DESTINATION: MUTINY by Sean Dalton.
Operation Starhawks 5.
Ouoji flattened her belly to the deck and crept closer to the security checkpoint. Overhead, one of the monitoring cams swiveled fourteen degrees. Ouoji froze in place. Her body was stretched almost to full length, and she had pressed herself as close to the wall as possible. A nervous quiver passed through her body from her muzzle to the tip of her bushy tail, but she controlled it.
The cam read only sharp contrasts of color, such as the uniform colors of fleet crimson or Spec. Ops. black; it could not scan the slight differentiation of her smoky gray fur from the metallic hue of the walls and deck.
The scanner modules within the cam detected a range of body temperatures between thirty-four and seventy degrees Celsius; Ouoji had lowered her body temperature to thirty-three. To do so for a long period of time would endanger the unborn cubs she carried within her womb, for they must be kept warm, but Ouoji did not intend for this task to take long.
She waited a few seconds more, hissing with impatience, until the cam swiveled another fourteen degrees down the corridor. Its vision range was past her. She hurried forward,
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slinking like quicksilver to the counter. In a flash she leaped to the top of it and over the other side. Her body skimmed beneath the barrier sensor beams with less than a centimeter to spare.
Pleased, she turned her round head from side to side and blinked a moment at the airlock which was dogged down and sealed electronically less than two meters away. Her tail twitched, and she jumped back on top of the counter.
Being careful not to let any part of her body brush the sensor beams, Ouoji curled her tail tightly about her feet and studied the control panel.-The cam overhead swiveled back to its intermediate position. She blinked, aware of the urgency within Siggerson lurking at the opposite end of the corridor. There were twelve seconds to go before the cam spotted her.
Most of the control switches had to do with cam and scanner activation, height placement, and sensitivity of the sensor beams criss-crossing the entire corridor at heights of two meters, one and one half meters, one meter, and one half meter. There was a secondary relay system designed to signal an alarm within Station 4's security offices if anything was switched off without authorization.
Ouoji knew what to do with that. Using her left front paw she slowly pushed in the proper unlocking code on the numerical keypad. The red activity lights remained on, but beneath them a green light began blinking a query that indicated she had made no errors. Ouoji shut down the secondary relay system first, then the primary just as the cam swiveled toward her.
The cam froze in position, and the irritating subsonic hum of the sensor beams ceased. Ouoji lifted her ear flaps in relief and cluttered for Siggerson to come.
He appeared cautiously, then broke into a grin and ran down the corridor.
"Good girl!" he said. "You did everything exactly right."
Ouoji slitted her eyes in pleasure and jumped off the counter. While Siggerson fitted a lock breaker to the airlock, Ouoji went to work on raising her body temperature back to normal levels. She sat up on her haunches and curled her head down to nudge
her belly. All the cubs' heartbeats remained in good rhythm with her own. They had not been harmed.
"Got it," said Siggerson, and the airlock opened. "Come on, Ouoji."
He went through the lock, and Ouoji bounded after him. Past the airlock, they went down a narrow corridor that led to the secured hangar. This area held enemy ships that had been captured in battle. Stolen ships that had been recovered went in here until they were claimed by the companies who established legal ownership. Cargo storage contained black market goods that had been impounded. There was even a small scoutship bearing an Internal Affairs registration number parked alongside two craft that had to belong to Covert Operations.
Just beyond them lay the Sabre, berthed and silent, her hull gleaming ghostly white in the muted hangar lights. Siggerson gazed at her a moment through the small viewport. Longing and anger choked his throat. They had no right to park her in here with the derelicts, pending a conduct investigation of her crew. No right at all.
Ouoji chittered impatiently, and Siggerson realized he didn't have time to stand around. At any minute someone in Security could discover that the alarm systems were down.
"Coming," he said.
Ouoji trotted ahead of him, leading the way with swishes of her tail. Together they passed down the small docking tube to the Sabre's airlock. Its security lock had not been changed. Siggerson opened it quickly.
Inside, the Sabre was dark and dead. Her air smelled stale. Switching on a small hand torch, Siggerson fumbled through a locker and pulled out an oxygen mask. There was no point in using up the air residue left in the ship.
With his breath hissing audibly through the mask, Siggerson made his way quickly to the teleport bay on deck three. His torch stabbed here and there through the gloom. Silence crushed the air.
