Ghosts of Empire (Book 4 of The Empire of Bones Saga) (25 page)

With the instructions given, she led the way into the building. The lobby was more upscale than the exterior suggested, but that wasn’t a surprise to her. The owner liked to flaunt his wealth.

The wide desk on the other side of the lobby boasted two human receptionists and a beefy guard. The large sign behind them proclaimed who they worked for.

The central receptionist smiled at Olivia brightly. “Welcome to Calder Broadcasting. How may I be of assistance?”

“You can take me to the main studio right now.”

The woman’s professional smile turned a little sad. “I’m sorry, but we don’t give public tours. Perhaps you could schedule a special event. I’ll give you the public relations com number.”

Olivia smiled wryly. Her disguise was obviously too effective. “Take a closer look and see if you know who I am. Actually, we don’t have time for that. George, if you please.”

The man beside her drew his stunner and shot the guard. He went down without a peep.

When both women screamed, Olivia held up her hand. “Quietly. We won’t hurt you. I’m Coordinator West and you’re helping me stop a coup. I need you to move quickly. Take me to the studio.”

The woman on the right stared at Olivia in shock. “It
is
her! She’s alive!”

The main receptionist’s expression told Olivia that she was less enthusiastic. Of course, her boss wasn’t Olivia’s fan, either.

Still, Olivia was surprised when George stunned the woman.

“She was reaching under the desk,” he said. “Probably a silent alarm. Miss, you keep your hands where I can see them.” His stunner never wavered from the remaining receptionist.

The woman nodded sharply, frightened, but still cooperative. “There’s an alarm, but she didn’t activate it. If you want to get to the studio before the address, we need to hurry.”

Olivia gestured for the woman to proceed. Time was very short.

* * * * *

Captain Black took Jared and Kelsey to a massive underground hanger, a number of sleek vessels sat waiting there. Most were only for atmospheric use, but a few along the back wall looked space capable.

“These are prototype vessels meant to demonstrate some of the work we’ve been doing here,” the Fleet officer said. “We don’t take them out very often. Many of them incorporate stealth technologies of one kind or another. We can get you to the island in one of them.”

“Can one of them get me straight to orbit?” Jared asked. “That might make things easier.”

The slender Fleet captain gestured to the small craft against the far wall. “These three can make it out of the atmosphere. One of them—the marine pinnace—is offline. We’re swapping the grav units for upgraded versions. We thought we might need extra speed with current events. Just not so soon.”

Jared had to admit that it didn’t look capable of flight with the back end opened up and dozens of technicians stripping out the drives.

“How soon to get it back online?” he asked.

“At least a few hours, Admiral. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have started getting it put back together sooner.”

“What about the small one?” Kelsey asked. “It looks like a fighter.”

Captain Black nodded. “It is, and she’s ready to go. Unfortunately, there’s no stealth on her, other than what normally comes with a ship that size. Its upgrades are in the weapons department. She doesn’t use missiles. Instead, we put a powerful, but short range, beam weapon on her. It can make two shots before the capacitors are discharged, but inside its range, it should be a thoroughly unpleasant surprise for someone.”

Jared was impressed. That was a lot of punch for that small a vessel. More than the missiles they normally carried when used at short range. It wouldn’t be very safe for the pilot, though. At beam range, a bigger ship would kill them all too easily.

“What about the third one?”

The boat in question looked nothing like a normal wedge-shaped pinnace. Instead, it was more of a disc.

“It’s a stealth testbed,” the other man said. “It’s slow, but the damned thing is almost invisible to regular scanners until you get right on top of it. It’s completely unarmed and only has room for two. It’s also, I hesitate to say, a screaming bitch to fly.”

That brought a smile to Jared’s face. “Is that the voice of experience?”

The other man nodded. “Oh, yes. It’s prone to spinning and wobbling. We’ve been working on it to bypass the orbital bombardment stations, but there hadn’t been a driving need to act just yet. I think the time has come.”

“Does it have a standard docking rig?”

“I’m afraid not. This was only a proof of concept. For a real mission out to one of the orbital platforms, we’d build a larger ship. And, we still might not have included a docking setup. That would pretty much announce its arrival to the station.”

