Prison Ship (18 page)

Steiner sat back in his chair and held his head in his hands. He could now imagine a fate worse than death. Maybe it truly was easier for his old friend to relate to people as a machine because then he didn’t have to be constantly reminded by the people around him of the utter tragedy of his own situation. Steiner laid his head down on the console and fell asleep.

The glaring sunlight pouring through the security screens woke him up. He yawned, stretching his arms to their full length. On the screens, Tramer had assembled the men for one last training session, using the portable laser cannons. Steiner found his unfinished cup of coffee sitting nearby and sipped the unappealingly cold liquid, hoping the caffeine might wake him up. Then he noticed Tramer calling to a trainee two hundred feet away. He told the man he had typed the wrong figures into the access panel of his portable laser cannon.

Tramer couldn’t possibly have seen what sequence the man had entered from that distance unless his sensors had somehow detected it. Perhaps they had picked up the electronic pulses the keys generated? Or, maybe they deciphered the movements of the trainee’s fingers?

Considering what Steiner had just seen, he realized Tramer must know the passwords to everything on the ship.

When he had learned that his old friend was still alive, Steiner had hoped to rebuild his relationship with Maxwell, but too much evidence indicated that his former colleague had turned into a heartless murderer.

Even so, he couldn’t bring himself to execute Tramer. He was too much of an asset to the missions ahead. Maybe Tramer did like him, as Daniels had said. Maybe he could use that a little while longer.

When he informed Bricket of his decision, Bricket shook his head.

“The odds are against you,” he said.

“They always have been,” Steiner replied.

DAWN found the New Order Empire’s Commander George Williams standing out on the balcony of the lookout tower, surveying with disgust the area around his planetary outpost. The deep scarlet orb of the system’s sun rose over the plains to the south. It was diffused by the carbon-dioxide dust storms rippling across the flat terrain.

A fierce gust buffeted Williams, forcing him back against the rear wall.

He hated this planet. Its atmosphere required that they all wear pressurized suits and helmets. The mountains to the north shielded the installation from the gale-force winds, strong enough to topple buildings.

Williams raised his binoculars to his facial mask and searched the storming plains for any signs of an invasion force. A half hour ago, their automated satellite had warned them of an approaching ship. Since then, they had lost all contact with it.

Williams knew that the enemy attack he had been expecting for the past week had finally come. He had few armaments with which to defend his outpost. His superiors had already decided far in advance that he would lose this battle. Williams and his men were only to pretend to put up a fight. There wasn’t much else they could do besides that.

It isn’t fair,
Williams thought to himself. He had originally been promised a posting at Hurot IV, the most heavily armed outpost near the border. Hurot IV was the most elite of all their outposts, having been constructed on a planet that once possessed multitudes of luxury resorts. High-ranking officials went through there all the time, increasing the possibilities of being noticed and promoted.

Admiral Richina must have given him this assignment in revenge for what Williams had done at that dinner party last month. Williams winced at the memory. His mouth had gotten him into so much trouble. In front of several other guests, he had attributed Admiral Richina’s callous disposition to the fact that his wife had been executed for being openly sympathetic to the United Star Systems. When Williams had finished the account, he looked up and saw Richina glaring at him from the next room. Right then, he knew his career would take a tumble, and it had.

“Here they come.” Lieutenant Ortiz’s voice sounded within Williams’s helmet. “They’re approaching from sixty degrees to the south.” Williams looked over to the suited man next to him who stared at a mobile readout. All the staff of the planetary outpost was already suited up and ready to retreat.

Williams found the exact spot with his binoculars. A large swirling cloud moved among the normal dust storms.
Three, maybe four, vehicles.

In a few minutes, it would finally be all over.

His gloved fingers found the universal channel under his face shield. “Pulse cannons, open fire on the approaching targets.” His voice echoed within the confining space.

The two gunports shot bolts of destructive energy across the barren surface at the invaders. Williams stepped back into the doorway, thoroughly disgusted by the sight of their pitiful arsenal.

“Sir,” Ortiz called out through his helmet’s comlink as he pointed to the east. “Enemy ship closing.”

Williams looked up in time to see a dark shape materialize from behind a cloud of nearby swirling dust. The vessel passed directly over the installation, dropping small bombs over the pulse cannons. In a flash of light, his base’s armament was gone.

“Damn you, Richina,” he shouted without activating his comlink, hurting his own ears.

His men began fleeing from their posts up into the mountainside.

“Sir?” Ortiz asked. The atmospheric mask failed to hide the pleading expression on Ortiz’s face.

Why not?
Williams asked himself. He had put up a fight as he had been ordered to do. He had no idea what the convict invaders had planned for their prisoners, but he didn’t want to find out.

“Sound the retreat alarm,” he announced over the universal channel. He hated losing a battle, but a planned defeat felt even worse.

While the sirens blared, he and Ortiz climbed down from the tower and got into an all-terrain vehicle. By that time, no one was left inside the compound. Williams drove up the mountainside, fighting against the gusts of wind threatening to overturn them. When they reached the heights of the ridge, he looked back at the invaders, who were breaking through the front gate of the base. In seconds, they had infiltrated the massive doors and were branching out into different buildings.

They can have the entire base,
Williams thought, gritting his teeth.

Something gleamed in the sunlight from inside the base.

“Why have we stopped, sir? Let’s keep going.” The lieutenant sounded nervous, on the verge of hysterics.

Williams ignored the man and lifted his binoculars to take a closer look at the glistening object. Some kind of robot was with the attackers. He had never seen anything like it.

“Let’s go, sir, before they come after us,” Ortiz cried out.

