Chronicles of Athena Lee (10 page)

Someone had used a form of weaponized chlorine gas on the cafe. Fatalities included the kitchen staff, twenty civilians, and one agent from my detail. Things just got really personal.

The attack proved one thing, we seemed to have a security leak. No one had our schedule, it was not written down. We had picked our dining location at random. NCIS was brought aboard the investigation. Their agents sprung into action, investigating everyone. Not one person was left to chance.

A break in the case came when checking government bank accounts. One of the security public surveillance monitors had received an unusually large amount of credits the day of the attack. Interrogation led to a PAC (Political Action Committee). Staffers had been instructed to be kept aware of my location 24/7. The orders had come from one of the owners. Finding the owners got kind of murky after that.

NCIS was still investigating when the second attack occurred.

My team and I had just entered the reception hall when shots rang out.

“Down, down” screamed my bodyguards.

“Shooter on your left, check right!” one of the other guards yelled, as we took cover behind a fallen table.

The other guests were scattering in all directions. Gunshots rang out as personal security teams and gunman battled it out across the room. The security forces were not as professional as mine was. Random guests were getting shot!

My face was pressed flat to the floor. I had an agent covering me.

So I didn't see it when a trio of gunman, using human shields, rushed our position. I heard the screams, as my team shot them down.

“Alive, we need them them ALIVE!” my team had switched to stunners but some of the contract security had opened fire, within seconds the gunman were all killed. Unfortunately, so were the hostages.

The noise in the hall dropped as the cries of the wounded took over.

My team finally, allowed me to sit up. All that I could see was the piles of the wounded and of the dead. The charging gunman after being stunned had been shot numerous times. Paramedics were torn from saving the wounded guests. To trying to save at least one of the gunman. In the end none of the assailants survived.

Needless to say I wasn't invited to anymore events.

NCIS saved the investigation.

Communications between the latest bounty hunters and a local law firm were revealed. Records, taken from the firm, liked it to the PAC group and ultimately the Buckley family.

The evidence was still circumstantial however. The investigation ground to a halt.

Then it happened. Computer records from the NCIS investigation, somehow, were leaked to the press identifying the Buckleys as persons-of-interest.

Because of all the innocent lives that had been lost, even the Buckley’s allies were screaming at them. The political tide had finally turned.

Right or wrong, it became a trial in the public eye.

NCIS and other government agencies were tearing into the Buckley families lives. Family skeletons and scandals were being exposed.

Something had to give.

We left for my new post on the regular shuttle, no task force this time.

The navy publicized my interview with some of the local newsies, where I emphasized that I trusted my fellow crew members in the navy. The Navy, hoped to guilt anyone who would take credits to help kill me.

Here I was, right in the middle of it all.

The Admiralty was at a loss for what to do with me now. After much discussion and turmoil, I was given two options.

Remarkably, they let me choose rather than ordering me.

Go to ground. Allow my family in Hong Kong to protect me was one option. Or I could travel to my next assignment and trust the navy to keep me safe.

Both really hard decisions. My father was a high ranking planetary militia officer. His troops would help, but did I really want to put their lives in front of mine?

I chose to move on with my next assignment. The navy was my life. I trusted the people that I work with. You have to trust someone to survive in space. I got lucky. The new assignment was my dream job. The New Madrid shipyard and repair facility.

Chapter 10

Naval intelligence sent two bodyguards with me. We left on the regular commuter shuttle.

In a morbid way it was funny. When other crew members saw me standing in line, they postponed or just flat-out-refused to board the shuttle.

So much for trust. I almost had to pilot it myself.

Command had to ask for a volunteer pilot. I had heard that the bounty on me was over $150 million credits. It would almost make me want to kill myself, to collect the money!

Flight time was pretty short, less than a day.

No one died.

Never having been here before, it was a real treat.

The New Madrid shipyard was simply HUGE. It covered all of the orbitals surrounding a small moonlike asteroid. That chunk of rock was used for all of the shipyards raw material and was one the largest mining operations of its kind in the galaxy. This was an engineering dream.

The shuttle was approaching what looked like an asteroid.

One of my guards was like, “that's not an asteroid, that's a battle station.”

I had to punch him for that one, those old vids are still very popular. No storm troopers were waiting for us when we exited the shuttle.

New station equals a new job.

Old business came first though. On the trip, Wilson and I had prepared a short vid, more of a show and tell about Firefly station. All of the how's and why's went into this. Construction details, as well as my impressions and of course, my mistakes. We had left out the really embarrassing ones. No need to make myself look that bad. This made my introduction a whole lot easier. After a couple of showings most everyone's questions had been answered.

My new assignment was to work with developers of new space station features, predominantly hydroponics and life support areas. When I had built my station, those areas were vital in keeping me alive.

I knew a little about this subject. The overall project commander was Chief engineer Ronald Eversole. He had been a civilian designer of mining stations recruited by the navy just for this project.