“Having examined the stations,” Jared said, “I’m not certain they would’ve noticed or cared.” He turned to Kelsey and Lord Hawthorne. “I think this is where I take my leave of you. Be careful, Kelsey. As much as I want our people back, we can’t lose you.”

She gave him one final hug. “I’ll be fine. They can’t kill me if they can’t find me.”

“I’m not reassured.” He looked at Captain Black. “I’ll need a pilot and a suit.”

“I’ll have someone meet you there, Admiral. Have a good flight.”

Jared shook his hand and then Lord Hawthorne’s. He took the indicated walkway and went down to the floor of the hanger. He spent a few moments admiring the atmospheric craft. They looked wickedly fast and as deadly as a supernova.

When he arrived at the saucer, a man in a vacuum suit was waiting for him. He was short and thin, almost boyish in size. He held out his free hand. The other had a second vacuum suit in it.

“Admiral Mertz, I’m Roger Walton, one of the test pilots. I’ll be taking you up.”

He shook the man’s hand. “Roger. You’re a civilian?”

“Through and through. It’ll take me a few minutes to preflight the critical systems, so I’ll let you put your suit on.”

Jared slipped it on and waited patiently for the man to finish. The very last thing he wanted was for anything to go wrong.

After a few minutes, Roger climbed up into the ship via a slender ladder. He didn’t invite Jared up, so he was probably still looking at things. He stuck his head down after a bit and waved for Jared to come up.

“Everything looks good, Admiral. It’s somewhat tight in here, so watch your elbows. Are you a pilot?”

Jared nodded. “Sure am, but I have no intention of being a backseat driver.”

That made the man smile. “That’s good. I’ll give you the rundown, but unless I’m somehow incapacitated, please keep your hands off the controls.”

The cockpit was even tighter than Jared had imagined. No wonder they’d picked such a small man to pilot it. Jared felt like he couldn’t move at all without being in danger of touching something he shouldn’t.

“Not a lot a room, is there?” Roger asked. “It takes a lot of space for everything they have to have to make the stealth field work.”

Jared strapped himself in to the couch. “How does it work?”

“Damned if I know. The brains tell me it’s need-to-know. And that I don’t.”

The man brought a console between them to life. The piloting controls did look somewhat familiar, but Jared hoped he didn’t have to try them out during an emergency.

“How do we get out? And how do you keep the locals from wondering what all the strange aircraft are?”

“Most of the people in this area are friendly. There also aren’t many folks feeling a burning desire to move to the country and grow crops. Those that do come along, well, let’s just say that the locals make them feel very unwelcome.

“As for getting out of here, there’s a shaft leading to the surface inside an abandoned grain silo. It’s reinforced to take the stress of grav drives moving inside it. The roof opens like a flower. We launch at night—usually very early in the morning—and steer clear of town.”

That made sense. “And the planetary traffic control network?”

“We have some people in the loop. They add us to the expected traffic—while changing our origin point to somewhere safe—or cover for us if we’re seen while testing any stealth mods. We keep flights to the very minimum, though.

“Today, we’re not on any flight lists. We’re going outside the atmosphere and there’s just too much risk of someone seeing us. We’d rather not leave even a fake electronic trail this time.”

Without another word, Roger brought the craft to a hover and nudged it toward a massive hatch in the wall. The thick metal slid aside revealing the shaft the pilot had mentioned. It went horizontally into the ground for several kilometers before it curved upward.

They shot out of the silo at low speed and accelerated into the sky. Jared wished the craft had implant interfaces. The view must be spectacular, even at night.

“We’re taking it slow,” Roger said. “Half an hour to orbit. We don’t want to chance anyone seeing us. We especially don’t want to risk one of the orbital bombardment platforms shooting us down. That would ruin our evening.”

“The platforms won’t engage inside the atmosphere,” Jared said. “Once we’re high enough, I’ll enter the clearance code into our transponders.”

Roger grinned. “While I’d love that, we don’t have any transponders. That sort of defeats the whole idea of a stealth ship. I guess none of the brains thought it likely we’d ever get our hands on something like that.”

