Veil of Shadows (Book 2 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (26 page)

Chapter Twenty-Seven

“We need to take the ship back,” Kelsey said. Lieutenant Reese, Talbot, and she had commandeered the rear of the flight deck to discuss their situation. “We also need to contact the people they left on the shipyards. If we can.” She consulted her implants. “They both just passed around the planet and out of communications range. We’ll have to wait a half an hour for the damaged one to come back into range. Another half hour for the other.”

Reese shook his head. “Taking the ship back is easier said than done. They know exactly where we are and they can blast us if we try to reach orbit. I don’t want to say this is impossible, but the odds of us being killed without getting near the ship approach certainty.”

Kelsey rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Dammit. There can’t possibly be that many of them on the ship. Surely, the Pentagarans did some kind of background check on these people. How can they possibly take over the entire ship?”

“With only a few people to carry out the attack, I’d wager they used the ship’s anti-boarding system to disable the crew. If the mutineers had enough access, they could trigger it all over the ship. They probably left a few compartments alone so that their people would remain conscious.”

She nodded. “And they probably used that same access to reactivate whatever cutout we had installed for the computer. There is no way
Courageous
would allow this to happen. They used our own precautions to hang us. But they made one mistake. They let the Captain back on board.”

Reese frowned slightly. “While I have the highest respect for Captain Mertz, exactly how does that count as a mistake?”

She smiled. “Because I’m not the only member of our crew with implants.”

The marine’s eyes widened. “Seriously? When did that happen? Someone would’ve noticed him spending a couple of days in the medical center. Are you sure?”

“I’m positive. He only has the cranial implants and medical nanites, so his recovery time was short. I found out at breakfast today. Having him on board the ship is even better than having me there. He knows a lot more about the ship’s systems than I do, and if anyone can figure out how to break free of whatever prison they have him in, it’s Jared.”

Reese paced across the flight deck. “That might be enough. Hell, it’s going to have to be enough.”

Talbot looked up from the console he was sitting at. “LT? We have another problem. I rerouted the drones toward the new search area and I’m picking up ground movement on one of them. Take a look.”

Lieutenant Reese walked over and stared past Talbot. Kelsey linked directly into the drone’s feed and immediately saw what the Senior Sergeant meant. Dozens of savage looking humans loping through the forest. As the drone continued over the area, she saw that it was more like hundreds. Perhaps thousands. The Pale Ones were on the move.

“Where are those things going?” Reese asked.

“Not towards us, if that’s what you’re asking,” Talbot said. “They’re headed in the general direction of the survivors’ facility. They probably detected our landing. The drone estimates there are thousands of the things on the move. I’ll wager there are a lot more of them on the move from other locations.”

“Wonderful,” Kelsey muttered. “Bell’s people are vulnerable. The Pale Ones can just keep throwing bodies at them until they get in. We need to locate that AI. It sent them on this mission. It can stop them. We just have to capture it intact. Lieutenant Reese, that mission objective just became mandatory.”

The next hour went by with excruciating slowness. The damaged shipyard didn’t respond to their signals. Reese had sent one of the drones to send a short-range transmission to Bell and his people. Maybe their defenses were better than the Terrans expected.

The team on the intact shipyard responded, though. They confirmed Kelsey’s worst fears.
Courageous
was on the move. They’d left orbit and were heading for the flip point back to Pentagar. Since the ship was faster than the pinnaces, there was no way they could retake her. It was all up to Jared. She’d just have to focus on her own problems and trust him to do his part.

Shortly after that, a jammer in orbit went active and blocked them from communicating with anyone.

Finally, Talbot spoke up. “I might have found something.”

Kelsey again accessed the drone’s signal directly. He was watching the feed from over a large lake.

Talbot tapped his screen. “There’s a small facility on the shore. Those look like transmitters on the roof. Big ones. Capable of reaching orbit.”

