Inherited War 1: Retribution (31 page)

“Me too.”
   Was all Jeth added to the argument.

“So why didn’t he show up at your rendezvous if he was so important?”  Cole asked Thalo.

“I don’t know.  I sent him a few different messages through a few sources.  I can only believe he thought what he was doing was more important than answering the summons.”

“Yea
h about that, I thought that was your purpose in life.  To prepare and wait for me or my people and aid us.  What could he be doing that was more important than that?”  Cole asked.

“It is and again I don’t know.  All I can say is that it would have to be important for him to miss.”  Jeth was resolute in his feelings toward the Worlder he called Split.

Cole looked back and forth between the two Worlders.  He sighed and rubbed at his eyes.  “Damn it.  Okay, go get what you need.  Find this guy and get me the Intel on the Esii.  I expect you back in no more than two weeks from the day you leave.  I also expect you to have this Split along with you.  Understand?”  They both nodded their agreement and started to rise.

“We shall do all that and more.”  Thalo said with a flourish as they left the room.

Cole firmly believed his life just got a lot more complicated.  He swiveled around in his chair and leaned back rubbing at his eyes again.  He hoped he had nothing to worry about and that Thalo would do his job well enough to go undetected and get away clean with the Intel, but he didn’t keep his hopes that high.  Oh well, what was the worst that could happen?

51

“I had almost absolute faith that Thalo could pull off the mission I sent him on.  According to him, I am the first being that ever saw him while he was cloaked.  Before they left on their mission I asked him about his unique ability to mask sound and hide himself from view.  He basically told me to mind my own business and ask him again later when he felt like betraying his race to an outsider.  I guess I will never know how he does it.  I did some digging in the ships records and found that a few different races of beings have varying abilities.  Some have slight telekinesis powers while others can sense and share emotions with people.  That got me thinking and I did a further search on Jedi or anything resembling the force and came up empty.  I was very disappointed.  It seems that some beings just have extra talents that others don’t.  I also did a search for a light saber type of weapon and came up empty.  Today was a day for disappointments.”

Cole had been camped in the command center of the base for the last two days.  Thalo and Jeth were late, very late.  They had wanted a week.  Cole had given them two and now they had been gone for three.  Cole was running out of time to make a decision.  He had met with his people last night to discuss options.  It hadn’t been very helpful.  All of their hopes had rested on Thalo getting the Nixa’s Intel on the Esii.  They hadn’t been able to think of a new way to acquire the badly needed Intel.  If Thalo and Jeth didn’t return, they were going to be forced to start spending some credits to buy the information and take the chance of having their plans passed along to the Esii.

Damn it
, Cole silently cursed as he stared at the holo image of the Home System.  He had been staring at the map floating in front of him for the past few hours and nothing had changed.  Still no sign.  He had sent a small group of his Nixa out to a close inhabited world and had them check the news nets and posts from Nixa.  They had come back with no good information.  If Thalo and Jeth had made it to Nixa they hadn’t been caught, or if they had it had been kept a secret because the news was silent on any hacking of government systems.  There were also no strange reports from Archones about capturing any Worlders.  They had just disappeared.

That
, more than anything, was what had Cole worried.  He had entrusted Thalo and Jeth with the coordinates to Home.  If the Esii had somehow gotten their hands on the pair, the Home System could very well be in big trouble.  After the Nixa had returned with their disheartening report, Cole had moved the base to a higher state of readiness.  Both ships had at least a minimum crew aboard to prep them if they were attacked.  He had found and deployed more sensor platforms and auto defense satellites.  He was confident the defensive measures were sufficient enough to protect the base but he still was worried about an attack. 

Sky had been with him almost nonstop for the past few days of his vigil, until he had asked her to go check on the only other surviving human left in the galaxy.  She had left him not twenty minutes ago to do just that.

The news there was still not good.  The patient still exhibited, what Sky still called, abnormal brain wave patterns for a human and was still unresponsive to stimuli.  She may as well be dead for all the life she didn’t exhibit.  Machines still did her breathing and she was fed via IV.  One more failure added to the list.  Sky thought it may be time to just let her go.  Sky told Cole that she wasn’t in any pain but she couldn’t live on her own. 

