First Infiltration
“I’d like to part friends.”
(Part 1 of the “Cypher Sigma” series)
When Denver got the details, the payoff seemed to be worth the limited risk she perceived at the time. In the months since the Lambda-Shadra massacre, the Trasp hadn’t bothered the major outposts in the Alphas and Betas—not in any significant way. The money was good: thirty thousand L-Cr up front and thirty more on delivery. The transit with the cargo was back to Athos, so they’d get a nice little layover out of the deal too. It was a job that seemed too good to be true, which of course, made Denver suspicious of the scenario, but not so suspicious that she rejected it outright. At least, she thought, she could look into the client’s motivations. Conrad Hostet was currently in Effei, a small outpost in the band of Indies between Hellenia and Trasp space. She figured she could send him a list of queries about the job and take a nearby short-term run in the meantime while they were awaiting the client’s response. She and Kilty ended up moving a few boxes of cargo from Alpha-Origgi to Aer, which Denver suspected were filled with military-grade processors. That was a strange freight for the Aerans. Neutrality, these days, seemed to be taking on a different tone everywhere.
It took about thirty hours to get the client’s response. Conrad Hostet didn’t exactly go through the list of questions one-by-one as Denver had laid them out, rather he responded with a video call explaining the scenario in detail. At first glance, Hostet seemed like an odd little fellow, and he was obviously under serious stress of some kind, looking jittery and vexed. He kept shaking his head as though in disbelief that he was in the current predicament.
“I need someone who can be trusted to pick up Santos on Derin-13 at Alpha-Richard. I’m not sure how your service relayed my request to you in the initial query, but your response repeatedly referred to Santos as ‘the cargo’ and I need to emphasize, Captain Gennaro, that Santos is not cargo. He is a cat, and he is a very special cat, even beyond the fact that he is like family to me. I reached out to you specifically because your small outfit has a stellar reputation for moving specialized and sensitive ... well, cargoes around the Lettered Systems. But Santos requires special treatment, which will all be outlined very clearly in the files the customs officials at Derin-13 are holding where Santos is currently in quarantine.
“I was adamantly opposed to being separated from him in the first place, but the Athosian government is being absolutely absurd with their directives curtailing their own sovereign citizens’ freedom of movement abroad right now. Everyone is paranoid since Lambda-Shadra—jumping at shadows, imagining attacks around every corner. The Trasp are not going to strike Alpha-Richard. It would be madness. But my government is moving all Athosian citizens out of Richard, and I think they chose me to make a public show of my forcible removal to get all the Athosians in the system to self deport on the free transfer vessels. Santos and I were in the media, you see, but I got taken against my wishes before I could retrieve Santos, who hadn’t cleared through the local quarantine—another ridiculous precaution, by the way, this one of the Richard System’s choosing. So now he’s stuck, and I need someone trustworthy to pick up Santos and deliver him back to Athos, where I will travel to meet you immediately once I have confirmation that you’ve retrieved him. It should be the easiest 60,000 you’ve ever made. He quite likes space flight and is a real charmer with the ladies. All you have to do is pick him up at the Derin-13 cylinder and give him a ride home to Shalinor-Zair on Athos. The information you’ll need is embedded in the drive in his carrier. It will be another four days from the time I’m sending this transmission before Santos clears quarantine and can be picked up. I just need your confirmation so I can send word to the customs officials there that I’ve designated you his temporary custodians, and then they’ll release him to your care, Captain Gennaro. I’ll include plenty of background information on myself and Santos in this transmission for you to peruse on your way to Alpha-Richard. I’ll be so grateful when this nightmare is over. No more tours after this. If people want to see Santos, from now on, they’re going to have to come to Athos. I eagerly await your confirmation on the bid.”
Denver hadn’t made up her mind yet, but Conrad Hostet’s message had tipped the scales. She was inclined to accept the bid despite her father’s recent declaration that company ships should avoid the border systems, the larger systems in the Alphas, and several of the Betas known to be recent hot spots for Trasp activity. Part of being a reliable currier service was having a nose for trouble and avoiding it—at least that was their parents’ perspective. Recent risk assessments had put Alpha-Richard into a stronger risk category, but part of growing into her position as a captain, and eventually a company leader, would be to weigh the nuance of those assessments against reality. Hostet was an Athosian private citizen who wanted them to pick up a cat. They’d be traveling in a private ship registered in the Lettered Systems with no obvious military use or tactical value. And Alpha-Richard had never been hit by the Trasp or the Etterans in any meaningful way. It was a big system. The Richards kept to their neutrality unfailingly. Any strike on them would come with ugly optics from across the Letters, the Indies, and back in Dreeson’s system.
“But the Athosians are evacuating their people,” Kilty said when Denver asked her sister for her thoughts on picking up the run. “It’s good money, sure. And, yeah, the odds are certainly against us running into major trouble. But things have been weird, and far be it from me to think I know better than the Athosian intelligence services. I doubt they make a decision like evacuating millions of their citizens haphazardly, Denver.”
“Sixty thousand to run a cat back to Athos, Kilty. That’s what’s on the table, versus the Athosian abundance of caution.”
“Sounds simple when you say it.”
“It is that simple.”
“What’s Dad going to say about it, do you think?”
Denver shrugged. “I don’t know what he’ll say. I imagine he’ll say it’s a bigger risk than it’s worth.”
“Not if it works out. Sixty-K is sixty-K. Plus, it’s not like we have to turn around right away. We could wait for the right bid to turn around and come back. It wouldn’t be far-fetched to think we’d get the highest rate out of Ithaca or Moses-Mesui, probably after spending a couple days in each port.”
“It’s a job, not a vacation, Kilty.”
“Some jobs do have perks, though. What do they call them? Fringe benefits? Something like that.”
Denver couldn’t help but grin. Kilty could say things like that now. She couldn’t, though, not as the captain. But it didn’t mean she couldn’t quietly think them. Plus, she’d never seen a cat before. Not in person. She already knew what she was going to do. They didn’t have time to sit around or to take another job while they awaited permission, so the message Denver sent to the home office wasn’t asking for permission, more explaining her reasoning and letting them know the change in their itinerary. Whatever it turned out to be, Denver was prepared for the fallout. She recorded her message, sent it, and then she sent confirmation to Conrad Hostet. Sure. They’d rescue his cat from the quarantine ward at Alpha-Richard. It might even prove to be a fun time. Fringe benefits, just like Kilty had said.
There was a ping waiting for Denver by the time they jumped into Alpha-Richard. It was their father replying to her message informing him of her decision to take Conrad Hostet’s cat-transporting job. Kilty was with her on the flight deck, anticipating the call, as their parents always addressed both daughters when they reached out, whether it was for business or just keeping in touch while the girls were out for any stretch of time.
“Hey, girls, it’s your father,” he declared, as though their eyes couldn’t tell them as much instantly. “Got your message, Captain. A serious call. I can’t say I agree, but I put you in the big chair for a reason, Denver, and I am not out in the field at the moment. My directive was based on local and Letters-wide threat assessments. As a company, we can’t afford to gamble. But, Denver, you mentioned the safety of the ship as though I care about the ship, and sure, we care about the ship because the fleet is the business, but the family is the real business. I’d give up every ship we own and every other material possession to keep both my girls safe. Remember that. I want you two girls to come home safe above all else. You’ve made your call. Don’t be afraid to pull the plug if you change your mind and realize it was a bad one. The information you have can change. I’ll respect that as much as I respect your decision to take the run in the first place. And don’t you be afraid to tell your big sister what’s what if need be, Kilty. Be careful and come home soon, both of you. Don’t hang around there a minute longer than necessary. Love you both.”
“Rousing note of support, Captain,” Kilty joked.
Denver nearly winced at the comment.
“Well, we knew he wouldn’t be thrilled, right?” Kilty asked. “At least he didn’t call us back in, as though you would go if he did.”