Searching through the storage lockers, Siggerson located the harness he had rigged up for Ouoji to carry things. Fastening this about her, he smoothed the silky fur along her plump sides.
"This barely fits you now," he said. "You're getting to be a butterball, Ouoji-girl."
Ouoji's blue eyes flashed in the torchlight. She cluttered an answer. Aware that she didn't like to be called fat, Siggerson hid his smile. He fastened two of the teleport wristbands to her harness.
"Ready to go?"
Oubji bounced on her sturdy forelegs and trotted ahead of him all the way to the airlock. Before he let her out, however, she butted her head against his legs.
"I'll be careful," he said, aware that if he were caught here he would face serious charges. "Out you go. Do you remember how to reset the security system? Should I repeat it to you?"
Ouoji raised her ear flaps, then trotted to the airlock and lashed her tail.
"Okay, you remember. Safe flight, Ouoji."
Siggerson opened the airlock and cycled her through. As soon as she was gone, the gloom seemed darker. He stood there a moment, following her progress with his mind's eye. There was no need to worry about her. Ouoji could do the job.
He sighed and started for the engine room. Stealing a ship from a space station was no easy task. He had a lot to do in the next few hours.
Caesar Samms walked along the broad concourse of Station 4's central axis. This was the area best known to the civilian visitors, for it had been designed to resemble a small park. Delicate ornamental trees, a sort of springy, blue-gray carpet of creeper to cover the ground, flagstone walkways, pots of blooming flowers in Terran and Minzanese varieties, pools and miniature waterfalls were laid out in such a way as to conceal the pyrillium deck and walls. The concourse was the enly large place in the station not curved. Overhead a holo created a synthetic sky—something much needed in the dark reaches of space.
Today the sky was Earth blue, complete with fluffy cumulus clouds and birds on wing. Every thirty-six hours the sky changed to represent a different world in the Alliance. It was
always day in Concourse Park. If you wanted to see stars you could go to any external viewport.
Along the sides of the park ranged expensive, duty-free shops with wares to tempt the pay credits of crews on leave. At either end stood comm shops, advertising datatrons and parcel shipment anywhere.
Caesar avoided the shops. He didn't want to run into any of his bar buddies and get dragged off to share drinks. Instead, he wandered through the park and pretended to be enjoying nature.
The tough thing about going AWOL was remembering that what had always been home ground was now enemy territory to be escaped. It took an entire mind shift. The worst disadvantage was being well-known. Your fighting style, your tactics, even your thinking pattern were familiar to this particular enemy. The key, therefore, became finding the precise moment in which to catch old friends off guard. It was a small moment, a fleeting moment. It might never come at all.
In which case, thought Caesar grimly, they would have to create a chance. And that could become messy.
Where was Phila? Restlessly Caesar checked his chron. She should have been here by now. The fact that she wasn't meant that Ouoji was late. And if Ouoji was late, that meant she and Siggerson could have been caught breaking into the ship.
A cold sweat ran down Caesar's spine. He didn't mind risks, but he didn't want a prison cell at the end of them.
Besides, he was acutely aware of the tiny floater tailing him. It measured about the size of his hand, which made it hard to spot in the crowds. It also had the capability of attaching itself to the ceiling or a wall to avoid detection. Since it was colored in the same utilitarian shade of station gray, it blended in.
But Caesar wore a scanner beneath his tunic, and its gentle pulses against his chest warned him that the floater was still with him. He checked its location, spotted it, and let his eyes wander casually in search of Phila.
Come on, toots. Don't let us down.
Snoops ran through this station like cockroaches. Caesar had never cared before, but until now he hadn't much to hide
beyond some contraband ale that he bought sometimes off the station's black market. He'd spent his life running surveillance on targets, but he disliked being a target himself. The floater made him itchy between the shoulder blades.
But a rendezvous in the park was notoriously hard to monitor, especially with the running water to serve as white noise. He sat down upon a pseudo-stone bench and frowned. What was keeping her? He checked the time again and tried to smother growing worry.
There wouldn't have been any need for this sneaking around if Internal Affairs hadn't gotten a wasp in their windpipe over 41's desertion. Everyone had tried to explain to those boo-heads that 41 had been working undercover with the meres and had been kidnapped by them off Kenszana, but IA wasn't buying the story. The fact that Kelly was stuck in a detox hospital didn't help any. The whole squad was under investigation for improper procedures, and Zoe was behind part of it with demands for a full inquiry into Colonel Nash's death.
