Stars in the Sand Page 5

   “You did well enough on the freighter.”

   “That was a short boarding action, and not exactly against top-grade opposition.”

   “Even so, there were enough bullets flying around for you to get yourself into real trouble.”

   “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

   “That’s what’s worrying me.”

   She walked over, sitting down beside him, “What makes you think that the Captain will turn you down?”

   “The look on his face,” he replied. “I don’t think he really believes they are there.”

   “You know,” she said, “This is going to need more that just you. If you fly as well as you hack, you’ll need some help.”

   “Are you volunteering?”

   “I guess I am. I’ve looked over that ship, and I think I could fly her. She isn’t that different from the ships your Uncle had me working on.”

   Placing his hand on her elbow, he replied, “Thanks. That means a lot. I had a word with Cantrell, earlier; she thinks she can handle the sensors.”

   “Cantrell? Lisa Cantrell? Sensor tech?”

   “Yeah. Turned out to be a pretty good shot. The only one of the newbies to actually hit anything.”

   She withdrew, shaking her head, “You realize that she’s just trying to tick you off her list, right?”

   “Huh?”

   Sighing, she said, “How can you get so naive?”

   “Are you jealous?”

   “Don’t be stupid.”

   “You are!” he said, smiling. “Don’t worry, I know where to find my girl.”

   “You’d better,” she replied, pulling closer again. “What are you going to do if that Captain says no?”

   Glancing at the viewport, the freighter just sliding into position, he said, “I thought about taking matters into my own hand.”

   “Wait a minute…”

   “They’re our people, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get them back.”

   “Do you actually think the two of us – even with the dubious assistance of Loose Lisa…”

   “What?”

   She shook her head, “Evidently you haven’t been hanging around the lower decks enough.”

   “I guess not.”

   “We’d need at least a dozen people to man that ship. Where are you going to get the rest from?”

   “I’ll think of something.”

   She paused, then said, “For whatever it’s worth, I said I’d go, so I’ll go.”

   “You don’t have to.”

   “Yes, I do,” she said. “Something interesting, though; I just had to ferry Lieutenant Caine over there. She’s doing some sort of inspection, looking for hidden compartments or something like that.”

   He sat bolt upright, “Why didn’t you say that before? I bet the Captain’s having her check the ship out. She sat in on my meeting with him.”

   “Those two are tight,” she said. “If he was going to send anyone over quietly, I bet it would be her.”

   “Which means we might be getting to go after all, without doing anything desperate.”

   Cooper’s communicator bleeped, and he reached for it with his stump. He cursed under his breath, reached around and raised it to his ear, “Cooper here, Captain.”

   “Captain?” Duquesne said. “Are you promoting me, Corporal? I wish you’d reconsider, if so. I don’t want the damn job.”

   “Sorry, Doctor. I was expecting a call from the Captain.”

   “Well, I’m sorry to interfere with your social arrangements, but I want to see you at 0700 tomorrow morning. Quinn’s delivering your new hand around then, and we need to get it tuned.”

   “I thought I wasn’t getting it for a fortnight?”

   “Someone bumped you up the priority schedule. Obviously you have friends in high places now. Put in a word for me, will you; I could use a pay rise.”

   “Thanks, Doctor. I’ll be there on time.”

   “Bring coffee. Lots of coffee. I don’t do mornings well. Duquesne out.”

   “Did I hear that right?” Barbara asked. “They’ve bumped you up ahead of the critical ship repair components.”

  “Let’s not get our hopes up,” he said. “This could be the Captain’s idea of a consolation prize.”

  Shaking her head, she replied, “He doesn’t strike me as that sort. I think if he said no, he’d just say no, he wouldn’t try and pacify you.”

  “When we lost them, he told me that he would do anything it took to get them back. I understand that he can’t commit Alamo to this. Most of the crew just want to get home, and I don’t blame them. That’s why I tried to give him the alternative, so that he didn’t have to commit the whole crew to this. Hell, I know that the ship would never get through. We’ll have to sneak in, and the freighter is perfect for the job.”

  “It won’t be as easy as that,” Barbara replied. “There are a lot of hoops to jump through. The Captain has to think of all of them.”

  “We can do it, though. Between Alamo, the freighter and the station, we’ve got everything we would need to pull this mission off.”

  Pausing for a second, she looked around the empty room, “Even if all of that is so, you’ve got to remember the odds. This isn’t exactly going to be a low-risk operation. There’s a good chance that we could end up captured like the rest.”

   “I know. I’m willing to take the risk.”

   Another figure appeared in the door, and uninvited, Cantrell walked in, carrying a pair of ration packs. She looked at the two of them with a smile and walked over to sit opposite them, dropping her cargo onto the table.

   “What’s up?” she asked.

   “We were just having a conversation,” Barbara said.

   “I think I can add something to it. Besides dinner.”

   “What?” Cooper asked.

   “Petty Officer Fox just got back from the station. He was grousing in the mess about being on double duty; he’s been ferrying prisoners back and forth all evening.”

   “Did he say why?”