“I might,” Denver replied. “It would depend on what he said and what was happening here. I will turn us around if things get squirrely out here.”
Kilty looked out the front screen and shrugged. “Looks pretty normal to me.”
“Speaking of which, we should get in touch with the customs office so we can get that cat out.”
The call with customs did not go nearly as smoothly as the sisters had hoped. Their expectation was that they’d be able to swing in to the Derin-13 cylinder where they were holding the animal and take him as quickly as they were able to process the filing. After all, since Santos was no longer going to be entering the system, there should have been no further need for any quarantine. At least that was the sisters’ thinking. It was not a position shared by the Derin customs house. Denver spoke to about five people, working her way up the ladder with each failed attempt to free the cat a couple days early. The first few underlings couldn’t do much more than cite the policy that they didn’t have the authority to circumvent, providing no good reason why they couldn’t just take Santos immediately. Then one of the assistant directors got on the call. It soon became clear to Denver that there was a reason but that the AD was either prohibited from sharing the reasoning for the policy with outsiders herself or simply wasn’t inclined to do so. Instead, Denver only got an answer when she was transferred to the medical director on hand. Apparently, they were told, the facility had to keep the cat for the duration of the quarantine in case the cat was carrying any type of distemper that could spread and might only appear after a longer incubation period. It seemed a stretch, but at least it was an answer.
“It’ll be two more days,” the medical director stated. “But at least we can clear all the forms through in the meantime. Where are you now? There’s almost no delay in comms, so you can’t be too far off.”
“We jumped in about mid-system,” Denver answered. “We only wanted to stop in, pick up Santos, and jump out.”
“You could jump out to the wheels if you’re looking for someplace quiet to wait. Or in to Hollowell if you’re not looking for quiet. And there’s at least one cylinder that’s right for recreation if you’re looking for something in between.”
“Thanks,” Denver replied. “We’re familiar with the system.”
“Well, make the best of it I guess, and I’ll meet you in a couple days’ time, Captain. Truth be told, I’ll be sad to see Santos go. He’s a charmer.”
“I thought he was a cat,” Kilty said almost too flatly for the medical director to tell she was joking for a moment before Denver couldn’t keep from spitting out a laugh that gave her younger sister away.
“Right. Anyway. Enjoy Richard,” the medical director replied, giggling herself as she closed the channel.
It was not ideal. Hopping into Richard at a time while the Athosians thought things were serious enough to evacuate their citizens was bad enough. Staying for a couple days while the bureaucratic gears churned in the customs office was another.
The Derin group was not where the sisters wanted to be. Not only was it an obvious government target if the Trasp did strike but Derin held the customs house, immigration offices, tax and tariff divisions, and every other mundane government department of the Richard System. It wasn’t exactly where Denver or Kilty wanted to spend two days, especially since there were decent places for visitors in Richard.
They could have jumped in to the planets, or they even could have jumped out to interstellar space and sat idle for two days, but with the amount of time they’d been spending in zero-G and deep space, two days in strong artificial gravity was another nice fringe benefit of this curious new job.
One such decent place to spend a couple days was the Krystezia group. There were thirty Krystezia cylinders magnetically bound together mid-system in a long string, and each one was modeled after an Earth environment or culture, mimicking food, music, art and architecture, festivals, theater and dance, and all of these various celebrations were well coordinated to allow for visitors to attend as many of the various festivals without overlap. Denver had been twice, the second time bringing her younger sister along during their first year out together as a currier team while working for the family business. The girls practically didn’t need to discuss it. The only question was whether it would be a beach or a forest enviro on the first day.
“Waterfalls would be nice,” Kilty said. “But maybe we should spend the night in one of the cityscapes.”
“What about day in the Old Town and biolume at the beach once the lights go down?”
Kilty nodded as though that wasn’t an objectionable itinerary. She started looking through the info tabs on Krystezia’s tourism board.
They arrived late morning local time, stayed for a long lazy lunch in the Old Town cylinder, and then took the tram all the way out to the sim-seaside, where they stayed for the sunset and star-rise, swimming for several hours in the warm, glowing salt waters of Krystezia’s false sea. Krystezia-19 looked less strange to the sisters at night. They’d both been to water worlds with natural shores where the sea itself was the horizon in daylight. In the Krystezia-19 cylinder during the day, the “sea” looked more like a strip of blue with sand striations alternating in stripes all the way up to the central sky bar, which was too bright to directly look at for long—a weird-looking environment, but at night, it was difficult to see the curve of the cylinder in the darkness except the dull lights of the beach huts and the faded glow of the biolumes against a black background. It almost seemed like a normal swim in a planetary shore at that hour—a welcome break from life in deep space.
Then, around midnight, the sisters decided to cap off the day at Mirenna Town, one of the nightlife hotspots on Krystezia-6. They ended up at a nightclub where they planned to have a few drinks and dance a little if the mood struck them before taking the tram back to the Errow docking field where they’d parked their freighter at Krystezia-2.
They were in a club called Xreis for about an hour before they decided to leave. The mood in both the upper and the lower rooms was several hours ahead of where the girls were, even after a couple drinks, and they’d had a long day in a time zone that put their clocks nearing dawn. The party there was just heating up.
As they were exiting, a man a few years older than Denver, who appeared to be by himself, stepped in front of Kilty, smiled, obstructed her way to the exit, and then, when she finally managed to squeeze her way around him, they guy made the mistake of slapping her ass with the back of his hand before turning to walk away. Kilty scowled at him but seemed inclined to let it go, opting to leave and make nothing more of it, but as she gestured toward the door, she could see big sister was having none of that. Sleep would have to wait until the offender was set right.
At the same time, Kilty noticed there was a minor scuffle breaking out at the back corner by the toilets. She took a measure of the place, realizing things were quite a bit livelier than they’d seemed while the sisters were sitting at their table in the opposite corner. Denver was a few steps ahead of her, already in pursuit of the creep who’d slapped her, while she was keeping her eyes on the fight, which seemed to dissipate when a guy about her age got shoved to the ground. He quickly scrambled away from a group of angry men who were kicking and shouting at him. Then that boy scrambled to his feet looking around as though he’d been ditched by his own friends.
By the time Kilty turned around, Denver was standing directly in front of the creep, and it looked to Kilty like Denver was giving him an earful while at the same time, clasping him right by his balls.
“Oh, shit,” Kilty said aloud, though it was too loud in the club for anyone to hear her.
As she rushed to her sister’s side, Kilty realized Denver wasn’t grabbing the guy’s crotch, no. She had her shock box right up between his legs and was ready to let him have it.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Denver was shouting at him as Kilty arrived.
She grabbed her sister’s other arm by the wrist and gently tried to pull Denver away. The guy stood there looking at Denver with a stupid grin on his face, almost daring her to do it, but he appeared to be so intoxicated he either didn’t know what was going on or what he’d done to so offend Denver in the first place.
“Come on, Denver. Let’s go.”
“Screw this idiot,” she replied. “Apologize!”
The guy just grinned back at her. And then, he winked.
“No, no, no,” Kilty said, reaching now for the shock box, trying to pull Denver away before she could zap him and escalate the situation any further. She didn’t know the specific laws on personal defense devices in the Richard System, but it didn’t take too much imagination to envision a scenario where Denver found herself in a legal tangle if she pushed the shock button.
“We just need to get the cargo and get out of Richard, Denver. We don’t need this.”
But she could see in her sister’s eyes that she wasn’t inclined to let it go.
“Please don’t,” a young man’s voice shouted from behind Kilty.
She turned to see the boy who’d got shoved to the ground in the earlier scuffle.
“It’s not serious, whatever he did. If you break his balls, he’ll break mine twice as bad.”