So far, the project had successfully developed stronger and more pressure resistant bulkhead doors and hatches.

A good hydroponic room can keep a station alive. It provides both food and air helping to reduce carbon dioxide in the air. Necessary space is at a premium on a station. Having enough room for your plants is always an issue. That was my job on this project, finding room. Most current designs went for a standard room or series of rooms interconnected for redundancy. The idea that I had was a spiral of hydroponic pods circling around the station core. The heat from the exhaust ports would help heat the plants, putting less strain on the HVAC system. Access tubes and lifts would interconnect the pods for maintenance and harvesting. This design hopefully would reduce the power drain and aid life support for a station.

It took me several weeks to build the pods and interconnect the lift system on our mini-station. The navy had built a scaled down version of Eversole's design as a test bed. I, personally, rarely saw the man. He left orders in my project in-box if he needed something changed.

I was very busy. I rarely saw anyone other than techs. My security team had changed gears, two weeks into the project. They had integrated with station security and were rarely here as a physical presence. The station as a whole, was about a week from completion when a small accident happen.

Space is dangerous accidents do happen.

This one looked like a real accident. A power conduit was not aligned properly and when turned on it overloaded and blew. It destroyed part of the main security panel. Camera's, sensors, and alarms were affected by the explosion. Repair crews began work almost immediately to repair things. Extra crews had to be brought in to check for hull integrity and look for possible cracks. My section was unaffected by this. My whole concept was working, and it was working well. All of the plants were alive. Oxygen levels, at least in hydroponics, were up 25% compared to normal. The whole crew was excited about the upcoming demo for the navy. Our designs might make a difference and help to save lives.

Working alone, on a malfunctioning pod high up near the exhaust ports, I never saw who struck me from behind.

At the last second I heard what I thought was Wilson yelling at me in my ear.

I awoke, I was in one of the grow pods. I felt a painful lump behind my ear.

“Wilson, what's going on?”

“Athena you were attacked. I think they left you to die. The pod controls are sealed and someone has initiated an overload in the fusion engines. There is a design flaw or something and they can't be shut down. They sound as if they are going to explode.”

Something was really wrong, those were the brand new Merlin engines that were the same ones on our front line ships. No way it was a design flaw.

“Wilson, can you access the emergency communications?”

“No we are being jammed. Somewhere on this deck is a frequency jammer.”

My mind was working at what seemed like light speed. This station was built with all of the newest hatches and bulkheads. Were they strong enough to survive a fusion explosion?

When we lose power, no more life support. At my workstation I had a portable power source and a large box of power system equipment.

I got to work. Praying to all the space gods, I used my portable power module to reroute the system routines, to power the back-up life support equipment. This was a navy station. Redundancy was the name of the game with us.

Nothing makes time crawl by, like waiting for a large explosion. When it finally happened the station jumped and bumped like it was a carnival ride at a cheap circus.

The core of the station blew out like a volcano. Bursting out of the top of the station. The armored bulkhead shielding and hatches held!

Life support was out everywhere, except in hydroponics. What little air I had was minimal, but it was life sustaining.

Wilson, jabbering in my ear, said that he could now talk to security.

I contacted my team and told them I was still here and alive. It took several hours for them to cut the doors open. The explosion had welded them shut. My injuries were light, but I ended up in the med-bay anyway. Not really hurt I was sitting on the bed reading my tablet. It was here that chief Eversole found me.

“Lieutenant, are you OK? I thought for SURE that you would have killed.” Eversole looked away from me toward the main entrance.

“Chief, the bulkheads held. The navy will be so excited! Plus my hydroponic layout increased output by over 25%....”

“I'm sorry Athena, but just how DID you survive? Life support should have failed in the explosion. I don't understand it!”

“Well, chief” not really getting his point here, “the navy always builds redundancy into everything that they use. I was able to power the back-up life support system.”

Chief Eversole had a sad look on his face when he turned back to me. “I'm sorry about this Athena, but you were not meant to survive that explosion.” At that he pulled out a short barreled fragmentation gun. “It's too late to make this an accident, sorry.”

I threw my tablet at him as I dove under the bed.

He bent down, trying to shoot me. I kicked him in the head.

Stunned, he fell backward, accidentally firing his gun. The sound of the gun going off was very loud, sparks flew as the medical equipment around us shorted out from the shot.

I yelled for help, as I scrambled on all fours to get away from him. He rose to his knees and fired another shot at me, hitting another medical equipment station. I ducked behind the desk and tapped my link trying to contact my support team.

Eversole fired once more into the desk. I then heard shouts and loud sounds of a struggle. I peaked over the desk. A security officer was on the floor cuffing the now stunned chief engineer. Shakily I stood up. The officer reacted as if to a threat, gun coming up. When he saw my uniform he relaxed.

“Are you OK, lieutenant?” He asked me. “I'm fine, thank you officer.” At that point my ever late security protection team showed up and took over.