   “Something about an urgent series of interrogations. Top priority stuff. Hey, and I took a look around the freighter with Caine, and she was installing some new stuff in the computer systems. You know what that means.”

   “Don’t jump to conclusions,” Barbara said. “We could just be planning to take the freighter home with us. I could think of a hundred reasons for a software upgrade.”

   “Only one of them makes sense, though,” she said, snatching a piece of nearly-cheese from the food pack. “They’re going ahead with Coop’s plan, and we get to head out into the wild black yonder again.”

   “What do you think we’ve been doing?” Barbara said, shaking her head. “Alamo already holds the record for the longest patrol in history without friendly resupply, and we do have five new systems to explore on the way home.”

   “Brown dwarves and all boring as hell, most likely. I’ve been working on the long-range surveys, and all we have to look forward to are barren rocks and ice giants. I can see those any time.”

   “Pining for the bright lights of the Cabal?”

   “I joined up to see new things, explore the universe! Did you ever see the Captain’s recruitment advert?”

   Cooper looked at Barbara, then said, “I must have missed that one.”

   “Just after nothing at all interesting happened at Uranus, he did a ninety-second piece about the settlement at Ragnarok, about how it opened up the whole universe to us, about what the Triplanetary ships were doing. That’s why I dropped out of college and signed up, even if my mother did just about disown me for it.”

   “And so far the frontier hasn’t been exciting enough for you?” Barbara said, shaking her head. “I’d hate to be on a cruise you’d find interesting.”

   “So you aren’t going on Ouroboros, then?”

   “If the Cap
tain decides to go for it, then I’ll sign up.” She looked across at Cooper, then said,  “Someone has to keep him out of trouble.”

   “From what I saw during the boarding action, he can take care of himself.”

   “Obviously you’ve never been on leave with him before.”

   “Come on, it’s a big mission, and a chance to actually do something hands-on. Smaller crew, so we all get to share the fun stuff. I’m bored with data analysis and replacing burned out relays.”

   Cooper’s datapad bleeped; he glanced down at the screen and smiled with glee. “I just got a diary update.”

   “That’s a cause for celebration?” Barbara said.

   “It is when the update is instructing me to report to the briefing room at noon tomorrow for a meeting with the senior staff.”

   Cantrell whistled, then said, “That’s it, then. The Captain’s way of telling you the mission is happening.”

   “At the very least, he’s giving you a chance to present your plan to the senior staff,” Barbara said. “I don’t think he’d do that if he wasn’t in favor.”

   “My God,” he said. “We’re going to do it. We’re actually going to get to do it.”

   “Looks like it,” Cantrell said.

   He looked at the two of them, then up at the clock, “Feel like pulling an all-nighter?”

   Barbara frowned, then said, “What do you have in mind?”

   Waving his datapad in the air, Cooper said, “I want to get this report perfect for tomorrow. I’m not going to have time to work on it in the morning, so…”

   “So you want the two of us to beat it into shape now,” Barbara said. Cantrell bristled, but made no attempt to move.

   “Look, if this is a chance for me to sell this plan, I don’t want to mess it up. This needs to be as good as I can make it, so I need to get it right.” He swung over to sit opposite them, moving his datapad in front of him. “Barbara, you pretend to be the Captain. Lisa, you are Zebrova.”

   “Must I?”

   “Try and tear my plan to pieces. If I can make it bomb-proof tonight, we might get to go on the mission tomorrow.” He cleared his throat, took a swig of juice, and started to read.

  Chapter 7

   Alamo’s senior staff were sitting in the briefing room, most of them looking puzzled. Cooper was sitting at the far end of the table, fidgeting with a datapad, and Zebrova fixed her stare on him, trying to interrogate him through thought alone. Marshall walked into the room, taking his seat at the end of the table, and looked around the room.

   “Good afternoon, everyone. First things first; Mr. Quinn, is your estimate of Alamo’s repair schedule still good?”

   “I’ve inspected the facilities at Hydra Station,” replied the engineer, “and I think everything will be satisfactory. Eighty to ninety days remains my estimate, probably towards the beginning of that time period. We’ll have the orbital defenses in position in ten days.”

   “Excellent.”

   “Three months drifting in orbit,” Orlova said. “The crew could use the break, sir. I’ve already had several requests for shore leave.”

   “That sounds like a good idea,” Marshall replied. “What about Ouroboros?”

   “My team has completed a damage survey, sir,” Quinn said, “and I don’t think it will take much to repair. A few days should see it back to full working order.”

   “Are we taking it with us, Captain?” Zebrova said. “We have got the personnel to man it, and having a second ship could be useful.”

   His father, looking at him from his chair, shook his head, “I think he has something else in mind.”

   Nodding, Marshall said, “Last night, Corporal Cooper came to me with some new information regarding the fate of the Espatiers captured by the Cabal. I think he should begin this briefing; Corporal?”

   Rising to his feet, flexing his newly fitted artificial hand, Cooper looked around the room, obviously trying to conceal his nerves. It seemed strange to Marshall that a man who had been in combat four times should be afraid of public speaking.