“Not serious? He won’t even apologize,” Denver replied to the kid. “I’m not going to break anything, just give it a sizzle.”
The kid’s eyes got wide as he realized what Denver was holding. The older guy just looked back at her grinning, almost as though he was turned on by the fact Denver was paying that area of his body so much attention.
“Please, ma’am, don’t.”
“Ma’am?” Denver barked back at the boy.
“It’s not real. It’s a joke. Whatever he did it was to get a rise is all. I promise he didn’t mean nothing by it.”
“Is he deaf or something?” Kilty asked. “Why can’t he speak for himself?”
The kid just shook his head at them. “I can’t say.”
The older guy leaned forward, grabbed Denver’s cheeks, and kissed her forehead, pulling away with a giant grin on his face. Denver pulled her hand back in shock and shook her head at the guy’s brazen attitude as he simply turned and walked back into the crowd on the dance floor with the young man trailing behind him.
“Can we go now?” Kilty asked.
“What the hell was that?”
Denver still seemed fixated on getting even as she glared over at the space where the two guys had disappeared into the crowd.
“Let’s get out of here and get some sleep please,” Kilty said, grabbing her sister’s wrist and tugging her toward the door. “Please. I’m fine. No harm done.”
Denver shook her head and begrudgingly stepped toward the door. It was getting late, after all.
The sisters took a late morning and spent the early afternoon getting some warmth and light at the 19th cylinder beaches the following day. Denver was lying back on a towel soaking in the artificial sunlight with her eyes closed while Kilty was taking an early swim. The sound of the waves was about to put her back to sleep after a long, late night.
“Hey there,” she heard a man’s voice say, “if you still want to shock my balls, I might be open to it.”
Denver sat up and opened her eyes. There he was, the same guy from the club. She looked around, and down in the water, Kilty was talking with the younger guy from the club. Denver scowled at the man as he smiled down at her.
“What the hell are you two doing here? I suggest you be on your way.”
“We’re on leave,” he replied. “About last night, it was kind of a rite of passage—”
“You know what? I don’t really care. If you think we’re going to be friends after you treated my sister like that.”
“Oh, sisters,” he replied, nodding. “That explains maybe half that fury in your eyes. I imagine the rest is genuinely your personality.”
“I thought you were deaf last night, but I believe I told you to get lost already.”
He laughed. “Man, I thought all the Athosians had left already, but judging from the stick up your ass, I’m guessing they must have missed one. Should we call back the Athosian transport ship, Ms. ...?”
“It’s Captain, actually, and I’m not giving you my name or another second of my time.”
Denver was about to lie back, but just as she was, the guy gestured toward the water where Kilty and the younger man were engaged in a visibly friendly conversation.
“Look at those two crazy kids,” he said. “Warms the heart, doesn’t it? My name’s Shad Pozzer. I’m not a captain, like you, miss, but a lieutenant. That whole thing last night was just a silly game, and I’m sorry it so offended you, but at least I see your sister—the one who could claim actual offense—seems to not be too traumatized by the incident. It was just a couple of rangers on leave horsing around in the way we do, as I said, a rite of passage, meant to give the boy a hard time.”
Denver looked out at the water where she could see pretty clearly that Kilty wasn’t merely talking to the younger man, she was outright flirting with him now.
“Rangers?” Denver asked.
“GG Lunar Rangers. Kid was just assigned to our unit.”
“The Gammas? I didn’t know they made fighters out there.” Denver looked Shad up-and-down and feigned a look as though she was unimpressed. “What does the other G stand for? Grim?”
“Ha. Funny. You’re quick, Captain. You forgot what? Grotesque, gross, or perhaps in your case grouchy? It’s actually Griffin, though—toughest little group of rangers in the LSS.”
“Oh, well that’s great for you. Tell me, Lieutenant, what kind of stupid game was it you two were playing where one night you won’t utter a word, and the next day I can’t get you to shut the hell up and leave me alone?”
“The CO can’t talk, and my goal is to get the young pup into trouble. His job is to get me out of all the trouble I get us into. If I start a fight, it’s his job to either talk me out of it or finish it. If I end up back on ship at the end of the week all banged up, he catches hell, not just from me but from the whole unit for not having my back. Your sticking a shock box to my balls was a first. Thank you for not activating it, by the way. I’ve taken a few knocks bringing new guys into the unit, but I think that would’ve topped them.”
Denver shook her head. “The GG Rangers.”
“I have been slapped a few times,” Shad said. “But it’s usually not the sister.”
“You’re in my light,” Denver replied, looking up at him. “Have you apologized to Kilty yet?”
Shad smiled and shook his head. “I suppose I should take advantage of this chance encounter to do so, Captain. Have a lovely rest of your day.”
Denver nodded and lay back down.
That night, Denver had no intention of staying out late. She told Kilty as much and made it about as clear as she could without pulling rank that she expected an early start so that they could be back at Derin-13 first thing to pick up the cat and get out of the system as soon as possible.
“Dinner then,” Kilty agreed. “I’ve got a place in mind in the Old Town.”
What Denver did not have in mind was the possibility that Kilty had already told that young ranger where to find them at dinner. She’d just sat down and was enjoying a cool glass of white wine when she spotted those GG boys.
“You didn’t?” she said, shaking her head at Kilty.
She had her back to Denver and still knew exactly what she was talking about. She grinned at her sister.
“What? I kinda like them.”
“Even Lieutenant ass-slap or whatever his name is?”
“It’s Shad, and it was a harmless joke, Denver. You can’t let a little thing like that burn your ass for two full days.”
The two GG Rangers were approaching their table.
“Whoa, look who it is,” the younger one said, smiling at Kilty.
“Yeah, wow. What a coincidence,” Denver answered.
“I’m Ranger Ellis Ames,” the younger one replied, extending a hand to the older sister. “I hear you’re the captain. So, Captain, permission to join you ladies for dinner?”
She shook her head. “Permission granted.”
The boys pulled over a table and signaled for the service bots to bring over two more settings. The Lieutenant ordered another bottle of wine.
“How are you two so free to follow us around?” Denver asked them.
“Leave,” Ellis replied. “Our unit got a week of leave right after I shipped in.”
“I thought you just joined?” Kilty asked.
“Perfect timing,” he joked. “Seriously, though, I had three straight months of G-school without a day off before I was deployed up here, so I guess I had a break coming.”
“Hell,” Denver said to Shad. “He looks like he’s barely seventeen. The LSS is letting schoolboys onto dropships now or what?”
“I’m twenty-two.”
“You’re a baby.”
“We’re rangers. Full stop,” Shad said.
“Not tonight we’re not,” Ellis replied.
“We’re rangers every night,” the Lieutenant insisted. “It doesn’t turn off.”
“So what are you two doing up here?” Ellis asked. “Kilty said you were curriers, but she wouldn’t tell me what you were picking up.”
“It’s not exactly our custom to advertise what we’re carrying to random people, much less random LSS personnel,” Denver answered.
“Fair,” Shad said. “Let’s say we’re both enjoying a little leave here and enjoy the wine and the meal.”
Kilty picked up her glass and smiled. “I’ll drink to that.”
The foursome sat for a quiet dinner getting to know each other. Kilty and Ellis were self-evidently nurturing the kind of magnetic chemistry that doesn’t quite know what to do with itself, the uncertainty of a certain parting on a very short horizon. Denver’s caution and reservations were just as obvious but not nearly with such clear motivations, partly the big sister in her wary of Kilty getting hurt, the captain in her responsible for a smooth ship, and still, yes, the resentment of Shad sitting at a table with them as though that first impression had meant nothing after all. But she sipped her wine politely and did her best to enjoy a sumptuous meal prepared with care and passion that didn’t come from a pouch—cuisine for a change, not food. By the time dessert was over, she almost seemed to be enjoying herself, and maybe, the boys could be forgiven for living a little harder and faster than she would’ve preferred, their futures far more uncertain than she’d appreciated at first.