Caesar snorted to himself. Nash had been a bastard. Getting nibbled to death by a coscacun in the swamps of Kenszana was exactly what he deserved. But the brass didn't see it that way. "Interplanetary incident," Caesar muttered aloud. "Hah!" "So you've snapped, is that it?" said a voice that made him jump violently. "Talking to yourself in the park. Bad sign, Samms."
Caesar turned to see Phila standing behind him with a wicked grin on her face. He drew in a breath and tried to slow his racing heartbeat.
"Very funny," he said. "You trying to be Miss Lightfoot, or what?"
"You and Siggerson are taking this whole thing too seriously. " Sweeping her black mane of curly hair back over her shoulders, Phila Mohatsa came around the end of the bench and sat down beside him. Her small hand touched his, and Caesar palmed the wristband she passed him with a feeling of breathlessness.
"Relax," she said, grinning. "The whole operation is simple. I'm going to make the last records tap right now—"
"Not so loud," said Caesar, fresh perspiration breaking out. "There's a floater—"
"Where?"
"Behind us, past the trees, seven o'clock."
She glanced over her shoulder. "Too far away."
"It could have a sensitive mike."
"Mandalel Trust me, okay?"
He sighed. "Okay. So you make the tap. Never mind the fact that if you get caught breaking security buffers, even to make free piggyback calls on the nets, you're facing galactic indictments and—"
"Shut up," she snapped. "I know what I'm doing. You've got to get into the arsenal right away. There're three frigates going out on maneuvers in forty-eight minutes."
Caesar looked at her. "The chance we've been waiting for."
"That's right. So move tail, Caesar. We've got work to do."
He stood up. "Right. Does Siggie know about this?"
"He does. That's why I was late."
"Watch for floaters."
Phila smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up. "Hurry."
Caesar left the concourse like a bat fleeing the rising sun. Forty-four minutes . . . Yususl He quickened his stride until he was just short of a run. It wasn't enough time for all they still had to do, and yet they'd known from the start of this plan that the crucial stuff would come at the last minute. There was no way to steal weapons to restock their depleted arsenal ahead of time without tipping off Internal Affairs.
He passed an officer's lounge. The double entry doors were opened while the lounge was being cleaned. Glancing inside as he jogged past, Caesar could see straight through to the enormous viewport overlooking the hangar area. Warning lights were flashing out there in the bay, and technicians in environmental suits were floating out on their tethers to set up taxi lanes.
During all the hangar activity, monitors were less likely to pick up the Sabre's departure until she was out of the station.
The floater stayed with him like a shadow. Caesar cursed it
and ducked into an emergency service ladder chute. He descended two levels in swift order.
When he emerged again into a corridor, he grinned to himself. He'd lost the floater.
Another one picked him up within minutes, hovering ahead of him at eye level as though to make a proper identity check. Caesar slapped it aside, upsetting its gravity stabilizers so that it dipped and nearly crashed into the wall.
"Out of my way," he muttered.
It bobbed after him, then stopped. A grinding noise came from it, and Caesar figured he'd damaged its motor control. He hoped it burned itself out. By the time another one showed to pick up his trail, he figured he'd be safely out of sight.
He ducked into an alcove of lockers and swiftly unlocked the one he'd rented over two weeks ago. Glancing out to make sure no one was coming, he yanked a pair of dirty technician coveralls on over his uniform. They smelled of coolant, and a few places were so worn the wiring showed through. His forged IDent badge clipped to his collar was likewise so scratched and worn that only a close examination would be able to read it. A scanner readout would probably be faulty. Not that he expected to have to pass through any scanners.
He jumped aboard a conveyor. Caesar adjusted his balance and began to jog through the passengers gliding along.
A Minzanese woman in the crisp tunic of station personnel glared at him as he brushed past her. "Illegal!" she snapped. "Improper use of conveyor. Demerits to record."
"Up yours," retorted Caesar and kept going.
Just short of an upcoming intersection of corridors, he vaulted the safety railing, ran across diagonally, and vaulted the railing onto the intersecting conveyor. A cadet whistled in admiration. Caesar waved, feeling like an idiot, and ran faster.
He burst into Engineering, caught his toe on the raised threshold, tripped, and saved himself from sprawling only by a complicated twist and wriggle. Luck was with him. The place was deserted except for a man in a lab smock, who came forward with a frown.