   “Before he died, the traitor Major Diego attempted to trade his life for some information on the location of the prisoners. I couldn’t make any headway in interpreting it with Alamo’s computers, nor with the Cabal database, but I had more luck with the astrogation systems on Ouroboros. The prisoners are being held on Denebola VII, a Cabal resource extraction hub, where they are being used as part of a labor workforce.”

   “What is your basis for that, Corporal?” Zebrova said, flashing a look at Marshall.

   “I didn’t know it at the time, but Diego was telling me the colloquial name for the system; it is a variable star, and that was the term the Arabs used for it on Earth in ancient times. More than that, the information we have indicates that the population is predominantly indentured labor, and prisoners are used there by the extraction corporations.”

   “That fits,” Bailey said. “It’s exactly what they did with us at Ghawar. Though we were kept segregated from the main workforce.”

   “I expect the same will be true here, Lieutenant,” Cooper said, his manner easing. “My plan is to use the Ouroboros to send in a strike team to infiltrate the planet and free the prisoners, then returning them to Alamo.”

   Zebrova shook her head, “I can’t even begin to tell you the flaws in your plan, Corporal.”

   “There’s a lot more too it than that. We can trade our way to our destination, disguising ourselves as a normal freighter crew.”

   Bailey nodded, saying, “I’m pretty sure we can provide fake civilian identification documents without too much trouble. We’ve got a lot of examples to work with.”

   “Once there, we can evaluate the situation and determine the best way to break our people out. It’s a civilian facility, not a military one, so security will not be as tight. And they won’t be expecting it,” he added. “With luck, we’ll catch them by surprise.”

   “I am always concerned about plans that rely on luck. What if the prisoners are not there?”

   Cooper took a deep breath, then said, “In that case, we make the most of the opportunity to gather some intelligence about the Cabal from the civilian point of view. Most of the information we have is focused on the military.”

   Tyler said, “Our intelligence staff will find such information useful.”

   “Not to mention the bonuses for any possible negotiations,” Caine added. “Knowing what the civilian population wants as opposed to the military could give us a few extra bargaining points.”

   Marshall looked around the room, then said, “I’ve been considering Cooper’s plan all night, and…”

   “Sir,” Zebrova said. “The risk factor is great.”

   “Dammit, these are our people,” Cooper said. “They’re out there waiting for us to rescue them. If we have the guts to try.”

   “Corporal!” Marshall snapped. “Stand down.”

   Cooper looked around, then replied, “Sorry, sir.”

   “As I was saying,” Zebrova continued, “In my opinion this mission is too risky. You can’t ask the crew to go any further than they already have. Some of them haven’t been home for ten years.”

   “I’d like to take a crack at it,” Orlova said. “I volunteer to take out Ouroboros, sir.”

   “That eager for another command?” Marshall said with a smile. “I’ll be glad to have you with me, though.”

   The room grew silent. It was Mulenga who finally said, “You intend to command this mission yourself, Captain?”

   “I do indeed, Lieutenant.” He raised a hand, then said, “I don’t want any arguments about it, either. The decision is mine, and it is made. I am conscious of Lieutenant Zebrova’s points, and therefore this mission will be volunteer only.”

   “Sir, you can’t go yourself,” Zebrova said. “Why not let me take her out.”

   “I appreciate th
e offer, Lieutenant, but you are needed here. Alamo will be sitting in orbit for eighty days; the mission is currently timelined out at seventy, including ten days to complete our objective. If it looks like extracting the prisoners is too risky, then we will turn around and come home, with whatever intelligence we have managed to gather along the way.”

   “Alamo…”

   “Can manage fine without me for a while. You were talking about shore leave, Lieutenant; I have considerable leave time saved up. More than enough for this mission.”

   Caine chuckled, then said, “A working holiday, then.”

   “You know how hard I find it to turn off, Deadeye.” He looked across at his father, then said,  “In my absence, Major Marshall will assume command of this ship, as the next-senior officer.”

   “I must formally protest, Captain,” Zebrova said. “I request that you enter in your log my objections to this mission, and to your assumption of command of Ouroboros.”

   “So noted,” Marshall replied. “Nevertheless, I intend to do everything we can to rescue our people.”

   “How many people will be needed?” Mulenga said.

   “Eighteen,” Caine replied. “That will be sufficient to crew the ship, and leave plenty of space for rescued prisoners.”

   “They’ll be eager to get out of there,” Bailey said. “I know that we would have given anything to get out from Ghawar. We made the attempt.” She shook her head, “And we know why it failed, now. I think if we can do this, we should.”

   “Does that mean you are volunteering?” Zebrova asked.

   “Lieutenant Orlova,” Marshall said. “Are you still wanting to try this?”

   “Yes, sir.”

   “Lieutenant Caine has already volunteered also, and I can’t strip the senior staff any further.  Therefore, no-one else in this room will be permitted to go.”

   “Sir,” Quinn began, but Marshall cut him off.

   “We need you here, getting Alamo back into shape for the passage through the Shrouded Stars, Lieutenant, though it would be good to have you with us.”