Inherited War 1: Retribution (7 page)

BOOK: Inherited War 1: Retribution
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They must have gassed them again because
Cole woke up with that same odd taste in his mouth.  He saw food and a set of second skin sitting by the door.  He got up and moved to the door.  He picked up the skin first and walked it back to Sky.  He gently shook her awake holding the skin over her torso.  “They knocked us out again and left this at the door.  There is also food when you’re ready.  I’ll leave it here, speak up if you need help.”

“Thank you
, I think I can manage Cole.  But please bring over the food, I don’t think I can walk yet.”  She replied.  He turned and went to get the food.  He kept his back to her for a few moments until he heard her say, “I am clothed again Cole, you can turn around.”  He did so and walked her bowl of broth over to her.  She took it and looked up at him.  “Thank you very much” she said before drinking the broth down in one long swallow. 

Cole
walked over and got his food, “Here take mine, I’m not hungry and I think you need it more than me.” 

She started to tear up at that.  “What did I do to deserve you
Cole.  I have brought you nothing but pain and misery for your whole life.  Yet you treat me this good.  I don’t deserve your kindness.”  The last was a whisper.

Cole
gently put his fingers under her chin and lifted her face to meet his.  “I forgave you for all of that the moment I found out you were as much a prisoner as I was.  I value you as my only friend here, or anywhere for that matter, and feel indebted to you for keeping me alive since before I was born.  So, as far as I’m concerned I still owe you and this went a little ways towards paying you back.”  He backed away and sat down on the bench.  “Now eat up and get your strength back because I have a feeling we are going to need each other before too long, to get out of this mess.”

She thanked him again then started eating his food for the day.  He was hungry but he had gone longer without food before and he had learned to tune the feeling out a long time ago.  “If you ever feel like talking about it
, I will always have the time to listen.  When you are ready.”  She looked at him for a moment before digging back into her food.  He leaned back against the bulkhead and slowly closed his eyes.  He needed some real sleep not this knock-out drug crap.  It was messing with his head and had his internal clock all out of whack.  He drifted off to sleep to the sounds of Sky eating her food and found he had finally relaxed after being tense for the last two days.  He slept soundly for the next few hours and he was glad for it.

11

 

 

 

 

 

Feng stared at the readouts, looking at them but not really seeing them.  He had worked it every way he could.  He looked at it from all angles.  The Admiral was going to make sure he never came back from Archon.  He wasn’t sure how it would happen, but he was sure the supply run was just an excuse to get rid of him.  The Admiral had someone there who would take him out at some point in the trip.  This had been his mission from the start and for the Admiral to be out here now sending him on a glorified supply run meant that either he had outlived his usefulness, or more likely, he had become too self sufficient. He had to assume it was the latter, especially since he had broken into the Admiral’s files.

To say he was upset was an understatement.  He was mad enough to
contemplate going on a rampage here and now taking whomever he could along with him.  He fought that urge down fast.  This wasn’t about dying, it was about living, and if the Admiral had taught him anything, the goal was always survival.  He reached out and hit the comm switch.  “Get me the tech team leader, ASAP.”  He said to the officer of the watch.  He shrugged and turned back to the readouts in front of him, really looking this time.  To do what the Admiral had asked was a difficult proposition.  It wasn’t easy to remake a starship.  The only easy part was the actual markings on the ship.  Those only had to be painted over or scraped off and replaced with whatever new ones you wanted.  Then create files, maintenance logs and the other minutiae that got created by ships as they were built, flown and repaired.  The other parts were not so easy.  First of all you had to reprogram the transponder beacon.  The transponder was the light speed equivalent of a handshake.  When traveling to a populated system or station, ships came out of grav travel a light hour out from their destination and sent a transponder message towards their intended target.  The message was basic, type of ship, owner, armaments if any, ship number and the last five ports of call. This was difficult, because this was supposed to be impossible to alter in any way.  A skilled technician could however.  It took hours of painstaking work and you had to know the transponder software.  That software was buried deep in the ships computer and heavily encrypted.  Only the harbormaster’s computers in said systems, or stations, were supposed to be able to decode it.  So only someone with experience working on the code or with a harbormaster’s decoding device could even get at it to change it.