"Thirty-five minutes to launch!" shouted Caesar at the top of his lungs. "Where's our Forte filter?"
The technician sighed. "Do you have your repair requisition chit?"
"Right here, pal." Caesar pulled a grubby flimsy from his pocket and slapped it on the nearest work station. "Move it, move it, move it! You promised it would be ready yesterday, and we still don't have it. We're on launch countdown, and the captain is going to have my guts for garters."
The technician peered at the chit with a puzzled frown. "I don't recognize this. Nuvey?" he called, and a woman appeared in the far doorway. "Check on this, will you? Are you sure you've got the right work order?"
Caesar shrugged. "That's it. Come on. Either produce it or fit us out with a new one. Do you expect us to go at time distort without anything filtering out Forte radiation?"
"You can stand down as unready," said the woman.
Caesar gave her a disgusted look. " Yo, you want to tell that to my captain? You said it would be ready, so why isn't it? Slacking on the job, you are."
"We'll check," they said coldly.
Caesar paced restlessly up and down between the work stations while the two technicians conferred. The chit was another forgery; there shouldn't be a filter in for repairs at all. Caesar hoped they spent a long time looking.
As soon as they left the room, Caesar whipped through a side door marked NO ACCESS, using a security-override entry card he'd picked up on the black market for times like this. No one was supposed to know that this was a back entry to the heavily guarded arsenal. But Caesar knew about it.
Within three minutes he had coshed a guard, blanked out the scanner system, and entered the arsenal storehouse. Panting a little, he looked around the area.
"What are you doing in here?" demanded a sharp voice.
Caesar's hand was in his pocket as he spun around. He stunned the engineer before the man realized what he was about. A quick check around determined that the rest of the
arsenal was empty. Caesar worked fast, jamming all the access points.
Then he surveyed the racks of weapons, explosives, and larger artillery pieces—all rowed up neatly.
He grinned. "Just like the candy store."
He moved fast, slinging die-hards over his shoulder. These old plasma rifles were getting a bit dated, but they were still the most dependable range weapon made. He piled them up in a corner and trotted down another row, scooping up packets of explosives.
Hand weapons ... he frowned, wasting precious seconds in indecision. Better have something stout. He made for the bi-muzzle Maxell pistols—real beauties, these, with good fit to the hand, extreme accuracy, and plenty of punch. If they were going up against cyborgs, the tougher their ammo the better.
He dropped another armload onto his growing pile of loot and checked his chron. Not much time left. Gulping in a breath, he ran down another row. Body armor? Hot and uncomfortable, but necessary. He came around the end of a row, frowning with urgency, and stopped short.
Before him on a table lay a series of modified launchers so new they didn't even have their model serials stamped into the butt plates yet. Caesar drew in a breath of pure admiration and picked up one.
It was unbelievably light. Graphite housing, with a tabbed scope possessing sensory scales from infrared on up to molecular heat shift, a shell ejection kick so smooth it was soundless, and more compact than the old shoulder-slung models. Caesar pushed a button, and a stablizer arm kicked out from the butt to fit against the crook of his elbow. It could be fired like a pistol, and a sensor wire up the arm and hooked over the ear put all the scope sensors straight to the brain. Caesar was in love.
He scooped all of them into his arms and added them to his pile. Then he began searching for the ammo. They were designed for special-length shells. So where were these babies?
Heat seekers . . . long-range . . . short-range . . . old
Kloper charges . . . gas pellets. Caesar crawled along the ammo shelves on his hands and knees, checking containers.
He was taking too long. Twelve minutes to launch point. He had to leave now or he'd never be able to run all the way to the security hangar. Besides, at any minute someone was going to discover the security system had been breached. If he got caught in here, the guards would shoot first and ask questions later.
He ran out of containers and jerked himself to his feet, his kneecaps aching, frustration digging through him. He raised his wrist to his mouth, ready to call Siggerson, and saw a box near the wall.
It had no markings. Just like the launchers, he thought with a rise of excitement. He jerked open the container and grinned at the beauties lying inside in slim deadly rows.
Plasma missiles, just like the ones the Sabre carried, only in miniature size. Starship firepower right in the palm of his hand.
He whistled under his breath, aware that if he took these he was going so far over the line he'd never get back. They were ultra secret. He hadn't even heard a murmur about any weapons development along this line. He had plenty of firepower already. He didn't need to grab these.