They were here in Richard now, a system unfamiliar to two young men from the Griffin cylinder group—a much smaller outpost of upstarts, such that Richard might as well have been Athos, Hellenia, or Charris to them. The false-beaches were a wonder, the waterfalls a dream, the Old Town district a magical trip through a time-warp. And at the tick of a new second, those young men could be ordered out to stand on a line against Trasp aggressors who were far better trained, armed, experienced, and motivated. In that context, Denver could see the braggadocio for what it was: a mask they put on to convince themselves they weren’t terrified. She began to ask herself what they were doing here in Richard—the Athosians ship out and the Gamma-Griffin Rangers ship in, among many other LSS forces according to them, an odd tradeoff that didn’t bode well for the stability of the system.
“We should go for drinks,” Ellis insisted when the meal had ended. “The night is still young.”
“Not for us it’s not,” Denver answered. “We have a pickup early that we need to push off for tonight. It’s going to take us a few hours to fly back to the Derins.”
“Will you allow us to walk you to your pier?” Shad asked.
He looked over at Kilty and Ellis as though to imply the two weren’t quite ready to part ways yet. Denver couldn’t think of any real harm that would come of having an escort to the bay. She nodded, and the foursome got up from the table.
It was a long, peaceful walk through the Old Town cylinder to the tram. The layout, it seemed, was purposefully irregular. There were piazzas and fountains and alleyways veering off at odd angles. The high stone walls and cobblestone streets made for an enclosed setting, that in the warm shop lights and streetlights felt at once enclosed yet not claustrophobic. Instead it felt small and welcoming. On the walk, they appeared like two couples. Kilty and Ellis walking in front, their shoulders occasionally bumping up against each other, seemingly accidentally. Behind them, Shad and Denver followed nearly a meter apart. Denver almost felt like the two of them were chaperoning. It was a strange feeling she tried to suppress. She knew her baby sister wasn’t a baby anymore. She was an adult, and so was Ellis. They were just younger, and acting young, probably because they were a little drunk and the universe was pushing them apart before what should have been their time. It wasn’t long before they were holding hands.
The unlikely foursome wound through the streets, their footsteps echoing off the cobblestones, passing other groups of people celebrating their own personal liberties despite the obvious overarching tension in the system. Alpha-Richard was still that type of place where people came to let loose and enjoy themselves.
There was still that tension, though. Mostly, Denver hadn’t seen a hint of it from either ranger. Then, suddenly, about three-quarters of the way to the tram stop, Shad looked away from their group curiously. Denver noticed a focus in his eyes she hadn’t seen from him. Something had switched on and done so in an instant. She knew immediately that something had caught his attention and also felt that his reaction was so instinctual it couldn’t have been any type of ploy to keep the night going longer.
“Ames, on me,” Shad said, the tone in his voice one that signaled to his junior officer that play time was over.
“Sir,” Ellis replied. He didn’t even ask what or why.
Denver watched as he lifted Kilty’s hand in his, setting his other hand on top of hers for a moment gently before stating quietly, “Be right back,” and then letting go.
Then the boys stepped off down a side street without a word between them. Kilty had a pair of clunky flats on her feet, which she quickly stepped out of, picked up, and stuffed in her handbag. Then she gestured with her head toward the disappearing GG Rangers. She hadn’t ever been much for missing out on any action, and neither of them liked the idea of leaving a mystery unsolved. What those boys were after, they’d do their best to follow and find out. Denver stepped softly behind her barefooted sister, doing her best to keep her own footfalls nearly so silent as they jogged down the little alleyway the rangers had disappeared into.
The girls struggled to keep the rangers in sight as they ran through the narrow walkways of the Old Town. Nearby, they could hear their own footsteps, their heavy breaths, and the sound of other celebratory voices echoing off the stone walls. In the distance, there was music and the sound of electric skeds zipping through the larger street ahead.
The sisters emerged to see the two rangers running up on a solitary male pedestrian across the street. They quietly pulled the unsuspecting young man into the nearest alleyway, making it look more like a genuine confrontation rather than the abduction the girls could plainly see that it was. The three men disappeared into the alley in seconds. Denver could only see the very start of the struggle. They had to wait to cross the street for a few seconds. As they looked around, it wasn’t evident that anyone else had noticed the scuffle. Both sisters were looking over their shoulder as they ducked into the alleyway as well.
“Pull it and clone it,” Shad was ordering Ellis.
They were fumbling with the guy’s eyewear. For his part, their target was putting up a valiant fight, but Shad was bigger and Ellis had both his legs in a bear hug. Still they couldn’t quite get him under control, and they certainly weren’t able to clone his tech while they were fighting him. Shad finally got the guy about the neck. But he was starting to try to shout.
Denver stepped forward, her trusty shock box in hand. “Let go,” she calmly stated.
Wide-eyed, startled by her directness and certainty, Shad stepped back instantly, knowing he was about to catch some collateral if he didn’t let go. And before the guy could take another breath or put his hands up in defense, the shocker was at his neck, and he dropped like a bag of rocks. Shad was barely able to catch the guy’s shoulders so he didn’t hit his head on the cobblestones.
Ellis immediately turned his attention to the eyewear which had fallen onto the street.
“Quickly,” Shad said. “He won’t be out long.”
“I know quickly, Lieutenant. You’re not helping.”
Shad had put the guy on his back and had his shin resting on the man’s chest, gently applying pressure.
“You have another thirty seconds, maybe,” Denver stated. “Who is this guy?”
“You want to tell us about your cargo?” Shad asked in return.
Denver didn’t think he meant to ask, merely to make the point that they weren’t keen on sharing their official business either, at least not in the heat of the moment.
“It won’t clone,” Ellis said, rubbing a smooth black bar against the eyewear multiple times, each time being met with a solid red pinpoint of light at the top of the bar.
“Here,” Kilty said, digging in her purse. “Bag it and let’s go.”
She tossed a glasses-sized faraday bag over at Ellis, who looked at his Lieutenant.
Shad nodded. “Time to make ourselves scarce.”
The guy was just starting to stir as they stepped back out of the alleyway into the main street, and in the few seconds it took him to come to and sit up, the foursome that had taken him by surprise were long gone into the relative darkness of the Old Town night.
As they slipped away quietly, it took about a hundred meters before the sisters realized the rangers were following them back toward the tram.
“You don’t have to escort us,” Denver stated.
The pace slowed as the rangers looked at each other and then the girls.
“I’d feel better if we did,” Shad replied, “in light of what just happened.”
“Not for nothing, Lieutenant, but I hope you know what you were doing back there,” Ames said. “I know tensions are high and all, but I’m not sure we can just jump random dudes in the street and steal their tech without it being assault. There’s ROE if you suspect something.”
“I suspect something. And by the way,” Shad said, turning to Denver. “Thanks for your help back there, Captain. You and that shocker.” He extended Denver a half-hearted grin.
“They really should issue one to you boys if you’re in the field.”
“We have our share of toys. Believe me. We just don’t usually bring them out to dinner with pretty girls.”
Kilty grinned and looked over at her sister.
“Yeah, anyway, Lieutenant, I’m not sure we thought that through fully, sir.”
“How so, Ames?”
“Okay, so we have the eyewear segregated in a faraday bag now, but it’ll ping a network right away when we take it out. So if the guy’s a civilian and he reports his gear stolen, it’s going to be flagged, right?”
“That is true,” Kilty said.
“And if he’s a Trasp infiltrator or collaborator, he’s not going to report anything.”
“Yes, sir, maybe. But they could set it to ping our location the second the thing comes online again. That’s another danger.”
“He’s a spy, Ames. I’m pretty damn sure of it.”
“How do you know?”
“Look, you need to stop asking questions. You just got off your transport ship. You don’t know the first thing about this system.”