Cole glanced around the command center.  It was a brightly lit room full of holo displays.  They showed in great detail, the surrounding asteroid belt and the system it was in.  Other displays showed the base itself or the dock and yard area.  He was still amazed at the level of detail that could be shown on these displays.  Other screens were blank and would stay that way until they were attacked, then they would constantly show damage and repair information.  Cole hoped to never see those turned on.  If they were, especially this soon, the war would be over.

The
commander’s chair he was sitting in was, as always, very comfortable.  It was elevated so it gave him a good view of the whole room.  This was the first room that looked like it should, well what the movies made a sci-fi command room look like.  The ships were totally connection based so there wasn’t much to see if you were not plugged into the ship.  Just a room with some chairs and a few displays.  The base wasn’t as sophisticated as the ships and the necessity of the base troops to move and fight made the bonding process untenable.    He slouched down in his chair and rested his chin in his hand.

Without
warning the defense net came to life.  Cole shot up straight in his chair and peered intently at Home System floating in front of him.  A small red dot appeared on the fringes of the system just outside of the minimum jump range.  The Nixa manning the sensor system looked back at Cole with his question unvoiced.  Cole nodded at him, and the Nixa turned on the warning klaxon.  Right about now the ships should be revving up and personnel should be running to transports to report to the ships.  Cole let the klaxon blare for a few minutes just to make sure everyone was moving before he had the Nixa silence it.  The red dot hadn’t moved any closer since it had been picked up on their sensor net.

It was hanging there just waiting, like it knew it was in range and was waiting to be identified.  Cole looked at the comm operator and said.  “Get me a channel to that ship.”  He waited while the comm man brought up all frequencies.
  He nodded to Cole. 

“Attention unknown craft.  If you have already sent a message
, then ignore the parts of this one that are unnecessary.  State your intentions, crew size and any other information that you may think will help keep me from blasting you out of space.”  Cole glanced at the Nixa on the comm station.  “What is the lag time on transmissions?”

“At that distance about thirty minutes.”
  He responded.  Cole heard the door slide open and someone walk calmly into the room.

Without turning around he said.  “Sky
, this isn’t your duty station during an emergency.”

“I know
. I just wanted to see if it was them.”  She sounded a little hurt by his snapped comment.

“Sorry, nerves I guess. 
You’re fine, there are no injured anyway so you’re not vital to the med lab right now.”  He waived her over to the nearest seat.  “No confirmation yet on who it is, but the ship doesn’t match the one they left in.  They haven’t come any closer than our extreme sensor range.”

The
y waited and watched the holo.  Within ten minutes of activating the alarm klaxon, both ships were fully staffed and ready for action.  Cole ordered the
Retribution
go stealth and he pushed out the
Reckoning
to cover for the base.  This was one thing the movies didn’t prepare you for, the waiting.  It was hard to imagine something travelling at the speed of light taking thirty minutes to get to its destination and another thirty to get back.  The countdown clock finally reached zero and started to count up.  They had to have received the message by now and had hopefully sent one in reply.  If they had sent one almost instantly it shouldn’t take more than thirty-one or two minutes to receive it.

The time
slowly ticked by.  Cole’s eyes never left the image on the map.  He refocused the view of the map to center on the unknown ship.  He zoomed the view in and found himself looking at a small craft that had to barely be able to manage a grav jump.  If Thalo and Jeth were in there it was very crowded, not to mention if they also had Split with them.

Time ticked by.  The clock hit thirty minutes and no response came.
  Five more minutes passed with no response.

“
Hal, get one of the
Retribution
’s transports back here and pick us up.  Hangar one is the closest. I will meet you there.”  Cole shot to his feet and ran to the exit.  Sky was close on his heels.  They ran down the hall and took the lift down to the hanger level.   The door to hangar one opened and they saw the small transport from the ship landing in the bay.  They sprinted across the bay and vaulted into the back of the transport.  Hal had the small craft up and moving before they had settled into the pilot’s couch.

“No change in the unknown ship.”  Hal supplied as they rocketed away from the base and turned toward the
Retribution
.