But Caesar's hand remained on the ammo box. The very concept of these little missiles took his breath away. He could no more pass up the chance of trying them than he could stop his own heartbeat.
"Idiot," he said softly. "If you think Kelly's going to get you out of this one, you're crazy." He grinned to himself. "So let's be crazy."
He hoisted the box with a grunt and carried it over to his stockpile. Winded, he called Siggerson on his wrist comm.
"Ready," he said. "Tieonto my voice signal, and teleport."
"Acknowledged," replied Siggerson's voice. "Stand clear."
Caesar darted back and started to disengage his wristband so that there would be no chance of the teleport signal fastening partially onto him. Within the station there were so many overlapping signal waves and transmissions that teleporting
people was simply too dangerous. Caesar would have to get himself out of here the same way he came in.
But just as he started for the door, he heard muffled shouts from the other side and the sound of the lock cycling open.
"Hell!" he said sharply under his breath. He glanced around for a hiding place but he already knew there wasn't one.
He had only one way out. Swiftly, not giving himself a chance to think, he climbed into the middle of his loot. There was no time to tell Siggerson that he was coming along on the signal. Caesar saw the door slide open.
Guards rushed in, shouting just as displacement made the world go fuzzy. He had time to envision himself materializing on the Sabre with all of his body parts rearranged, then with a jolt he was nowhere at all.
Leaving Caesar in Conc6urse Park, Phila went past the comm shop with all the customers lined up meekly to pay exorbitant prices for calls to their homeworlds. Since getting her communications training, she hadn't paid once. It was easy to make piggyback calls on the nets. All you needed was the expertise to keep tracers from picking up your trail through the interfacing systems.
But tapping into the data files of Covert Operations was not easy. In fact, it was damned scary. She had a tracer following her around right now, trying to tag onto her tap. That had her worried plenty. Of course she knew better than to run on direct wire. If she got caught on wire, the tracer would lock her in and she'd sit there with all her neural circuits jammed so tight she couldn't physically move—wrapped up nice for the MPs to pick up. But even hacking in the old-fashioned way had its problems. If the tracer found the keyboard she was using, it could take sensor impressions of her fingerprints.
The agents in Covert Ops. were the original paranoids. Their files were wrapped under so many security tabs it took longer and longer for her to tap in. Data retrieval was almost
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impossible. Thus far, she'd been able to bleed off data only by duplicating it, then pulling it off before the mother circuit finished its loop and cancelled the duplication request.
She could only pull that trick two or three times per tap in, which meant every few seconds she had to erase and climb out, then find another way in. It was slow, frustrating work.
So far, however, it had been worth it. She had three-fourths of the investigations file on 41 and some juicy information on Harva Opie's mercenary business. All she wanted now was the list of Opie's bases and their security password codes, and she'd be finished.
Dodging the floater tailing her was easy, but to be doubly cautious she ran a scanner over her clothes to make sure she hadn't picked up any bugs. She and Caesar had met several times in the park; it was conceivable that micro-dot-sized homing transmitters could have been planted on the bench to adhere to her clothing and pinpoint her location.
The scanner search didn't turn one up. Satisfied, Phila found a deserted stretch of corridor and swiftly unlocked a service tube. Locking it behind her, she scanned ahead to make sure no technicians were working in this section. None were.
She hurried along the tube, crouching slightly to keep her head from brushing the top. When she came to a circuit box about a meter square, she grinned to herself and set about opening it. She lacked the transmitter frequency to unlock it, but the stout center blade of her prong pried the edges open enough for her to clamp off the alarm signal.
A couple of judicious wire snips later, and she had the whole thing open. A brightly colored maze of intricate opticals, plus gel-bonded communications cells the size of her thumbnail, each capable of holding over five-thousand megabytes of signal data, and thick cluster cables presented itself to her.
From her pocket she pulled her data scoop and wired it in. She checked for traps with care, and found two obvious ones and three extremely well-hidden ones.
It was hot in the tunnel. Perspiring, Phila forced herself to forget the urgency of her deadline and concentrate. There
would be all kinds of safeguards on these lines. The storage size alone warned her of that.
The keypad built into the box waited for her. She jacked in her first tap line, heard the first warning beep of a protected line, and yanked the jack quickly. For a few seconds she knelt there, her heart pounding too fast. Then she drew a deep breath and reset her scanner to check for signal variations. She didn't think it was sensitive enough, but it was all she had. Running it over the area she wanted to infiltrat...
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