“But he is right, though, about your rules of engagement, I’d bet,” Kilty said. “If you take that eyewear back to your unit for analysis, you’re going to be in some shit if he’s a civilian. And I’ll bet you’ll need to log it or something in order to access tools to actually break the encryption and then analyze the data.”
“That’s why I’m so sure he’s a spy, Ms. Gennaro. Ordinary civilians don’t have firewalls on their eyewear that a military-grade scanner can’t rip and clone.”
“Or he’s a competitive gamer or a drone pilot who takes his personal security seriously.”
“Really? You think so? It couldn’t be that I may have had just a little bit of training in counter-espionage? I think we should get you two back to your ship and safely on your way, and I can worry about whatever fallout may come our way from that little incident back there.”
“You could,” Kilty replied. “Or you could be sure about it before you bring that eyewear back to your people.”
“Kilty,” Denver said, shaking her head.
“What? No. We’re in this too, Denver. You shocked the guy’s neck.”
The group continued walking in silence for a few steps. It was obvious to the two rangers that the sisters were having an almost fluent conversation with their eyes. They might have suspected some form of technological telepathy, but it was pretty clear those two didn’t even need that to have a completely silent debate, all during a brisk walk in the dark.
“I didn’t offer,” Denver stated, as though they’d skipped forward in their conversation about ten sentences.
Kilty just gestured to the two rangers with her head.
Denver sighed. “His gear can’t ping anywhere from the middle of space, certainly not from our clean room.”
Ellis looked at her curiously, and Denver understood the questions he seemed certain to ask.
“We have to take secure communications in our line of work. I’m sure our tools aren’t as powerful as the LSS military, but our Andrew can help, and we do have a few Saraswathi keys that we can operate through our ship’s processors. We could crack it and analyze the data. I don’t want to stay in port while we do it, but you two aren’t staying on Krystezia for long anyway, right?”
“I understand,” Shad replied. “You and Kilty are going to Derin tonight, you said?”
“Two LSS boys can get a shuttle anywhere in the system pretty cheap from Derin, I’d bet.”
The Lieutenant shrugged and looked at his young junior officer. “We can always swing back later for our stuff, Ames, unless you’ve got something you can’t live without back at the hostel?”
Ellis shook his head.
“A very kind offer,” Shad said. “It’s probably not a bad idea for all of us to put a little distance between us and that spy anyway. Yes. Thank you, Captain Gennaro. We’d gladly take a ride out of here.”
They didn’t ask, but once they were aboard, the sisters could tell by the way the rangers were looking around the ship and at each other that they were wondering how two sisters as young as them could afford a freighter as nice as theirs. And then there was their Andrew, clearly a high-end multi-use model. Denver introduced the android to the rangers and asked him to open the eyewear from their clean room while they were underway. It was a glorified closet, in the midships where their own servers and comms boards were stored. Denver put the eyepiece inside, faraday bag and all, and then closed the door while they got the ship prepped.
“It shouldn’t be too much of a problem to get into,” Andrew declared.
“That eyewear may be military-grade,” Shad said. “In fact, I’d bet on it.”
“Nevertheless, we have keys that should be able to open it.”
Shad handed the android the scanner, which hadn’t worked in that critical moment in the field. “We do as well. If that’s Trasp tech and you get inside, I’d like to know how and if you can reformat our scanner for future encounters.”
“That would be a bit more complex,” Andrew said. “But with the help of our AI keys, you should wake up to a comprehensive analysis of the device’s data.”
“Thank you, Andrew,” Denver said. “You two will be in Kilty’s room for the night.”
She showed their guests to her sister’s cabin, which she’d already messaged ahead to have Andrew make ready for their arrival. Ellis looked disappointed by that declaration, but Kilty, who was expecting just that arrangement was already making herself at home as the second in the captain’s stateroom.
The rangers settled in as Denver got the ship underway. From the flight deck, of course, she could monitor all the goings on in the vessel under her watch. She turned on the audio monitoring in their guests’ cabin, an invasion of privacy she never would’ve dreamed of while Kilty was that room’s occupant. She wasn’t suspicious of them, per se, but taking on military passengers at the moment the system was being evacuated was another choice she knew her parents wouldn’t have sanctioned any more than following them into a dark alleyway and helping them steal their target’s eyewear in the first place.
Those two GG Rangers didn’t say much at first, beyond staking out space, with Shad asserting his rank and claiming the bottom bunk and closing the screen. Denver was just about to turn in for the night herself after the magnetic locks had loosed the ship and she’d flown the first part of the egress from Krystezia, setting a straight course for Derin.
“Lieutenant, I can’t stop wondering why you’d give them those glasses if you really think you made a spy back there,” Ellis said softly, leaning over the edge of his rack toward Shad’s. “I’m not questioning you, certainly, just asking for clarification, education, I guess. Do you think they might be Trasp too? Some kind of dummy or decoy or what?”
“Why do you ask, Ranger?”
“I don’t understand the play. Putting counter-intel into the hands of civilians we haven’t vetted? I mean, I like them and all. I might even think it’s more probable they’re trustworthy, but even so, you’re going to trust secure data we picked up to a pair of curriers we know very little about?”
“Remember the first thing I told you when you arrived under my command: you know nothing. And you certainly don’t know anything about Alpha-Richard yet. If you insist on thinking, start from there. Then shut the hell up and go to sleep, Ames. We can talk about it in debriefing.”
“Never heard of debriefing from leave, Lieutenant.”
“Refer to my previous, Ranger, and assume they’re listening as well ... dumbass.”
“Right,” Ellis replied, rolling back and straightening out in the bunk space.
Ellis put up his netting himself as they were well into the steady weightlessness of the transit. Before long, both of the GG Rangers were sleeping to the quiet hum of the sublight engines.
Andrew adjusted their heading during the night after waking the captain for her orders. He couldn’t give her a full picture of what he’d found in a few sentences, but he did let Denver know that the rangers had discovered something significant, and given her past command style and the company’s policies, Andrew surmised that she’d want to review his full report before docking again at Derin. Denver agreed based on Andrew’s brief summary.
The rangers were surprised to still be transiting when they woke. Denver brought them and Kilty into the lunchroom midship and had Andrew serve everyone breakfast before asking him to commence with his full report.
“If it was your instincts that told you the man you accosted was a Trasp spy,” Andrew began by addressing Shad, “your instincts were correct.”
The android went on to share a map of the system reflecting the contact tracing he’d performed based on the data embedded in the device. Andrew had also put together tables of recent activity leading up to the present moment, overlaid with the Athosian evacuation, coupled with the public data of traffic into and out of the system. Based on the totality of data synthesized using the Saraswathi AI keys embedded in the ship, Andrew’s analysis had come to a startling prediction.
“An imminent Trasp attack on the system in some form,” Andrew declared.
“Vague enough,” Shad grumbled. “What do you consider imminent, housebot?”
“Within the week,” Andrew answered. “Possibly already underway, though no chatter has reached us through conventional comms as yet.”
Shad shook his head in frustration. “An attack in some form? Great, Andrew. That really narrows things down.”
“Retrospective tracing indicates a highly sophisticated network of infiltrating Trasp agents with heightened activity in the past several weeks. The Saraswathi keys are more limited than an analysis by a full Saraswathi AI would be, but given our ship’s limitations, which I’m sure you were aware of when you boarded, Lieutenant, the indicators point to a targeted seizure of key assets rather than the attempted destruction of any major outposts within the system. This is the best analysis we can offer at this time.”
Shad got very quiet suddenly. Kilty and Denver noticed Ellis looking to his superior for direction on how to respond. A single look from the Lieutenant was unmistakable—the junior officer was to shut his mouth and wait.
