Reason For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 1) (18 page)

While Valerie sat there contemplating her destination, the Spectre’s computer continued to monitor the flight field and now showed it was seconds from point of collapse.  She braced herself and felt her body being pulled in all directions momentarily, as the Histria Azure and its hitchhiker reverted back to normal space.  It was still unknown why organic life felt that change from normal to hyperspace and vice versa.  All humans felt it and animals were caused obvious distress by the transference.  Even plants were affected by it.  Tests had been done, multiple jumps back and forth with plants on board ship.  They were all damaged by it as though they had not had water or sunlight.  After continued exposure they even died.

This had been confirmed with animals as well and although there had never been a recorded case of a death for humans, the scientists carrying out the tests reported worsening health.  No one could pinpoint the problem.  Physically the subjects were in perfect health.  The one consistency they could find is that, body mass made a difference.  The higher the mass of the subject, the less they were affected.

It had been determined that hyperspace travel was perfectly safe, as long the subject was not exposed too many times over a relatively short amount of time.  It was calculated to take a minimum of fourteen consecutive jumps, in a twenty-one hour period, to cause any significant damage.  The shortest distance between two inhabited systems, was the six light year trip between Galway and Killarney or Killarney and Ballymena, so there was no danger.  It had also been proven that inorganics showed absolutely no change down to the molecular level.

Shaking off the effects the transference brought, Valerie started scanning for media signals.  The Spectre would receive a signal from the local traffic beacons, including the system identity and would display it momentarily.  That was not what Valerie was looking for.

It took her moments to pull up a news feed.  The gravity shadow of a sun extended out to 1.2 billion kilometres, approximately half way between Jupiter and Saturn in the Sol system.  This was deemed as close as hyperspace allowed you to go to a star safely, before it became unstable.  Depending on the star and in what state it was in, you could go closer.  It had been found though, that it was very difficult if not impossible to model that instability, so all craft exited at that minimum distance.  If your destination was something outside of that it was quite easy to leave hyperspace earlier. 

With the signal traveling at light speed, it was approximately an hour old.  That was of no issue to Valerie, what she was looking for would be older than that.  Courier vessels moving at Velositas thirteen or fourteen could have made the journey in seven days against her eighteen.  The story of Furioso would be all over the news by now.  She hoped it would have died down, but didn’t think so.  Constant updates would have been coming in from Olympus as they discovered more information.

It was immediately obvious the news feed originated from Blaze, matching the information the Spectre was putting up on her screen.  The Ship was also taking in information from its passive sensors, automatically doubling checking what it received from the beacons.   The computer used the star alignments, planet arrangements and the position of the systems Sun, to calculate a location.

A system chart appeared automatically on the screen, confirming the system to be Blaze.  It showed Blaze A on the opposite side of its sun to the direction they arrived from.  The crew of the Histria Azure would have known this when they calculated their flight plan.  They brought the freighter out of hyperspace 1.2 billion kilometres directly above the sun.  A turn sharp enough to bring them around behind Blaze A was not possible via hyperspace.  The crew planned their arrival to give them the shortest sub-light journey.

The freighters sub-light engines were already coming online.  The ship began to re-orientate itself to take the least time course to Blaze A.  A Spediteur class freighter had a cruising sub-light speed of thirty thousand kilometres per second or ten percent of the speed of light.  With an acceleration of one percent every fifty minutes it would take over eight hours to reach its cruising speed.  Needing the same time to decelerate relative to the planet, taking a total of eighteen and a half hours to reach Blaze A.

The Spectre, in contrast was much faster, it was actually designed to be one of the fastest ships in space.  Able to accelerate at one percent every five minutes, up to a maximum of ninety thousand kilometres per second or thirty percent of the speed of light, the Spectre would reach its maximum speed in one hundred and fifty minutes.  Valerie would reach Blaze A in a little over six hours.

Letting the freighter do the work for the moment, Valerie searched the news feed for information on Furioso.  As she feared, it was not difficult and was still headlining the hourly bulletins.  The Pantheon’s government were pushing it for all it was worth, by releasing horrific pictures of casualties floating within the station, frozen faces bloated by decompression.  There were reports from ships involved in search and rescue and heroic stories of people sacrificing themselves to save comrades. 

