Birthright: Battle for the Confederation- Crusade Read online

  “How do we do that?” Captain Elco asked bluntly. At this, Roxis blushed just a bit. “That, I’m not sure of, Captain.”

  “He got us this far,” Halley spoke up. “He shouldn’t have to think of everything. Covert looting and pillaging is my territory; I’ll think up something.”

  “What do we know about Anderson?” asked Elco.

  “Human planet, colonized by early Confed separatists,” began Roxis, glad to be back in his element again. “They’re very independent, did a decent amount of trade with just about everyone around here. Their solar system has a lot of outer planets and moons; they have a large industry in harvesting those moons for metals and other useful materials. Their production ground to a halt when the Primans took over, but it looks like they might be trying to restart those lines again for their own needs.”

  “We need a way onto the planet, then,” Loren summarized.

  “Maybe we should be watching that planet, then, instead of Gartha,” stated Elco simply.

  As much as Loren hated to admit it, he was right. Gartha wasn’t doing anything for them; it was time to move.

  It took another day to get to Anderson, a day that crept by for Loren. He always put off going to his cabin because he would see a reminder of Cassie and it would cripple him. Here he was, riding all over interstellar space, wasting an entire day now, while she got closer to the end of her own days unless he found a way to help her.

  He stood in his cabin, looking out the viewport at the asteroid mining complex Avenger was tucked into. The Andersons had quite the operation here, he’d give them that. And it was sparking a plan in his head. He watched the huge chunks of moon-rock in their tractor-managed lineups, waiting for the breakers, smelters, and cargo ships to trans-ship everything back to Anderson itself…

  Loren burst onto the bridge and walked as fast as dignity would allow up to Captain Elco’s command station, where the Captain sat going over the never-ending stack of data pads on his workstation.

  “Captain,” Loren began with a gleam in his eye, “I know how we get to Anderson.”

  Elco put down his data pad and looked at Loren. “That would be great. Let’s hear it.”

  Loren leaned over to Elco’s tabletop surface and gestured to the display controls. “May I?” He asked.

  “Go ahead,” Elco replied.

  Loren changed the tabletop display to show the outer reaches of the Anderson system. There were a half dozen mining complexes around the various planetoids and moons, only two of which were operational. Avenger was nestled in the inert complex farthest from the planet, in the space where large container ships parked while waiting for their ore and minerals.

  “We take one of their smaller maintenance ships from this platform here,” he gestured to a maintenance depot with his finger. “We run over to this operational complex over here,” he pointed again. “Then we join the inbound traffic to the surface. From what Ensign Roxis says our people have decoded from comm intercepts and our own intelligence efforts, the Andersons are being forced to run their own operations for the Primans, and there’s not much oversight. The Primans know they aren’t going to sabotage this equipment- it’s practically half their economy right here, so they give them a fairly wide berth. The Andersons, on the other hand, are stalling as best they can, routing ships in circles and wasting time to keep production down. We copy or make our own transponder and ID codes and just join the traffic to the surface. Since we’re human also, we can blend in easily enough. The Primans are watching their space with an eye towards a Confed attack, so they aren’t looking for a few people trying to sneak to the surface of a planet this way. Militarily, it wouldn’t do us any good. That’s why we stand a chance here.”

  “As usual,” Elco replied, “it sounds crazy. But it also sounds like it could work. Go run it by Halley and Ensign Roxis and see what they think.”

  Loren did just that, and Halley came up with another twist. Once on the surface, they’d still need to find a way to approach the Keepers and get to their ship. Based on what they’d observed, the Primans were leaving most of Anderson itself alone other than a handful of cities, including the capital. They had co-opted the spaceport for their own use, but used a respectable amount of local labor for various means. Part of the problem, Halley kept saying, was that the Primans were too nice to the general populace, creating a disconnect between what the average person perceived about them and what the Primans themselves were actually doing up in orbit. Somehow, news of the Primans’ use of the DNA weapon on Toral wasn’t nearly as widespread as it should have been, and there were people who didn’t believe it even when they did get the news.

  The Andersons, therefore, were fairly cooperative with their Priman occupiers and even seemed to have some standing business arrangements; the planet was far from a state of lockdown. Halley suggested that, once on the surface, they try to locate one of the crew of the Keepers ship they needed and offer to sell them some information, probably through a local Fixer similar to Garrett. They’d end up burning the unfortunate person, but if it got them in the same location as one of the Primans who crewed that ship, it was a small price to pay.

  A mere hour later, Loren, Halley, and Web were in the small auxiliary hangar where Loren had dealt with the Primans they’d had aboard the better part of a week ago. All three of them crammed into a tiny inspection pod. They didn’t have much in the way of gear, just a small pack each containing a change of clothes, some concealable lightweight body armor, an SSK, various forms of currency, and a small kit Halley said they’d need later.

  “Commander,” Web asked from his uncomfortable position wedged between the pilot’s seat and the outer bulkhead, “why do we all need to go again? Three’s a bit of a crowd.”