Jared couldn’t see anything in that to make him smile, so he kept his mouth shut and let the pilot focus on his work. The ship rose to the very edge of space without anything disastrous happening.

“Scanners from the orbital platforms are still safely below detection thresholds,” Roger said. “We’re angling to pass beyond them in the northern polar region. Their coverage there is slightly weaker. Of course, if they see us, all three of them will be able to take shots at us.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

It felt like it took hours for them to climb close to the level of the platforms. Roger’s cheerful commentary trailed off to nothing as he focused on his work. Jared gripped his seat and prayed.

“Approaching maximum scanner strength from platform three. It’s going to be closer than I’d prefer, but I think we’ll squeak by. The brains allowed for some leeway, so even if it hits detection threshold, the platform might still miss us. Not that I want to count on that kind of luck.”

This was far more hair-raising than Jared had planned. He sat with his heart racing as they inched into the top of the orbital’s envelope and beyond. He knew the moment they were safe because Roger visibly relaxed.

The other man turned to him with a look of pure joy on his face. “We did it! The scanner strength is dropping off. They’re focused on the planet, so we’re safe.”

Jared clapped the man on the shoulder. “Very well done! Now we need to get to
Invincible
. Preferably without letting anyone down below know we’re here.”

“I’m picking up her active scanners. I verified what her orbit was before we took off. Setting course now. We can signal them when we get closer.”

Jared was actually curious how close they could get without letting
Invincible
know. This was very similar to the approaches he’d done on
Courageous
in a fighter before they got to Harrison’s World. Except, that kind of stealth relied on high speed coasting.

“I’ll set up a channel and be ready to respond if we’re challenged, but I want to see how close we can get.”

Roger gave him a dubious look. “We kind of pushed our luck with the orbital stations, don’t you think? We’re already way inside your ship’s normal detection range. Isn’t that enough?”

“I thought you were the daring pilot looking for some adventurous stories to tell. How many free drinks will slipping up on a Fleet superdreadnought earn you?”

“Zero if it blows us out of space. Okay, we’ll try it, but I don’t want to risk getting shot. If the scanner strength spikes, call them before they get too worked up.”

The man was right. If they’d had missiles, they could’ve opened fire and almost certainly have gotten the first salvo in before the startled bridge crew could raise the battle screens. Perhaps even before the AI could react. Of course, it helped to have a handy planet screening their approach.

Unlike the bombardment stations,
Invincible
wasn’t putting out a constant stream of targeting scans. She relied on a number of detection criteria in which another ship would reveal itself so it could focus on it for more detailed readings.

Propulsion was a big factor. Large ships required massive grav drives. Those distorted space enough to detect a ship long before they’d otherwise see it.

“We’re coming up on five thousand kilometers,” Roger said. “We’re still below detection threshold, but someone observant might still spot us.”

“How close do you think you can get before they see us?” Jared asked.

“That depends on the angle of approach. We’re above them now. If we come straight in, maybe three or three and a half thousand kilometers. If we pass them by and come in from their stern, their own grav drives will mask us until we’re maybe two thousand kilometers away. Give or take.”

Jared gave the pilot a decisive nod. “Come in from astern.”

“Aye, sir.” Roger gave him an exaggerated salute and a smile.

In the end, they beat Roger’s best estimate and Jared’s worst nightmare. They slipped right up to the ship and attached to her hull just forward of engineering without any challenge.

Once the magnetic clamps locked down, Roger turned to Jared with a huge grin. “Now
this
is worth a lifetime of free drinks for sure!”

“Yes, it is,” Jared said glumly. “I’m going to have to find out what the brains’ secret is and update our scanning profiles. We’re obviously at risk. Put us into standby mode and we’ll go surprise a few people. I’ll buy the first of your well-earned drinks, too.”

“After all this stress,” the pilot said, “make it a double.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Once Jared was safely away, Kelsey turned to William and Captain Black. “Okay, now it’s time to find our missing people. Actually, I’d like to make sure that the others get safely to this island, first. I have a Fleet com unit. Jared said that he slipped his to Commander Meyer, so we need to get close enough to reach them. The booster my marines have only works on my end.”