“All right,” Cole paused for a moment. “
Tell the crew to get ready to run an intercept and I will be on the bridge shortly.”  Cole glanced at Sky and shrugged.  “If it’s them and they are in trouble we have to go and find out.”

“If it isn’t them and someone is setting a trap for you?”
  Sky asked back.

“Then
me being on the
Retribution
is the best bet of getting out of any trap alive.”  Their conversation was cut short by the ship landing in the
Retribution
’s cargo bay.  Cole was up and out of his seat in a flash and heading to the bridge.  Sky scrambled to keep up but was no match for his raw speed. 

Cole burst onto the bridge and vaulted over his command chair.  He grasped the arm rests and hurled himself into the link with the ship.  His awareness expanded
until he was the ship.  He did a quick status check with the crew before changing the ship’s heading, and giving it a nudge forward.  He ran the specs on the stealth systems again and set the speed to the fastest level he could, while maintaining total stealth.  It would take them nearly an hour to get there.  Cole silently fumed.  If it was the Worlders, and they were in trouble, every minute would count.  They had already wasted a little over an hour trying to talk to them.  “Hal, start feeding me the scan info from Home, I want to know everything I can about that ship before I get there.”

“There isn’t much Cole, but I’ll give you what we got.” An image started to build itself in front of Cole.  It started as a boxy
, blurry shape.  As they got closer and the
Retribution
’s passive scanners started to add more detail to the Home scans, the ship started to resolve itself.

Cole would have let out a whistle if he’d been in his own body.  That was one beat up ship.  The general shape of the ship should have been a rectangular shape with a sloping front that ended in a slight point at the nose.  Cole scanned the records and found an image of a similar ship
, but in mint condition.  The ship in front of them only vaguely resembled the one in the archives.

It was missing its stabilizing
wings, which would make entering atmosphere impossible.  The front view port appeared to have been lost to vacuum and the emergency shutter was down and pretty banged up.  No wonder it hadn’t replied, Cole couldn’t even tell if it still had a comm array.  He studied the ship from every angle and couldn’t find any possible way for it to hurt his ship.  Even if the small freighter was packed with the most volatile explosive in the known galaxy, it wouldn’t be enough to penetrate his shields.  So he shifted his focus away from the obviously wounded freighter and started to survey the surrounding area of space.

“I can’t find anything out
there; I have been searching since it first appeared on our sensor net.”  Hal seemed very thoughtful for a moment before he continued.  “It has to be the Worlders.  There is just no other explanation for a random ship to show up out here.”

“I tend to agree with you but I’m still taking it easy and coming in stealthed.”  Cole centered his focus on the ship again.  He was amazed it had made it as far as it had.  The ship looked dead in space.  It wasn’t even bleeding electrical noise.  That had Cole worried
, because if the ship had lost power during its flight here, everyone on board could be DOA. 

Finally
, after an agonizingly slow hour had passed, they were in visual range of the ship.  Cole stared at it, trying to will those on board to respond to the repeated hails that where assailing the tiny ship.  Cole flipped the
Retribution
end over end and opened the rear hatch.

“Cole what are you doing?”  Sky was managing to send over shock and amazement with the words.  “We can’t bring that ship on board without knowing why it’s here.”

“It has to be them.”  Sky knew who he was talking about without him saying so.  “If they are on that ship then they could be in trouble and I can’t take that chance.”  He opened the rear cargo bay doors and activated the tractor system.  He locked onto the damaged freighter and guided it onboard the
Retribution
.  He closed the exterior doors and brought the interior cameras online.  He watched with anticipation.  Nothing, no movement, no reaction whatsoever to being brought on board.  Cole severed his connection with the ship and lurched to his feet. “Go get the med bay ready to receive visitors.”

With that he was off.  By the time Cole made it down to the rear cargo bay there was already a
four man security team waiting by the doors.  Cole had forgotten about them but was glad they were here in case his judgment was wrong.  As he came up to the door, the security Captain held out a small pistol.

“Here
Sir, this is made for close quarters on board ships in a vacuum.”  Cole mumbled his thanks as he pushed his way forward to the door.