The facility he was talking about was more of a small building. One story tall and poorly constructed. Functional without a hint of grace. Definitely a Pale Ones construct. It couldn’t possibly have room for a major computer system, though. There wasn’t room for even the power supply one would require.

She shook her head. “It’s too small. Admittedly, I have no idea why it’s out here, but it can’t have all the equipment that they need.”

“See those cables running into the water? I think the computers and power supplies are under water. It would shield their emissions signature from prying eyes. The transmitters look like they’re tight beam. Unless someone was right on top of them, no one would ever know they were there.”

“But why would they need to be coy? They own this planet and they’ve been in control for five hundred years.”

“Why keep sending the same size fleet to attack Pentagar? They only just completed a second shipyard. They could’ve built one a lot faster if they’d wanted to. We’re not really in a position to guess why they do anything. Some things just don’t make sense. They may never make sense to us.”

Reese straightened. “We’re not seeing anything else and time is running out. We need to act if we want to save the people in that facility. If we’re right about this being the place, there’ll be defenses that we can’t see. We need to take out the underwater facility and then we come back to secure the transmitter.”

Kelsey frowned. “What use is the transmitter going to be? They aren’t going to be calling for help. We’ve taken over this entire system.”

The marine gave her a serious look. “Perhaps, but there might be a record of everything it has sent. Are there regular visits from other systems? I seriously doubt this is the only place where the rebellion left an AI to run things.”

“True.” She allowed herself to sigh. “I hope this works.”

“Me, too. If you’ll excuse me, Princess, I have an attack to plan. You and Talbot can coordinate on how you’ll follow us in. Remember, he goes in first.”

Kelsey stuck her tongue out at his back when he walked away. “That man makes me tired.”

“And you give him grey hair. Come on, Princess. We both know how this plays out. We attack the base and you do something that makes me want to scream. Then you figure out a way to make the LT want to space you. And in the end, you do what you want to anyway.”

“It doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way. Thanks.”

He shook his head and followed Reese.

Kelsey took control of the drone overlooking the lake. She brought it around for a closer look at the communications building. Not seeing any obvious weaponry on the roof, she dropped the drone down for a direct look at the building. Yes, that would announce their presence, but if the AI didn’t know they were already there from the drones buzzing around, then it was even stupider than she’d imagined.

She didn’t know much about communications hardware, but the transmitters and their associated hardware looked old. The weather had obviously taken a toll on them and there were signs of repairs. That meant that this facility wasn’t brand-new. It had been here a while. In her mind, that was actually good news. Why build a decoy set up when there was absolutely no need to have one? Then again, why keep attacking a planet the same way for five hundred years?

Digging down in the scanner controls for the drone, she found some filters. One of them looked like a high sensitivity IR scanner. If there were people in that building, they’d show up in IR as long as they weren’t in a shielded room. She changed the settings and scanned the building again. No sign of any people, but there were scattered heat sources. Probably equipment. Another sign the Pale Ones hadn’t abandoned the facility.

She took the drone higher and did an IR scan of the forest. There were animals, including some that were large enough to be human, but none was the right shape when she checked them out in more detail. A spot check of a few showed they were large herbivores. Considering the personalities of the Pale Ones, any critter in its right mind would head far away if the savages were present.

Kelsey opened a channel to Reese and Talbot. “I did an IR scan of the building. There doesn’t seem to be any Pale Ones inside. Ditto an IR scan of the forest.”

The marine officer switched to the general channel. “Listen up. We’ll be making an assault in twenty minutes. Bring everything we need to breach and storm an underwater facility. The Pale Ones likely have it heavily guarded. We’re on a schedule, people. If we don’t take the AI down quickly, the last survivors on this planet die. Let’s show this bastard what it means to have Imperial Marines dropping on his ass.”