“You did the right thing helping us, Captain,” Shad said to Denver. “Whatever your cargo is, I suggest you two drop us in Derin and get out of Richard before anything goes down. Leaving would be the safest thing to do.”
Kilty shook her head. “We’re here already. We should at least ping the customs house before we touch the outer drum.”
Denver appeared to be considering.
“It can’t be worth risking your lives over,” Shad insisted.
“Probably not,” Denver agreed. “Then again, every day in space comes with risks, and we’ve spent the last two days taking the exact same risk we’d be taking picking up our cargo now. We just didn’t know about it.”
“But you know about it now. The equation has changed.”
“How did you spot that spy last night?” Kilty asked Shad.
“We had intelligence,” he replied. “We also have methods I’m not at liberty to share with civilians. How did your housebot crack a piece of Trasp hardware using a Saraswathi key? I’d like to know that.”
“We have our methods,” Kilty replied, flashing the older officer a cheeky grin.
“Shut it, K,” Denver barked at her sister.
Suddenly the mood changed at that breakfast table. Shad was looking at the sisters very suspiciously.
“Well, this is some fine jackpot we’re in, Lieutenant. If I’m reading the situation correctly—let’s speak plain,” Denver said. “You can’t trust a thing we told you because of how easily we accessed that Trasp gear. You also can’t disregard it, because if we’re actually who we say we are, just two innocent curriers from the Letters, then there’s an attack about to kick off.”
“Wait? Did you think we were spies the whole time?” Kilty asked Shad. “You’re the one who approached me, remember?”
“I’d like to know about your cargo,” the Lieutenant said.
“Oh, my God. This is just a huge misunderstanding,” Kilty replied. “We were just trying to help you two—”
Denver put up a hand.
“It’s a cat. We’re picking up a damn cat that’s in quarantine at the customs house,” Kilty continued. “This is the most bizarre, nonsensical situation I’ve ever—”
“Leave the room,” Denver said, glaring at her little sister, who sat at the table shaking her head. “Now, K!”
Shad grinned, as Kilty unclipped and floated off angrily toward the flight deck.
“A cat?” he said. “You expect me to believe you two sat around waiting for two days to pick up a cat? That’s your story?”
“And you think me and Kilty are what? Trasp spies trying to feed false intel to a couple LSS bumpkins who don’t know any better? To what end?”
Ames looked like he was about to pipe up before Shad glared across the table at him to shut him down.
“A cat?” he asked Denver.
“I guess the easiest way to clear it up would be for us to just go pick up the damn cat with you two idiots and then be on our way.”
Shad smiled and shook his head at her. “A cat? Two curriers sit around Richard waiting for two days to pick up a cat, and we’re the idiots?”
“Yes, Lieutenant, you are.”
“I assure you, Lieutenant,” Andrew stated. “Captain Gennaro’s motivations are entirely genuine and sensible.”
“Well, I guess you and Kilty won’t mind if we escort you then,” Shad replied. “It must be some special cat. I can’t even imagine what you must be charging the client.”
“That’s none of your damn business, Lieutenant. But by all means, if you want to provide a military escort for us to pick up some Athosian weirdo’s pet cat, all the more secure we’ll be, in light of the current climate in the system.”
“Then we’re agreed. I insist on accompanying you when you two pick up your cargo.”
Denver pinged the customs house first. She had the direct line to the medical director, who was awaiting her call. Shad was seated beside her on the flight deck, while Kilty and Ellis were back at the lunch table talking. Up front, the call between Denver and the medical director betrayed nothing suspicious at all. The cat had cleared quarantine at the top of the hour and was awaiting their arrival to retrieve it. The medical director promised to have all the relative files ready, as well as the carrier and the necessary items for feline care transferred with the animal when they took custody of it. To Shad, the call seemed strangely straightforward.
Denver told Shad that she wasn’t leaving the ship, not under the circumstances. If an attack was imminent, she wanted the ship ready to go at a second’s notice. She told the Lieutenant he was welcome to sit beside her on the deck and watch the retrieval through his junior officer’s stream or through Kilty’s, but she wasn’t debarking.
“Fine,” Shad said, “they can go in together.”
“Spies?” Denver replied, shaking her head. “You people really must be jittery to think Kilty and I are up to something.”
“You have to admit, it’s an odd choice to come into harm’s way to pick up a cat.”
“Maybe so, but an awful lot of people are making an awful lot of odd choices in a system the size of Richard right now, Lieutenant Pozzer. I expect you’ll be stepping off when my sister comes back with the cat? And then you can take your intel back to whomever.”
“If everything checks out, yes. I’m not too big to admit if I get something wrong. I didn’t get the spy wrong—that’s if your Andrew’s analysis is correct.”
“It is. You should’ve called it in already.”
“It’s not as simple as that. My superiors will need to have the primary source of the assessment in hand so they can confirm that finding. Believe it or not, it was actually faster this way. It’s just ... you two ... there’s something funny about you two, about your cat.”
Kilty and Ellis were already en route to the medical bay at the customs house. Denver and Shad were watching Ellis’s feed on the viewscreen. It was early in the day by the local time, but to Denver’s eyes aboard the ship, and even more so to Kilty who was walking through the causeways of Derin-13 in person, the customs house seemed eerily quiet. Ellis kept looking over at her. The tension of the morning had confused the situation between them. He didn’t quite know what to feel, but he couldn’t help but still be attracted to her. Even so, he noticed her noticing the situation in the customs house. Her shiftiness even started to show on the feed.
“What’s going on with her?” Shad asked.
Denver shook her head and shrugged.
Someone knocked over a crate as they were exiting the tram at their mid-cylinder stop. Kilty jumped back almost a meter. Ellis couldn’t stop laughing for nearly a minute.
“I’ve never seen a cat before,” he declared, when his laughter finally faded. “For the record, I believe you and Denver. Shad ... I don’t know. There’s a lot of pressure on him right now, you know? With the Athosians pulling all their people out and everything. It’s really going to hurt the system, economically and all that, even if the Trasp keep to their own damn business for once.”
“Drop the chatter and keep your eyes open, Ames,” Shad replied over the stream.
Kilty, Denver could tell, was rattled by the sudden scare. “We should have gone,” Denver said, shaking her head. “I hope that boy can handle himself if something happens.”
“He’ll be fine,” Shad answered.
The rest of the walk into the customs house went smoothly. The medical director introduced Kilty to the vet tech who’d been caring for Santos over the two weeks of his quarantine. Outwardly, he looked to Shad and Ellis like an ordinary cat. Denver could tell as she looked over at Shad that reality seemed to be setting in. The weird alternate story he’d concocted for the sisters out of the thinnest whisper of suspicion seemed to be crumbling with each passing minute. Kilty took directions on Santos’s care from the vet tech while Ellis giggled, watching the animal’s every move, especially as it squirmed as the tech struggled to move Santos into his carrier.
“I’ll take the cat, and you take the bag,” Kilty proposed to Ellis.
“I can’t believe it,” he said. “I’ve never seen a cat before.”
“Yeah, you said that,” Kilty replied. “Keep your eyes out, will you. You’re supposed to be a soldier, Ellis.”
Foot traffic picked up between the floor of the customs house and the tram. It was starting to look like their unease over the Trasp intel had been overblown.
Kilty and Ellis were standing at the platform as the tram was approaching. There was a flicker in the feed. Denver couldn’t tell whether it was the feed itself or the lights in the tram hub.
“Don’t get on that tram, K. Do you read? Don’t board. That’s an order.”
Shad looked over at Denver, shocked by the urgency in the captain’s tone.
“Do you read?” she repeated.
Kilty didn’t approach the tram as it slowed, but she didn’t answer.
Then, as Ellis turned toward the younger Gennaro sister, the screen went black.