Williams glared at him, then accelerated the vehicle forward again. The raiders wouldn’t come after them. They wanted the information stored within the outpost’s computers. Little did they know, it was all fake.

STEINER couldn’t understand it. The New Order Empire’s plans made no sense. He sat behind his desk within his conference chamber on the
Marauder
. A table-sized holographic map of the known galaxy lay in front of him, with the galactic core acting as “north.” Earth lay in the center of the United Star Systems, scattered within the habitable regions of the Orion and Perseus spiral arms. The Outer Colonies populated the area east of the United Star Systems, mixed within the Orion and the rich Sagittarius arms. According to the enemy-ship deployment, the New Order Empire must be planning another invasion, of the southern regions of the United Star Systems, on the same scale as their initial invasion on the Day of Betrayal. Strategically, an attack in the northern sectors seemed more advantageous to Steiner. Why would they bother with the south? He picked up a computer pad lying next to the holographic map, a pad that held all the requisitions, troop transfers, and a personal letter. He navigated to the personal letter, written by the enemy commander to his wife, which described the part that their installation would play in the planned invasion. Could the man have been so careless not to have even encoded it?

Steiner looked up at Tramer, who stood on the other side of his desk inside the conference room. “Is this all there was in their computer mainframe?”

“Yes,” the weapons officer’s voice rumbled.

“We tore that place apart,” Pattie said, standing by the door. “We didn’t miss a trick.”

“I don’t believe this,” Steiner muttered to himself in utter bewilderment.

“Neither do I,” Tramer replied with certainty.

Steiner blinked. “You think we were
supposed
to obtain them?”

“There is no other explanation. The occupants of the base made no attempt to destroy their computer banks before retreating into the hills.”

Steiner tugged at his beard. What if Tramer was right? What if the Separatists had foreseen their raid and planted the misinformation? It seemed plausible. Steiner looked over to Pattie, seeking his opinion.

The Saint shrugged. “They did leave before we could even fire a shot at them.”

“I have reviewed all the outposts we are scheduled to raid,” the weapons officer said. “They are likely to produce the same results as this one. If we are to acquire any real strategic material, we must deviate from our orders.”

“Where are you suggesting we attack?”

Tramer pointed to a planet on the holographic display, farther into the interior of enemy space. “We raid this installation.”

With the press of a couple of keypads, Steiner enlarged the area where the spiny finger pointed. “Hurot IV? That’s insane—it’s too far in. There would be five battlecruisers on us in an instant.”

“There are no battlecruisers in that area.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“Because these plans say there are.”

Tramer’s theory seemed feasible, but Steiner still had doubts about such a bold move.

“The installation on Hurot IV will have ten times the armaments as the one both of you just raided,” Steiner said. “The people there will fight to the death to protect their government’s secrets. Do either of you believe our crew of convicts has any chance of defeating them?”

“Hell, yes!” Pattie bellowed, raising his fist in the air. “Bring ’em on.”

Tramer stood motionless. “We must try,” his synthesized voice replied.

Steiner thought back to the statistics he had seen on the Orders disk. The United Star Systems needed a victory right now. This might be his only opportunity to make a difference in the outcome of the war. “Okay, we’ll raid it.”

The announcement caused Pattie to dance a little jig. “I’ll tell the men. We’re gonna get some action this time.” Whistling his theme song, he turned on his heels, opened the door, and climbed the steps toward the command center.

Tramer waited until the door slid closed. “Captain, I must—” The blackish lips seemed to stumble on what they were about to say. The weapons officer’s posture shrank slightly, then became rigid again. “In order to achieve success, we will need Bricket’s help.”

In that instant, Steiner clearly saw the man inside the machine, struggling to admit he had been wrong. “Thank you, Mr. Tramer. I will speak to him.”

Tramer saluted and marched out the door.

Steiner marveled at how human Tramer had become to him. The three weeks he had spent watching life from the perspective of his weapons officer had changed his view of the man completely. He still didn’t understand all of Tramer’s motives, but he felt confident that they shared the same goals.

Upon entering the computer room, Steiner found the bartender working on the main terminal, a smoldering cigar drooping from his bearded mouth. Even though the ventilation system constantly worked to circulate fresh air, the pungent odor of burnt tobacco stung Steiner’s eyes. He sat next to Bricket and waved the smoke away from his face.

“Is this a business call?” the man asked gruffly.

“I’m offering you the chance to win back your bar.”

The sullen eyes sparkled to live. “I’ll play any game with stakes like that.”

“Can you devise a better method of jamming a satellite’s transmissions? The last one picked us up for a second before we successfully disabled it.”

The bartender tapped the ashes off the end of his cigar. “I could try boosting the power or widening the range of frequencies dampened. I might have to write some new software code. Maybe some adaptive algorithms.”

“How soon can it be done?”

“Maybe in a couple of hours. Is there a hurry?”

Steiner hesitated, realizing everyone else might not be so determined to raid Hurot IV as he or Pattie or Tramer. “It appears we’re going to raid an outpost in the interior. It’s heavily fortified. Surprise might be our only weapon. If their satellite picks us up at all, we might become trapped behind enemy lines.”

“Is this outpost next on our schedule?” Bricket asked.

“Yes, it is,” Steiner lied.

Bricket stared at him intently for a few long seconds. Then Steiner remembered what the bartender had told him earlier in the detention cell. Poker players could determine falsehoods based on facial expressions. Was he reacting in a way that Bricket could interpret? His pulse quickened. He forced himself to maintain a calm demeanor. His neck started to burn. He felt on the verge of flushing, when Mason walked through the door.