Feng had both.  His tech team had been working for a few days now reprogramming and making the ships history believable.  That left the third and most da
ngerous problem to the maintenance guys.  The ship’s engine signature.  Every starship left a very unique trail of protons, ions and gravity disturbances behind it.  To change this you had to make drastic and expensive changes to her engines and gravity collectors.  Certain parts had to be replaced while others could be modified.  The tuning and outputs had to be adjusted also.  Those were the tricky ones.  If they messed up and got the system too far out of tune, or the outputs got too far off alignment, there could be catastrophic failures to the grav collectors or engines.  If the engines were not taking the power from the grav collectors, that energy had to go somewhere.  That somewhere was usually a very brilliant release of energy that atomized everything in the immediate vicinity. He had seen it happen once. He never wanted to see it again, let alone be in the middle of it.  He was using these delicate operations to slow down his departure until he could come up with a way to cheat the death he knew was coming.  The files on board this ship may hold that key and his tech still had the code the AI used to break the Admiral’s files on the other ship.  Why shouldn’t it work on this one?  He would have to be careful about it though, as he was running out of time.  He could get two or three more days out of the refit and testing before he had to depart.  The Admiral was not going to wait forever.   Lost in thought, the chime on his cabin door made him jump in his seat.  He growled under his breath.  He hated this sulking about.  He would rather be at the helm of a starship or on the front lines with a rifle in his hands.  “Come.” He barked.  The door slid open to reveal the tech chief. 

“Good we have much to discuss and accomplish
with little time to do it.  Please sit.”  He absently waived at the only other chair in the room.  “Now tell me,” he said with the beginnings of a grin forming on his face,  “What I want to hear, and we both may just live to see the end of this.

The tech assured him that it was
possible, if the Admiral used the same security on all his computer systems he should be able to decrypt the files on board the yacht without the AI’s help.  On the other hand if they were a different set of protocols he would most likely need more time than was allotted or the AI’s help again.  The Captain told him to do his best and inform him one way or the other how it went.  He dismissed the tech but when he got to the door he stopped and turned saying.  “Captain I feel I should inform you of something I stumbled upon last night doing my security clean ups.  I wouldn’t mention it but it was quite disturbing.  In light of what I’m about to do for you… us, I felt I should link certain footage taken in your old quarters the other day by the security sentry system you had installed post construction.  I don’t believe the Admiral knew it was there recording the goings on in your cabin.  Let me get to my terminal and I’ll forward it to your private address.”  He shuddered then turned and walked out.  A few minutes later the file was safely in his mail and he was looking at it intently.  He had heard rumors about the Admiral but so far they had all been just that, rumors.  (He didn’t want to see this, he thought, but he knew that he had to see it for himself.)  He selected the play function and sat back to watch as Doctor Sky was brought into his old cabin and left alone with the Admiral.  He thought he knew what was coming next but was totally unprepared for what he saw.

Two days later Feng was back in his new cabin in front of his computer again. 
Once again in shock at the fact that he didn’t know the Admiral at all.  He had worked for the Admiral for close to a century and had never suspected the depths of the being’s depravity.  He had hundreds of files stored to his personal system just like the one he saw with Dr. Sky.  He also found the protocol that the Admiral was going to use to execute him.  Knowing what was supposed to happen on Archones he could avoid that bit of unpleasantness.  Should he truly even leave now was the question.  He had seen into the Admiral’s soul and found it wanting, even in his eyes.  Could Feng actually leave here knowing that the Admiral may soon possess one of the most, if not most powerful fleets in the galaxy?  He didn’t know the answer to that right now and could barely imagine what the Admiral would do with the ships once he had them.  Visions of worlds that looked like the Sector 1 capitol planet danced across his mind.  No he couldn’t do it even if it cost him his life and everyone’s life on board.  He couldn’t allow the Admiral the chance to become that particular monster.  He knew how he could do it to, it would take timing and cunning the Admiral didn’t know Feng possessed.  He keyed his comm, “Admiral I would like a chance to speak to you in person before we go, if you please.” 

A moment later he got his answer and levered himself to his feet.  He exited the yacht and made haste for his old cabin.  He worked out the details for his plan as he walked.  It may work if he could just get the timing right.  He smiled as he hit the call button on his old cabin door.  The
Admiral would never see it coming.

A few hours later Feng had his crew on board the yacht ready to go.  His talk with the
Admiral had gone well and the Admiral had supplied Feng with the code phrase that would have gotten him killed had he actually gone to Archon.  He had said good bye to the Admiral and certain key crew members then summoned his skeleton crew to the yacht.  He had left them their orders on the flight path from here to Archon, then left to go do final inspections and enjoy the comforts of his new cabin.  Ten minutes later the ship detached from its larger sister ship and made its turns to orientate for the grav jump.  Everything powered up just fine and she made a smooth translation into grav powered travel.  At a distance of one light hour, she reentered normal space and detonated in a brilliant ball of plasma.  By the time the light flash was visible to the Admirals ship, she had already started her power up to make the move in system.  She never slowed down or stopped.