When Andrew stepped onto the flight deck at Denver’s call, Shad suddenly became conscious of the reality that he’d made a critical mistake. He’d put himself in a vulnerable position. It was the type of scenario they’d have put up as a case study in training. Sure, one may find themselves in the company of sources or contacts one didn’t fully trust, but never poorly armed and alone and in an enclosed space no less. Still, he was a bit surprised when Captain Denver Gennaro turned to him and uttered the words.
“You’re going to need to go in the closet, Shad. It’s going to happen. You can go calmly and cooperatively or you can go unconscious, but you’re going.”
He saw that her right hand was hidden behind her hip, obscuring behind the captain’s chair, he had no doubt, that shock box she liked to carry around and use far too liberally.
Shad took a deep breath. “It comes to this?”
“I don’t want this to go badly,” she stated, almost apologetically.
“All your choice, Captain.”
She shook her head. He wasn’t going willingly.
Shad slowly unclipped his belt as though he was going to comply. He might have even fooled her, but the android could read body language well enough. Shad’s eyes were too fixated on the hand with the shocker—the only weapon that could have possibly put him in a position to subdue the Gennaros’ multi-use model. Andrew was just waiting for him to make the move, catching Shad’s hand when he did, well before he was able to get close to touching Denver, who dropped him to the deck instantly with the shocker. He was still vaguely conscious while the bot was stuffing him in the side holding area.
Shad heard the door latch from the outside. There was no handle on the inner side of the door.
“Great,” he grumbled to himself as he lay flat out on the metal floor. “Great work, Shad. You knew it and you let it happen anyway. Perfect form.”
It wasn’t at all clear what was happening at first to Kilty and Ellis, even though they had the intelligence beforehand. It looked like a flicker in the power, just a flicker. If it hadn’t been for Denver calling her attention to it, Kilty might even have missed it. But she listened. When the tram opened and a few people got on and off, Kilty and Ellis remained on the platform.
“The comms line just cut,” Kilty said. “I lost Denver.”
Ellis tried to contact Shad. Either something had happened back there, or their stream was dead.
The tram left the platform, and after moving about fifty meters down the line, it suddenly stopped. The lights dimmed.
Kilty looked around the platform. “I think we should move.”
“Move where?” Ellis asked.
“We need to get back to the ship.”
“I need orders from Lieutenant Pozzer.”
“That’s fine,” Kilty said, beginning a brisk walk toward the causeway. “If the comms come back, you can take the orders then, or we can walk back to the ship and get them that way.”
“Maybe it’s nothing, just a delay,” Ellis replied, looking back at the stalled tram as they rushed out of the station.
“It’s not nothing, Ames. We need to keep moving.”
Ellis nodded and kept pace beside Kilty.
All the systems in the tram hub went down. She’d seen ships malfunction before, but not cylinders, cities. Kilty considered it a lucky break that the ship was docked only three clicks from the division at the customs house where they’d picked up Santos. It was a walk they could make fairly quickly if they weren’t impeded. But as they made their way along, Kilty and Ellis started to see signs that something more was amiss than a simple power failure. The comms loss wasn’t just cylinder-wide, although that much was difficult to tell, but news boards along the causeway were blank with the exception of a simple message on an emergency scroll to the workers of the quarter to remain calm and proceed to their offices for further information. But the strikebots—LSS issue—which were ostensibly in charge of security in the Derin cylinder group, had gone just as dead as the tram. Kilty and Ellis passed a handful of human security personnel in the first few minutes of their walk, and they seemed just as confused as everyone else. But that didn’t hold for long. Security soon began to usher everyone inside.
At their first encounter, the officer didn’t seem to object when Kilty informed him that they were on their way back to their ship. The next officer barked back at them. “We’re getting word it’s a Trasp infiltration. Get clear and get inside immediately,” he told them. Kilty agreed they would but kept walking, at which point the officer didn’t seem to think it was worth chasing them down.
“They’re going to lock down the district,” Ellis stated. “It’s the next logical step.”
“I don’t think we should be here when that happens,” Kilty replied, quickening their pace.
An audio message began to cycle from the cylinder’s central lightbar. “Please remain calm. We are asking all government officials to shelter in place. Further instructions will be forthcoming. There is no threat to LSS sovereignty.”
“What the hell?” Kilty said. “That’s not ominous enough.”
They were working their way toward the ship as directly as they could, but Ellis guided them away from an approaching security agent and into an alleyway. They began to jog parallel down the next causeway. Before long, all of the buildings of the quarter being government buildings, LSS functionaries began to step out into the causeway, ordering Kilty and Ellis to get inside immediately.
Suddenly and without discussion, they were running.
They moved quickly enough through the alleyways and secondary and tertiary causeways that they evaded any meaningful resistance for a few more minutes.
That was when the unmistakable sound of shooting started. It was distant, back in the main government offices in the cylinder’s center. At first it was isolated and sporadic. Then it became focused, rapid, and repetitive, almost conversational, one report upon the next, a martial call and response.
Between them and the inner entry to the shipyard were only a couple hundred meters more. Kilty still hadn’t received any further update from Denver or Shad at the ship.
And then Kilty saw them. Too many personnel at the entryway to the docks to sneak by. Four at first glance, right at the threshold to the freight lifts. Even if those security personnel at the docks were friendly, which was to say not Trasp, they were still unlikely to allow Kilty and Ellis through. The only responsible move for anyone defending the LSS’s control of the outpost was to lock down anyone and anything moving.
Kilty and Ellis exchanged a look then diverted through a final alleyway back toward the tram hub for the dockyard where the ship was latched. They’d rode up to the inner level on the passenger lift earlier, which now was likely just as dead as the tram itself, but both Ellis and Kilty understood, even without a conversation, that their best bet was to find a stairway or even a ladder. They just had to get there first without being spotted.
They weren’t that lucky.
“You two,” a voice echoed toward them as they tried to sneak back into the tram stop at the back of the dockyard.
“I’m on leave,” Ellis stated under his breath to Kilty. “I don’t have a weapon on me.”
“You’re a ranger, though, right?” Kilty asked. “Don’t they have to let you through?”
“Unless they’re part of the infiltration. Who knows what we can trust?”
Two men began to approach them from the checkpoint at the edge of the tram hub.
“We’re just on our way down to our ship,” Kilty shouted back toward the men. “We don’t know what’s going on.”
“Stop!” one of the security personnel shouted. “Everything is locked down. You don’t have permission to enter the docks. No one comes in or out.”
“What are we supposed to do?” Kilty shouted back as the two men approached them. “People are shooting back there. We came here on my ship. We don’t have anywhere else to go.”
“Then we’ll have to detain you here. That’s our protocol when the station locks down.”
It seemed like the end of the line. The men were twenty meters from them and closing. Kilty stopped walking, so Ellis did too.
“I can fight a little,” Kilty said to Ellis under her breath. “If you can take one, I might be able to hold the other off for a minute.”
As she said it, a door swung open directly in front of them about fifty meters from the entrance to the tram hub. She and Ellis looked at each other, realizing suddenly in a single brief glance that the door, situated right beside the main personnel lifts to the cylinder’s piers, couldn’t be anything other than the stairway that led down to the ships. They didn’t even have to speak. They just made a run for it.
“Stop!” the nearest security guard shouted.
The other followed quickly in pursuit as well. Kilty was fast for a girl, but she couldn’t outrun grown men, not carrying the cat, and not with such a meagre head start. Ellis knew he could make it to the stairway, but he ran beside Kilty nonetheless. He waited, unsure of how much he could realistically do. In the distance, two more men were coming behind the security guards to see about the commotion.
Ellis was calculating. Could he take those two before the others got there or would they shock him into senselessness before he even raised a hand? One of the guards was reaching for Kilty’s back, just about to grab her. Then, the most improbable thing happened.