  Loren looked at Web and chuckled. He was no more comfortable, as he was wedged in the same position on the other side of the pilot’s seat, which Halley occupied. “Well, I’m in charge, so I get to go. Halley’s planning this thing, so she goes. You’re sort of expendable, though…” He grinned at Web, who smiled as well.

  “I promise to not use up too much air, Sir.”

  Halley floated the inspection pod out of the small hangar, whose blast door was already closing behind them. She rotated the little ship in place, then hit the thrusters and started moving towards a shuttle dock in the mining complex. They crept past a large grappler ship, used to pluck smaller chunks of rock from their holding spots and send them directly into the huge furnaces that broke them down. They wove deeper into the installation, the place becoming a bit eerie with all the lights off save for a few emergency low powered spotlights which cast large shadows all over the gridwork structures that floated among the facility.

  Finally, they arrived at the shuttle dock. Assuming that life support was non-functional, they had all been wearing their EVA suits, and Halley equalized the maintenance pod by letting the oxygen out as she settled the pod onto the landing pad. They got out slowly, activating their magnetic-assist boots so they wouldn’t float off into space. That would be the worst way ever to start a covert mission- disappear into the dark before they’d even powered up their ride.

  After swapping in a new power cell, Halley powered up the small cargo shuttle, closed the hatch, and brought up life support. After a minute, she took her helmet off, gesturing for Loren and Web to do the same.

  “Well, our ride is good to go,” she said, looking at Loren. She inserted a small memory module in a slot on the instrument panel, transferring the faked ID codes they’d cooked up aboard Avenger.

  “Good luck,” Loren replied soberly.

  Halley lifted the shuttle off the pad and headed towards the active mining complex.

  The shuttle took almost forty-five minutes to get to the other facility. They took for granted the high powered drives and inertial compensators the military put in their vessels, and the ride seemed to stretch on forever. Loren sat in the back, trying to give Web and Halley a semblance of privacy to talk a bit.

 
Finally, they were on the outskirts of the active mining complex. Halley turned up the gain on their comm gear, waiting for a challenge or hail. It took several minutes, but they eventually received a communications request, audio and video. Loren and Web stayed out of the camera’s field of view and let Halley do what she did best.

  “Shuttle seven one five,” said a middle aged human in a bored but authoritative voice, “Furnace Control here. Where you headed?”

  Halley smiled, and Web knew from experience it was hard to resist when she did that. The traffic controller of this mining platform, which went by the name Furnace, didn’t stand a chance as far as Web figured. “Just checking up on Lightning,” she replied easily. Lightning was another mothballed complex, though it wasn’t the one where Avenger hid.

  “Are you serious?” he replied. His eyes opened up a bit more. “Don’t tell me they want to open up another one?”

  “I don’t have any idea,” she responded. “I just got orders to do a systems check, make sure nothing exploded or floated off. What they do with it, I won’t ever be told.”

  “Yeah, you and me both. Look,” he said, and leaned forward a bit. “I know they treat us ok and all, but they’re not paying us anything like what our resources are worth, so just remember, take it easy and let’s not help them offload too much of our stuff. Hopefully they move on before they suck our operation dry.”

  Halley couldn’t help herself, and looked a bit startled as he spoke. Her quirked eyebrow was probably what gave her away.

  “Come on,” the man replied. “they don’t monitor internal comms at these rigs; they only care that we stay on the profiles they give us. You must be really new, eh?”

  “First solo run, that’s all,” Halley said convincingly. “Just don’t want to get in trouble the first day out. I like being out here and not chained to a building, you know?”

  “I hear ya. You have the return profile, right? The waypoints are colors, starting with ‘blue’ right outside the front door of the complex? I don’t want you to get blown up by a picket because you’re off course.”

  Halley double checked the waypoints available in the database and nodded. “Yup, that’s what’s I’ve got.” She gave a mental sigh of relief that the Andersons hadn’t been forced to rebuild all their in-system waypoints as a security precaution. Come to think of it, she needed to suggest that to Naval Intelligence as a way to prevent just what she was in fact doing.

  “Alright,” the man said cheerily, “hope we see you out here again sometime.”

  “Take care, thanks for the advice.”

  “You’re so irresistible,” Web piped up from the back of the shuttle. “We can’t help but win this war with you on our side.”

  Several hours later, the shuttle made one last traffic control handoff and finally plummeted into upper reaches of Anderson’s atmosphere. As they streaked down through the lower atmosphere, they were able to see an unfiltered view with their own eyes of Anderson’s surface. It was a beautiful planet which had been carefully laid out by the very first settlers, knowing that the bulk of their economy would be centered in orbit and not on the surface. As a result, all the prime locations were given over to the population and not industry or commercialism.

