while after that, but I’d hear from him now and again. Did well for himself and had the rep of being a ‘by the book’ Marine. Then, one day on leave at home, I ran into him.” The Sergeant smiled slightly. “To say he was a changed person would be putting it mildly, and after he told me a story about how he and a bunch of low life killers went into this big pyramid shaped building and died, I understood why. He couldn’t tell me how he’d died and got back home alive, just that he did.”

“An interesting story, Sergeant.”

“Yes, it is. He also told me to watch out for a yellow-eyed human who scared the living shit out of him, and he wasn’t an easy person to scare. He told me not to mess with him, or a human female Sub-major under any circumstances if I ever had the misfortune to run into him.” Penn wasn’t sure where Brask was going with this and said nothing.

“I took his advice after I saw you.”

“You think I’m this yellow eyed human he was talking about?” Brask smiled in answer. “And if I am him?”

“If you are him, then you aren’t IMPSEC, at least not for real, but you do carry the part off very well.”

“And interesting theory. What else did he tell you?”

“If he was right, then everyone that went into that building died and got transported home… or back to their own planet somehow.” Penn nodded.

“Not all of us Sergeant. Only three walked back out of that building. Myself, Sub-major Ellis and a Gort named Class. The rest died, if you could call it that, in horrible ways and got sent home to their planet of origin.” For some reason, Penn didn’t mind admitting he was the man in question. If necessary, he could kill.

“But that building did something to them, didn’t it?” Brask asked.

“Yes it did, it healed them, mentally and physically and sent them home a little richer.” Brask nodded as if what Penn was saying agreed with what Jaxx had told him. “So what are you going to do with this knowledge, Sergeant?” Brask looked surprised.

“Me? Nothing. I’m going to go along with whatever you do, seeing as how you have made the whole squad rich.”

“Even if I’m an imposter, and a criminal?”

Brask laughed. “We’re all criminals, otherwise we’d be in another line of work.”

“You have a point there, Sergeant, but what if I wanted to do something really, really stupid?”

Brask looked at him and rubbed his rock-like yellow chin. “So far you haven’t done us wrong, and besides, what else would we be doing but busting heads for some snotty nosed Var. At least with you we get well paid for doing it.” He let out a rumbling laugh. Beside which, unlike Var officers who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could see them, you I trust.” He looked a little embarrassed as he made the admission, as if it was something personal, like he wet his bed as a kid, or had a crush on a girl.

“As an old vid star on my planet once said, this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, Brask.”

“So, what’s the plan?”

“Believe it or not, I just sent off that message drone to Director Markoff telling him of a plot to assassinate the Emperor and himself.” Brask frowned.

“I know, I know. That might not be a bad thing, but who’s to say that the next Emperor wouldn’t be worse than the one we have now?”

“Got a point there, and there really is a plan to assassinate his assholeness?”

“Oh yes, I have the proof right here.” Penn handed the Estarian several documents. After a few moments reading he handed them back, his eyebrows raised in question.

“That’s my ‘in’ to taking over yonder fleet.” Brask glanced that the monitor.

“And why would you want to do something like that?”

“I need to go rescue my wife, the Major Ellis, Bane Jaxx spoke of.”

“Okay, I follow so far.”

“The trouble is, I think she’s working her way around Thrakee space along the outer edge of the spiral arm. The only way to get somewhere ahead of her is for us to cut straight across Thrakee space.” Brask looked steadily at him a moment, then blinked and let out a laugh.

“Bane Jaxx said you humans were raving mad. I didn’t believe him until now.”

“Told you I wanted to do something really, really stupid.”

Brask blew his cheeks out and rubbed his chin. “I didn’t think you could pull off taking all those stations, but you did, so why not? I take it you’ve worked out a way for us not to end up dead?”

“Working on that.”

“Good, me and the others would like live long enough to spend some of our back pay and bonuses.”

“First, let’s go take over a fleet.”

“At your command, Colonel.” Brask came to attention and saluted, smiling from ear to ear as he did.