All of this Valerie skipped over, she was not even tempted to look at the casualty lists to see if any of the people she knew and worked with for years, were on there.  She just could not bring herself to care.  She was glad she checked none of Shadow Company’s roster were on board before carrying out her plan, but that was all.

A quick search for who was to blame for the attack, brought up a news program recorded on Olympus, before being sent on the news courier to Blaze.  Valerie sat back to watch it play.  It began with a woman wearing an impeccably tailored suit, sitting in a comfortable chair in a studio with her bare legs crossed.  An image of Furioso was displayed behind her, the battered and broken husk of the space station giving true gravitas to what she had to say.

“I’m Sunta Plato for the TSE News Network here on Olympus.”  She began as though no one saw the two minute intro Valerie skipped past.  “Here at TSE, we would like to say that our thoughts and sympathies go out to the survivors and those who have lost family members and friends, in the horrific attack at the Furioso station. 

“How William Baccurin’s Free People’s Society.”  There was a distinct note of scorn in her voice as she named the FPS.  “Can justify such a wilful and cowardly attack on those men and women, who are our staunchest defenders of our freedom…”  Valerie fast forwarded what she assumed to be the usual government propaganda spin.  She had heard similar reports on incidents she personally was involved in with Shadow Company.  They rarely included anything resembling the truth.

A picture of a man in his early twenties replaced the image of Furioso behind Sunta Plato and Valerie slowed the recording to normal speed.  “-we can now categorically say that the attack was carried out by Lance Corporal Ruben Novajkovui, from the 114th Legion Commando Marine Regiment.  Legion Intelligence have been able to confirm that the Lance Corporal took a shuttle from the Battleship PLN Horus to Furioso, three hours before the attack.  Those sailors and soldiers on board the Horus, must be both glad he did not target their vessel and wondering what they could have done to stop him.

“Once on board the station, Ruben Novajkovui killed several of the brave Rangers on guard who tried to question him, before heading to the anti-matter reactor.  Once there he forced Technician Simone Honduras at gun point, after killing many of her co-workers, to over-ride the reactors controls.  This is what caused so much devastation to the space station.  Legion Intelligence has not yet released the details, but they have confirmed there is a strong link to Thomas Doherty, who Zeus PD bravely attempted to apprehend on the morning of-” Valerie slammed her hand down on the ships controls, stopping the report.

Screwing her eyes tight as the wave of grief and despair ripped through her again.  The tears never really stopped and had been a slow constant trickle down her face.  Now they flowed forth in full force.  Great sobs racked her body.  Valerie screamed and wailed, as she saw as clear as day, the broken and bloody bodies of her children and husband.

Drawing her feet up she hugged her knees and buried her head into her legs.  Forcing the universe away from her as she grieved for her family.

***

It was some time later that she was able to bring herself to raise her head and face life again.  Taking a deep breath she pushed that never ending well of emotion back behind its thin wall.  As her thoughts became coherent, she saw over half an hour had passed in a blur.  The navigation display showed the Histria was up to almost one percent of the speed of light and traveling at two thousand, eight hundred kilometres per second.

Forcing herself to concentrate, she focused on the news report.  The Government obviously decided to keep her name out of the story.  If the wrong person started asking questions about Valerie Carter and Eleanor Doherty, then there was a real danger of many things coming out into the open.  Valerie could well understand, why they would not want such things as Prometheus and the missions Shadow Company carried out, seeing the light of day.

Satisfied her face would not be on every networks channel, Valerie started the power cycle increasing the reactors output and brought the main engines out of standby.  Normally she would have done this before leaving hyperspace.  It was a clear indication of how distracted she was.  Everything felt like it was too much effort, nothing felt natural anymore.

It took a little over half an hour for the Spectre to bring itself to full readiness.  By then, the Histria Azure was travelling at four thousand, five hundred kilometres per second and was still accelerating.  Valerie disengaged the Spectres landing gear and a burst of the directional thrusters pushed it away from the freighter.  No longer connected to the Histria, the Spectre was not accelerating.  The massive freighter continued on without noticing its passenger depart.