As though there were an invisible wire strung out at knee height, both of the security guards tripped violently into two spectacular heaps, thundering off the unforgiving floor. Ellis’s eyes went wide, and he was so dumbfounded by the sight that he stood for a moment, watching the men as they moaned.
“Ellis,” Kilty shouted to him.
She was at the doorway.
“Come on!”
“What the hell was that?” he said back as he sped toward her.
“Our good luck. Best not to question it until we’re out of here.”
At the top of the stairway, he looked back for a moment and began to descend the stairs down to the ship. After he’d jumped down about three flights by his estimation, he heard something in the stairwell above him. At first, he thought it must have been the security pursuing, but no. No one had followed them. Even from that distance he could hear the unmistakable sound of somebody above, struggling to breach the door to the stairwell, which he knew for certain he hadn’t taken the time to close behind him.
Denver called Kilty and Ellis directly to the flight deck the moment they boarded.
“We need to get you boys back to your unit, and then Kilty and I are getting out of this system,” she said, betraying nothing unusual about her delivery. Kilty caught something, though, but also didn’t ask the obvious question immediately.
“Right,” Ellis replied. “I’m not sure how you girls secure a cat for flight, but yeah.”
“I’ll get Santos’s carrier secured in the hold,” Kilty announced, turning to leave the flight deck.
“Cargo 2,” Denver insisted. “There should be space to lock it in on the back shelf. And, Ellis, I’d like to have emergency jump points locked in at a moment’s notice, given the offensive underway right now. We need to know where to drop you and Shad. I know you’re based on a frigate, but I’ll need coordinates or at least a target cylinder.”
“Lieutenant Pozzer didn’t tell you?” He looked around. “Where is he by the way?”
“He went out with Andrew looking for you two. They’ll be back ...” Denver turned and looked at the screen to her right with a clock on it. “They’ve got a hard return time of seven minutes.”
“Oh,” Ellis replied.
He began to look at Denver as though he was starting to think things through.
“The sooner I have a destination to set a heading, the sooner I can start calculating a jump and get you two back to your unit.”
“Sure,” Ellis said, and then he reluctantly told Denver. “We’re based out of the Haya shipyard in Inner Richard. The frigate’s moored there. LSS-804-09 name of Byard.”
“Letters frigate Byard. Got it,” Denver stated, nodding. “You and Kilty get settled in the lunch room and we’ll be ready to get under way as soon as Andrew gets back with Shad.”
Ellis started looking at Denver sideways, though he still wasn’t so suspicious that he asked any further questions. He stepped back toward the rear of the ship to see if he could help Kilty with the cat, but it was clear by the time he got to the lunch room that Kilty had finished. And behind her, to Ellis’s shock, as he was stepping into the midship, was the Andrew clearly walking behind her left shoulder.
“Have a seat, Ranger Ames,” the Andrew said. “We’ll be departing momentarily.”
Ellis looked at Kilty. She didn’t explain, but it was clear she knew exactly what was going on even if he didn’t.
“It’s okay, Ellis. We are your friends.”
“Um, what the hell is going on, please?”
“No time for explanations,” Andrew replied, opening the door to Cargo 3, the small freight closet between the midship and the main hold on the starboard half of the ship. “Be seated, please.”
Ellis paused, catching a glimpse of Shad inside, seated on the floor with his arms crossed over his bent legs.
“Please,” Kilty echoed.
Shad looked up at his new junior officer and shrugged. It was a look that said enough. And then it dawned on him. He’d just told Denver where they were stationed. That was what she was trying to get from him.
Kilty took him by the wrist and pulled him down to one of the lunch chairs, which were extended now, doubling as proper jump seats for high-G spaceflight.
Andrew escorted Shad to the flight deck.
“Well,” Ellis said, looking over at Kilty as he felt the ship disengage from the outer cylinder. “What the hell’s going on now? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“So, Captain Gennaro,” Shad said through the dull hum of the ship rocking rhythmically through its brief FTL hop, “I still have no idea what your angle is. You’re a part of this somehow, I understand, but how?”
“We’re a part of it in that we’re caught up in it,” she replied, looking down at the dash, taking a quick measure of her instrumentation before looking over at the Lieutenant. “Believe it or not, all we came here to do is pick up a cat. And now we’ve got two stray rangers in the deal. My plan now is to let you off with your unit if you’re okay with that.”
“If we’re okay with that?”
“I mean, look, it’d be pretty stupid for me to shake up on a fully-apportioned Letters frigate if I were some kind of nefarious actor. There are certain questions I’m sure you have that I am not going to answer. But what I’d like to do is to drop you and your colleague back with your unit, no questions asked. If you can live with that, that’s what I’ll do.”
“You have to be joking? After stuffing me in a closet?”
“Like I said. You have questions I am not going to answer. So I have one question for you, Lieutenant Pozzer. Would you like me to drop you at the Byard—if you can accept that you’re not getting answers—or I can drop you and Ellis at Stationtop on Richard 2 and you can find your way back yourselves? I can tell you what I’d prefer.”
“And what is that?” Shad asked, a look of profound disbelief on his face.
“I’d like to part friends.”
“Friends?”
Denver shrugged. “Sure. Friends.”
Shad looked over his shoulder. The Andrew was locked into a station behind the two captain’s chairs.
“I sure have suspicions,” Shad said. “But as yet, I guess don’t have any evidence you two have done anything treasonous. Personally, I don’t appreciate your actions, stuffing me in a closet while you and your android did whatever you did.”
“Get my sister and your officer back is what we did,” Denver interjected.
He looked at her doubtfully. She gestured with her head toward the midship, as though to say—there they sit, which was true.
“I suppose we do have more important matters to address today,” Shad stated, nodding. “And I suppose the sooner we get to it, the better.”
“I drop you both at your doorstep, no questions? No hard feelings?” Denver extended her hand.
Shad shrugged and extended his hand, shaking Captain Gennaro’s.
“We won’t give you any trouble, Captain. You and your sister and your cat will be free to go.”
“Strange couple days,” she replied. “You have the outer field tight to the drop location, Andrew?”
“Yes, Captain,” he answered.
Shad looked over at her. Denver shook her head. He hadn’t known her long, but he’d known her long enough he could tell something was bothering her.
“Andrew, can you calculate a jump out before we drop?”
“Nothing specific, Captain. An emergency second hop, you mean?”
Denver nodded. “Anything’s possible today,” she said to Shad. “Let’s hope my instincts are wrong.”
Denver wasn’t wrong. It was self-evident when they dropped out three minutes later at Richard-2 that the attack on the Derin cylinder group at the government offices was system wide. Whatever the Trasp were trying to accomplish was happening everywhere. Denver had dropped the ship far enough back from the port that she and Shad had a clear view of everything. Ships were venting. Every now and again an explosion would flare up in the mooring fields. From that distance, with the naked eye, Denver couldn’t see whether it was Trasp warships causing all that damage. It was either that or a stunning act of coordinated sabotage.
“Can you find the Byard by transponder, Andrew?”
“Negative,” the android replied. “The Lieutenant’s ship is either not in the port or no longer transmitting its position.”
“We can’t stay here,” Denver told Shad.
“Close contacts,” Andrew announced. “Recommend we depart immediately, Captain.”
“Load the flight path,” she replied, turning to Shad again before the flight plan came through to her board. “Glad we chose to be friends, Lieutenant. Looks like we’ll have the pleasure of each other’s company for a little longer.”
Denver’s board lit up green, and moments later, the Gennaro sisters’ ship became one of the thousands of private vessels that fled Alpha-Richard during the initial hours of the Trasp attempt to take control of the system, which soon after became known in historical records as the First Richard Infiltration.
I had hoped we would hear more of Denver and Kilty . Rowe your worlds are so vivid yet you never get bogged down in detail. It's conveyed with subtlety within the narrative. Great story of course and two new players to sink our teeth into .
All cats are special cargo ! I'm smiling already!