Chapter Twenty

Trading

Ellis yawned and shook her head to wake herself up. Standing watch was boring at the best of times, standing it while in jump space was ten times worse. No one could attack you in jump space and it wasn’t as if you could bump into something in this dimension. However, things could go drastically wrong with the ship, the environmental plant might break down, or the fusion reactor could start acting up or running wild. Remote possibilities to say the least, but the main reason why someone had to stand watch around the clock. Even as the leader of this motley band, she didn’t excuse herself from that duty. It was just her luck to draw the odd shift and after several rotations she’d ended up on the dog watch, the midnight to four a.m. shift that everyone hated like a case of hemorrhoids after eating spicy food with extra hot sauce. So far, her guesses had been right, after the nerve wracking stop for fuel at the rim station, their course took them in slow careful jumps along the edge of the spiral arm, and so far it was paying off. They hadn’t run into anything they couldn’t handle, and they’d managed to find gas giants in the systems they’d jumped to and had scooped sufficient hydrogen to keep them going. Food was becoming something of a concern and she knew they’d have to stop somewhere soon and buy or steal what they wanted, that was assuming they could find a technologically advanced society. Her thought was that any star system with a Nav Buoy no matter who’s it was would have a sufficiently advanced planet nearby. There was an unknown Nav Buoy broadcasting in jump space at the end of this jump, not that they would handshake with it, or try to read the data, as that would alert any nearby Thrakee. The best they could do was use it as a guidepost to the next one, and pick up some supplies. Two watches later, as ordered, the comm unit in her cabin squawked to life to announce they were dropping out of jump space in thirty minutes. That gave her sufficient time to shower, dress and grab a cup of coffee and a muffin, taking both to the bridge with her. One by one, the rest of her bridge crew came in, some with coffee, other yawning their heads off. At least she’d managed to get the girls half trained on most of the systems, not that they were up to naval standards, but she didn’t care. They could get to their stations, load and fire the weapons on command, and usually hit what they aimed at now. The rest she let go by the board, even if they turned up at their post in their panties and bra.

“Dropping out of jump space in, five - four - three - two - one.” Jack Briscoe announced. The main screen flared for a moment before going black and showing normal space.

“Hold position here, Jack. Let’s see what we have before we move.”

“Right, Skipper. Just like last time.” It was his way of saying she should stop bugging him.

“Gwen, what do we have?”

“Interesting. We have two M Class planets, and two Jovian gas giants.”

“That is unusual, anything else?”

“Lots of intersystem traffic but not a lot of interstellar tracks, and those are almost gone so they have to be over an hour old.” Ellis nodded. At least this system had interstellar traffic so the chances were they could land and buy food and supplies.

“Any signature on the drive trails?” Gwen was silent for a moment.

“Sorry, Ellis. I’m just not familiar enough with these sensor systems to be able to tell. I can tell you they aren’t like any I’ve seen before.” That didn’t help much as they could be any one of a dozen star traveling species. “There’s a lot of chatter on one frequency, but I have no idea what they are saying.” Not surprising really seeing as few of the ex-slaves had ever heard any alien languages.

“Put it on the speaker.” Gwen did and Ellis sat there listening for a few moments.

“That’s Sethian and that’s the local traffic control talking to some ships in orbit.” She listened again. “Good, they’re getting instructions for landing, which means we can go down and get what we need.

“You know anything about these aliens?” Gwen asked.

“Not a lot. They are humanoid and look a lot like us, except for their skin and facial structure. Very bony and angular. On the whole they are a nice lot, friendly with a lot of other races out here, including the Thrakee.”

“So, are we out of Thrakee’s space?” Jack asked.

“Don’t know. I have no idea where their planet is in relation to the Tellurian and Thrakee Empires. I do know some Sethians serve in the Tellurian military.”

“How are they going to feel about us… us humans I mean?” Jack turned his seat and looked at her.

“Neutral I would guess. I doubt they know much about us, or what we look like. To them we’d be nothing more than another alien ship landing to take on supplies. Jack, take us in toward that planet.” Ellis pointed to the M class planet closest to the star.

“Ten-four, Skipper.”

“I’ll have to take over the comm and see how good my Sethian is, or if they know another language.”

“Better you than me, I only speak American English and some Spanish.”

In all it still took most of the ship’s day to get into reasonable comm range before Ellis attempted to contact traffic control. After a few fumbling attempts at Sethian, she switched to high Var. She didn’t have any better luck until she switched to low Tellurian. The traffic control person came back strong, requesting their size, required landing space and the purpose for their visit.

“Tellurian Ex-military Corvette. Minimum space and here to resupply.”

“You have clearance to land at the following coordinates. Please follow the landing ILS and maintain a slow speed once you enter atmosphere.”

“Acknowledged traffic control. Will comply.” As she spoke, the coordinates popped up in the Nav system and the ILS, or instrument landing systems appeared on the pilots screen.

“Wow, this should be a piece of cake compared with landing on Earth.” Jack chuckled.

“Just keep it slow and steady, Jack. We don’t want to piss of the locals before we even set foot on the surface.”

“How do I know what’s a safe speed?”

“Watch the other ships ahead of you. Maintain your distance and match their speed of descent.”

“Ten-four, Skipper.”

As they neared the planet, a string of squares appeared on Jack’s screen, with two lines passing through the center in what was called the highway in the sky. One line designated the track he should be on, the other the track he was on. Jack used the maneuvering thrusters to bring the ship up and over to match the center track and kept her there. In all they made two orbits of the planet behind a larger cargo ship in front of them sinking lower into the atmosphere each time. At twenty five thousand feet, they could see the surface below, passing over large expanses of verdant forest and grasslands, interspaced with medium sized cities.