Waiting a further half an hour, Valerie orientated her ship for its own journey to Blaze A, a path that would take it around the Histria.  It was a longer trip that decreased the chance of being detected and only added a few extra minutes to the journey.  In theory the Spectre would be entirely invisible to the Histria.  Some risks, no matter however small, were not worth taking when all it would cost is a little extra time.

The twin drives lit up and the Spectre moved off smoothly.  Valerie began to check the tactical data that was streaming into the ships passive sensors.  With full access to the most up to date Legion signal decoders, the computer was noting the location of every Legion asset in the system, along with all the civilian traffic moving around. 

A Legion task force was on the outskirts of the system, well outside the hyper-limit.  Two battleships with a light cruiser and destroyer screen.  Too far out to be of any concern to her, Valerie dismissed it.  What did catch her eye was a base in one of the asteroid belts, right on the edge of the hyper-limit and away from any planets.  It was not mentioned when Shadow Company were last in the system.  That wasn’t really surprising.  There was no relevance to their mission.

Only the location showed on the tactical screen.  She queried it with the computers and the signal gave no additional information.  The data banks also came up blank.  Looking at the information for the system itself it showed no mining in that area.  All the mining was taking place on belts closer in to the system.  That in itself was not unusual, it cost time and money to move raw materials from the belts to the planet.  Why mine further out when closer resources were to hand.

It was a mystery and like the task force, not one of any relevance so Valerie ignored it.  She had two hours until she arrived at Blaze A and she headed back to ready her gear.

Whatever luck she had, was still with her and it was night time over the Ginormican Mountains.  Valerie piloted the Spectre smoothly down out of the night sky, heading for an area she remembered.  Shadow Company scouted it as a possible base.  Too far from where the Butler clan operated, the Company chose not to use it in the end.  The area was made up of deep valleys, only accessible by air, with large caves at their bottoms.  With little of value in the way of resources, there was no reason for humans to go there.

The ships powerful active sensors built a detailed topographical map for Valerie to study.  Being highly directional, they left little sign of her passing, unless she was unlucky enough to fly over a human settlement.  If she did, hopefully they would think it was the Blaze Police sending in an armoured aircar to sweep through the mountains.  Since Shadow Company visited, the Clans stayed quiet and the Blaze Police made a point of letting them know they were still watching.

It took almost three hours and Valerie could see the sun beginning to rise, when she finally found a suitable location to hide the Spectre.  Small by the standards of Hyperspace capable ships and many inter-system ones, it still measured over one hundred metres in length.  Almost all of its internal volume was taken up by complicated systems and the smallest anti-matter reactor the Legion could build. 

That same reactor also made it highly illegal and no planetary government, including the Pantheon, would want it landing on their world.  An anti-matter reactor could be devastating, as Valerie proved on Furioso.  The Pantheon passed a law long ago, against anyone building a ship capable of atmospheric flight and used anti-matter as a power source.  Such a ship was not even allowed to enter a Pantheon system. 

It almost made Valerie smile as she considered the implications should someone ever discover that the Spectre had not only been built but had actually been stolen.  It was a fleeting moment quickly smothered by her pain.

With a competence earned with over a hundred years of experience, she manoeuvred the ship into a cave.  It was tight and she had to fly the ship purely on its anti-grav, making adjustments in the centimetres to clear the rugged walls.  Here the wrap around holo screen was the perfect tool giving her the clearest picture possible of where the Spectre was in relation to the cave. 

Carefully, bit by bit she brought the ship in and down onto the uneven floor.  The landing gear compensated for it as best it could and the ship was left with only a ten degree slant.  Valerie began the shut down cycle and headed back to the crew quarters for her equipment and bag.

She’d already changed into her black combat boots, dark, form fitting trousers and matching top.  Over that went her fitted light body armour, protecting her body, shoulders and upper arms, with pistol holders on each thigh complete with Mag pistols.  None of it was Legion issue and were her personal equipment, completely indistinguishable from those worn by people on a hundred planets.  Finally, she pulled on the last gift her family would ever give her.  The coat felt like a piece of them, it made her feel an almost warmth to wear it, until the wave of grief and loss crashed over her.