12

 

 

 

 

 

It had been a few days since Cole had talked to Sky.  She mostly just lay on the bed in the fetal position.  She cried a lot as well.  She wouldn’t let Cole anywhere near her.  Cole hated seeing her like this, hated it.  He had helped heal her physical wounds but he couldn’t do a damn thing about the mental ones.  He was impotent to do a damn thing about what she was going though and whenever he tried to help, she just whimpered and clutched tighter to her legs.  So he just sat there doing nothing and feeling like an idiot for it.  He had to try again.  “Sky please you’ve got to talk to me, please.” He whispered to her from a few feet away.  He had hunkered down near her head but not to close.  “You have to scream or rage or hit something or this is going to destroy you.  It may be selfish of me but we need each other to get out of this so please if there is anything I can do to help, let me know.”  He watched her for some kind of response.  Nothing.  Damn it he needed her up and thinking and it would do her no good to go completely catatonic on him.  He hated himself for thinking this but maybe if reason and compassion were not doing the trick, anger would.  He steeled himself for what was the most painful thing he had ever done.  “Fine.”  He said in a normal voice as he stood up to walk away.  “Give up on me, why don’t you? Everyone else has or did.  You people bring me to this shithole, tell me next to nothing, threaten me, lock me up and experiment on me, and for what?  So some space asshole can get a bigger ship with all the bells and whistles.  Great for you guys, while Cole gets the shaft again.  I thought we were friends Sky.  I thought we had some kind of bond.  I guess I was wrong.  Well you just lay there and flake out on me while I try to get us out of here.  Useless, that is what you are.” 

He never heard her move.  She took him down with a tackle a linebacker would be proud of.  He found out
, to his dismay, that she was stronger than she looked and had some damn sharp claws.  She screamed and pummeled him for what felt like an eternity but was only a few minutes.  She finally ran out of strength and collapsed onto him sobbing and cursing him in a variety of languages.  She looked at him in the eyes and said.  “You are a bastard Cole.” 

“That may be
, but I got you up and talking to me, and that’s a vast improvement from about ten minutes ago.  I am very sorry for what I said.  I need you up and dealing with what happened. I know it sucks and we can wish it never happened, but it did and we can’t change that.  I‘m not saying ignore it or it wasn’t that bad, but you can’t collapse in on yourself.  We need each other fully functioning to get out of this.  You wouldn’t talk to me or respond in any way, so I did what I am obviously good at, get you mad enough to forget for a moment.  So I am sorry from the bottom of my heart but you were slipping away from me and it was a last ditch effort.”  He took a slow breath and wrapped his arms around her and held on tight while she cried some more.  She let out a big sigh after a few moments and with Cole’s help, got to her feet.  “If you hate me for what I said I understand and I will leave you alone from now on, if you want me to.”

She shook her head in the negative.  “
Cole, once again I thank you for saving me.  You were right, I was slipping away from both of us.  I can’t…can’t talk about it yet. All I could see was his face and what he did to me.  I wanted to run as far and fast as I could.  But there was nowhere to go, so I went inside myself. You brought me back.  Is there anything to eat?”  She asked.

“Yea I saved your food for you as best I could.” 
Responded Cole.  “Here you go.  Enjoy.” He said with a grin.  “Nothing much has changed lately, so I have no clue what’s going on, but we’ve got to be pretty close to the end game.  So rest up and regain your strength.  Remember I care about you so if you need anything at all just ask, okay.”  He sat down and leaned back against the bulkhead.  “Besides it’s not like you have anyone else to talk to in here.”

She snorted some of her dinner out of her nose at that.  “You truly are a bastard aren’t you Cole?”

“You know it and so will the
Admiral soon enough.”  They both slipped into a sullen silence and waited.  That seemed like the only thing he ever did lately, was wait.  Well, Cole was a patient boy and he was an expert at hurry up and wait.  He didn’t have long though, because in the next few hours things were about to get hectic and Cole would be smack dab in the middle of it.  That is where he liked to be these days, where the action was.

BOOK: Inherited War 1: Retribution
9.86Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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