She couldn’t help smiling at their cheers. The AI wouldn’t know what hit it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

An hour later, the command staff was back in the kitchen with Doctor Leonard in tow. Jared had cajoled the cameras into recording the last hour for use during their escape. If he could get the cameras to play the recorded time back and no one noticed the jump from present to past, they might be able to sneak right out from under the noses of their captors.

“Doctor Stone,” he said, “let’s start off with the condition of our people.”

The Fleet doctor smiled a little. “Good news on that front. Everyone has recovered from the effects of the stunners with little more than a headache. We have a few secondary injuries from falls, but nothing worse than a fractured wrist. We got off very lucky.”

He turned his attention to his XO. “Charlie, what about a head count? How many people do we have unaccounted for?”

Graves grimaced. “A few more than I’d like, but less than it could have been. Without access to the personnel files, I might be off by as many as five people. Some of the Pentagarans worked in multiple departments and memories are a little shaky right now. Worst case puts the enemy at about just over four dozen people.”

“That’s not enough people to effectively run this ship, especially with some tasked to guard us. How many marines do we think?” He addressed that last to Sergeant Coulter.

The marine noncom looked as though he’d bitten something sour. “More than a dozen. Not much more, but that’s enough. They’ll be in modern combat armor and armed to the teeth. Any direct attack on them without similar equipment would be suicide.”

Graves nodded his agreement. “And there are enough people missing to operate the ship. Possibly even enough to fire the weapons. If they get back to Pentagar and fool them long enough to get reinforcements aboard, this ship could destroy the Pentagaran combat fleet. We need to keep them on this side of the flip point.”

Jared shifted his attention to the Chief Engineer. “Baxter?”

The man grinned. “Get me into engineering and they won’t be able to even see where they’re walking, much less control this ship. And that brings us back to getting out of this makeshift prison. What secret plan do you have up your sleeve, Captain?”

Jared shared a conspiratorial glance with Stone and Graves. “Let’s just say that Princess Kelsey isn’t the only one able to tap into
Courageous’
systems. As Doctor Stone, Commander Graves, and Doctor Leonard already know, I had a Fleet officer’s implants installed last night.”

Coulter looked stunned, but Baxter’s grin took on a savage tinge. “That would do it. Can you reprogram the remotes?”

“I believe so. Within reason, anyway. I sent a test command to them earlier. It will probably take them a few minutes to cut a hole large enough for us to escape through, though. That’s part of their programming for damage control. Probably to help get people out of dangerous areas.”

Baxter nodded. “That makes sense. What about using them for other tasks? Like shutting off control to the bridge or activating the anti-boarding defenses? We could stop the mutineers right now.”

Leonard cleared his throat. “I’m afraid that raises several issues, Commander. The remotes have a certain set of approved actions. To override those would take access to the main computer. If we had that, we wouldn’t need to reprogram them. I looked at their basic programming a few weeks ago. I’d imagine this was to keep them from being turned against the ship.”

“Besides,” Jared added, “if I started sending them all over the ship, someone in engineering might notice. I can isolate this group. If we use them sparingly, they might make a world of difference when we need them.”

“What about weapons?” Coulter asked. “The armory is probably under guard. A couple of marines would keep us from getting weapons. And that means the enemy is just about invulnerable.”

“I might be able to help out with that,” Doctor Leonard said. “We have a number of old Empire weapons in the labs. We were restoring them for use by your people. We’ve also been making some ammunition. I believe we could probably arm a number of people. Perhaps a dozen, if you count the pistols we’ve restored.”

“Well, we’ll just have to make do. How many people do you think we could sneak off without the bad guys noticing?”

“A lot,” Jared said with a smile. “I’ve been recording the feed from the cameras and I’ll start playing it back just before we head out. I’ll want you to go back out and make the rounds again. Select the people you need and brief them. In half an hour, I’ll get the remotes to work and call you in.

“The highest priority is disabling the anti-boarding defenses. We can’t count on being able to use them, so I want to make them unavailable to the enemy. How can we best do that, Dennis?”