Gritting her teeth she rode that wave until it subsided, took a deep breath and grabbed her pack.  It would take her over a week to walk to the nearest bastion of civilisation.  Hopefully she could then get a ride and lose herself amongst the masses that made up Inferno, the capital city of Blaze A.  The pack was filled with food, water, clothes, money, weapons, along with climbing and survival equipment, from a grav-belt to ropes and sleeping bag to small stove.  Altogether it weighed almost fifty kilos and she knew that even she was going to be feeling its weight as she made her way out of the mountain range.

Activating the door, she stepped down the exit ramp and breathed in the cold, thin air.  Modern technology could only do so much and in comparison the air in the Spectre tasted stale and lifeless.  After more than eighteen days, it was a relief to feel rock under her feet, the pull of real gravity and a breeze coming in through the cave’s mouth.  The cave was made of an almost black rock, formed as a vent for volcanic activity far in the planet’s past.  A white moss type substance gave an interesting contrast to the black rock.  Only the fact that it was empty of any sign of animal life was of concern to Valerie.

Dumping her bag on the floor, she went back into the ship and up to the cockpit to check on the shutdown.  The computer brought the reactor into its minimum cycle mode, where it would tick over and supply just enough power for its containment fields, along with a trickle to the ships electron cells.  All the other systems shut down one by one, until only the lights were left.  Satisfied the ship would not give itself away with any energy leakage and be useable if needed, she walked out, sealing the door behind her.

Picking up her rucksack, she slung it on one shoulder and walked out of the cave mouth to take a proper look at the valley.  Looking around, she could see she was in the widest part, narrowing at each end to canyons.  All of the walls were almost vertical with little slant and in many parts, the walls leaned into the valley.  Activating her wristcomp, she displayed a holographic image of the valley taken from the Spectre’s sensors on the way in.  Focusing in on the end canyons in turn, she could see they both ended in dead ends, without any easy way out.  Perfect for hiding in it may be, getting out of it was not so easy.

Fortunately, Valerie’s grav-belt could lift her out of the valley easily.  Such technology was very power hungry and its battery pack had a limited endurance.  There were hundreds of kilometres of mountain range to cover and the belt would be her most important tool.  She needed to ration its use as much as possible.  The belt went around her waist, with straps looping around her thighs and this particular model was designed for the military, so it fitted around her pistols.

Orientating herself by her holomap, she headed towards the north wall, following her progress on the wristcomp to make sure she exited the valley at the right point.  While searching for the Spectre’s hiding place, the scans created details maps of an area forty thousand square kilometres in size.  The computer was then able to calculate a route through the first eighty-six kilometres of her journey.  It still left her over fifty kilometres in a straight line, she would have to navigate by experience, training, instinct and luck.

Activating the harness and setting it for a low powered ascent, she rose up gently, keeping close to the cliff, using her legs to prevent her from hitting it.  She felt light headed as she rose up the cliff face and swore to herself.  The air here was very thin and she forgot to put on her re-breather.  A clever device, designed for use in the many harsh environments Commando’s found themselves.  It could scrub the air of almost any toxin or gas.  Where the air was too thin or thick for humans to operate efficiently, it regulated the rate oxygen was drawn in.  Up here at the top of this world, it would draw air in quicker and allow Valerie to breath normally without any loss of breath.

The re-breather was still in her pack and fortunately she hadn’t begun any strenuous activity.  She could not get to it until she reached the top and took care to breathe long deep breaths, while concentrating on keeping her body as relaxed as possible.  Even for her enhanced genetics, it was a struggle and by the time she reached the top she felt giddy, a clear indication of the lack of oxygen.  She took her time, carefully pulled herself over the ledge and deactivated the belt.  Shrugging off the pack, she opened the pouch on the back and pulled out the re-breather, at least she put it in an accessible pocket.  It slipped onto her face easily, covering her nose, mouth and chin.

Automatically it began to work and Valerie breathed deeply.  It took only a few seconds for her head to clear and for her to feel better.  Once she could trust herself, she climbed to her feet and took in her surroundings.  The grav-belt brought her out between two peaks with a traversable slope running downwards.  It was a beautiful view with the sun rising in front of her over the mountain peaks.  Once, she would have stood there to take in the spectacular scenery.  Now, all the attention she had left to spare was for the next part of her journey.  With her pack tight on her back, she set off towards the rising sun.