  Most of the oceanside frontage in the temperate zones had grown into beautiful cities given over to housing and day-to-day living, carefully engineered to blend the buildings with the natural elements as much as possible. All over the planet, the choicest locations were set aside for the people who lived there, while heavier industries, such as those that supported the orbiting mining operations, were more isolated so as not to intrude on the aesthetic as much as possible.

  It was this feature that served as a huge advantage for Loren and his people. The Priman crews that took their ships to the surface for servicing were essentially confined to the industrial areas, which limited their movement. This would allow them to make it easier to find and track down where the Primans on the surface spent their time.

  As soon as they parked their shuttle in an isolated landing spot, they faded into the crowds of the spaceport, having changed into generic work jumpsuits before they got out. They left the spaceport as quickly as possible and broke up, taking their time wandering around before regrouping an hour later at a prearranged public park they’d identified on the way down. The sky was a deep, sunny blue, with only the occasional high wispy cloud.

  Halley was there first, waiting for them on one of many benches that lined the walkways of the scenic park. The trees were in bull bloom; various species combined leaves, flowers, and fruits scented the air with a pleasant and calming bouquet.

  “These guys really know how to do some landscaping, eh?” Web asked Halley as he sat down next to her.

  “They’ve gathered species from a number of different planets,” Halley observed. “They must have had to do some genetic modification on many. Those thornblossoms in particular, since their native environment-”

  “Blah blah blah, can’t we relax and just smell the pretty flowers?” Web interrupted. With that, he whipped his hand around with a flourish and presented her with a handful of bright blue flowers he’d gathered for her. “These aren’t poisonous or anything, right?” he asked. “Because that would be awkward.”

  Halley just smiled. “Not at all. In fact, blue flowers are a personal favorite. Have you read my file?” she joked.

  “You have no file; I checked,” he replied with a wry grin. “You, ma’am, are a mystery.”

  “You love that about me, I can tell,” she said.

  “I love your ability to plan and execute just about any class of covert operation known to civilization,” piped up Loren as he walked up behind them and sat down on the adjacent bench.

  “I saw her first, Commander, just remember that,” Web stated.

  “No worries, Web,” Loren smiled. “So, Halley, have you planned out the entire operation yet?”

  “More than I thought I’d be able to,” she replied. “I fired up my tablet and started nosing around their data networks. Though they do many things well here, they aren’t on the cutting edge when it comes to data encryption. I found out which facilities service Priman ships, plus which locations they’ve converted to barracks for the crews. The average inbound crew, whether it’s from a cruiser or Keeper vessel, spends two and a half days on the surface if their ship is undergoing routine checks. Now that we know where the crews and vessels are, we can look for patterns showing where the crews spend their time. No doubt some of it is spent on base or doing business, but they probably have enough free time to wander around a bit. In occupations since the beginning of time, the local populace, whether voluntarily or otherwise, is always involved in servicing the needs of the occupiers.

  “So,” she continued, “I dropped some worm programs into their data networks. We’ll find out where the Primans go for recreation, plus we’ll check local police reports and discipline notices from the city as well as anything I can dig out of the Priman computers. That will tell us some of the more, interesting, places they go to unwind. That’s where we’ll want to go.”

  “And we find a Fixer from that area as well?” asked Loren.

  “Yes,” replied Halley. “That won’t be hard. I’d say no more than a day and I’ll have all the data mined that I’ll need. Then we just need to find some Keepers.”

  “Just remember, the clock for everyone on Toral is ticking,” warned Loren.

  The evening came quickly, and the Confeds found a middle grade hotel to spend the night in on the edges of the industrial district around the spaceport. Halley left to start scouting places to retain a Fixer, taking a burner comm device with her that they’d only use one time before tossing. She still couldn’t tell Loren and Web about her nanite-enhanced dermal communicator patch, and even if she’d wanted to use it, it worked best on Confederation frequencies. Also, using it on a local comm channel might look to local law enforcement types as though someone had illegal broadcast equipment and
was running a pirate signal. Besides, in order to blend in, the best thing they could do was exactly what everyone else was doing, which more often than not meant walking around fidgeting with the comm devices that were sending signals to the small earbuds currently popular on the planet Anderson. They were relatively confident that nobody knew they were on-planet, but software existed that would compare images from security cameras, commercial image-recognition advertisements, gait detection, traffic patterns, and so much more, and compile it all into a database that might just reveal their movements as suspicious to the wrong planetary or Priman security type. Halley took no chances, and Loren wasn’t going to argue.

  They each headed to a different bar for their evening meals in a bid to rapidly get the lay of the land. Loren ate little, unable to focus on the food and not very hungry to begin with. He spent most of his time staring at the news monitors, both hoping for news of Toral and dreading the possibility at the same time. It was a relief when he’d spent enough time there to be able to finally leave and head back to the hotel. He only had a brief time to himself before the other returned, but he was grateful for the short while he had to put his thoughts straight.

  Web and Halley were both upbeat about their evenings. Halley went straight to her computer and started sifting through the data her viruses were gathering