Chapter 11: Dead Drop

A beeping noise woke Boyd, and he struggled to free himself from Lorza’s furry arms, climbing out of the sleeping bag and rushing to the instrument panel in the cockpit. The incoming hail notification was blinking, so he hastily put on the flight headphones and angled the microphone towards his mouth, hitting accept as a hiss of static came through.

“ ... repeat, this is the civilian cargo freighter ‘Nelleblad’ responding to distress beacon, come in please, over.”

Boyd couldn’t believe their luck, a freighter had picked up their beacon so soon?

“Come in Nelleblad, we hear you, thank you for responding, over.”

“What’s your situation,” the voice on the comms asked, distorted by distance and interference.

“We’re a short range shuttle in need of rescue, two crew members, we’re looking to hitch a ride out of the system. Can you pick us up?”

The pilot of the Nelleblad hesitated for a moment before giving his reply.

“Negative on that, shuttle. I’m going to need some kind of proof of identity, there have been reports of recent pirate attacks in this system, over.”

Shit, the attack on the UNN jump freighter, the shipping companies that operated out here must have alerted their assets of the threat and warned them to keep an eye out for exactly this kind of situation. A lone shuttle drifting at the edge of the system could be a honey trap for passing ships, as UN law required any vessel that detected a distress beacon to investigate it. Boyd would have been suspicious too had their situations been reversed. He had a UNNI badge that would serve as ample identification, but how could he transmit the data?

Of course! The scanner on his oh-bis. He pulled his holographic badge from his pocket and tapped at his monitor, placing the leather wallet on the dashboard and slowly moving his wrist over it. The camera took photos of it, the tool originally designed for covertly copying sensitive documents, and he withdrew the data cable from his computer and plugged it into the shuttle’s instrument panel. He copied the file, then prepared to send it to the Nelleblad.

“Roger that Nelleblad, I’m sending you an image file, over.”

He activated the shuttle’s communications equipment and the display showed that the Nelleblad was streaming the file to its onboard computer, it might end up a little fragmented at this distance but it should be enough to prove his identity. After a few seconds he got his reply.

“UNNI? What on Earth ... what are you doing out here? Over.”

“It’s a long story, I would prefer to tell it to you in person. Do we have permission to board? Over.”

“Your ID could be faked ... but I don’t see why you would do that, there are far more plausible cover stories than this. Very well, I’m transmitting my coordinates to your flight computer, holding tight until I pick you up on my sensors, over.”

“Copy that Nelleblad, we’re in your debt, over and out.”

Lorza poked her massive head into the cockpit, opening her cavernous mouth to yawn, her claws sinking into the padded headrest of the pilot’s chair.

“Did someone pick us up already?”

“Yeah, a civilian freighter, looks like we might be out of here sooner than I thought.”

“Oh well, I guess it can’t be helped.” She leaned in close behind him and pressed her teeth into his neck, making him jump in his seat. “I wanted you all to myself a little while longer.”

The freighter loomed in the distance, illuminated against the velvet black backdrop of deep space by its running lights. Its long, skeletal frame was filled out here and there by massive cargo containers, the comparatively small cockpit and living quarters of the ship affixed to the bow of the vessel. The conventional and superlight engines were mounted on the stern like a counterweight, and Boyd angled the nose of the shuttle towards the open hangar bay, just behind the hab module the front of the vessel. They closed quickly, spurts of blue flame shooting from the nose of the shuttle in order to decelerate it and slow their approach.

Boyd maneuvered it inside the bay, only large enough to handle two shuttles, and there was a clunk as the landing gear lowered and the little craft was caught by the freighter’s artificial gravity field. He lowered the landing ramp, gesturing for Lorza to wait inside, and stepped out gingerly onto the deck of the Nelleblad. The pilot was waiting for them, a portly man wearing a stained orange jumpsuit, and wielding an XMR configured for wide-spread. He aimed the shotgun at Boyd, who froze, not wanting to make any sudden moves that might alarm their host.

“I’d like to see your badge again please,” the pilot said, and Boyd slowly lowered his hand to his pocket in order to retrieve it. He held it up and activated the finger print scanner, the holographic UNNI badge displaying on the front. “A little closer please,” the pilot said, gesturing with the barrel of the gun. Boyd inched a few steps forward, the pilot squinting at his wallet. Finally he lowered the weapon and seemed to relax a little. “Sorry about that, necessary precaution you understand, corporate sent out a pirate alert for Hades.”

“Yeah, no worries,” Boyd replied. He was a little shaken, for a moment there he thought the pilot might have been on the Syndicate’s payroll. “I have a friend with me, a Borealan. Please don’t be alarmed, she’s completely harmless.”

He gestured for Lorza to descend the ramp, and though the pilot’s eyes widened in surprise when he saw her, his gun remained safely at his side.

“So ... where are you guys headed?”

“The nearest UNN outpost, I realize I’m turning you straight back the way you came, but I can promise you compensation for fuel and time lost time. I can probably arrange some kind of reward for you too, if the brass will allow it. I’m on an urgent mission of the utmost importance, and I need to get the information that I’ve recovered into official channels as soon as possible.”

“Hell, are you guys spies or something? You been investigating the pirate attacks?”

“You could say that, yeah.”

“Well if you’re gonna compensate me then I’ll be glad to take you, lord knows I’ll be happy to avoid Hades for a few extra days. If you guys can write me up a document explaining the delay that I can show to my employer then everything should be squared away.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t come back to Hades for a while if I were you, things there are going to get ... turbulent over the next couple of weeks.”

“Well I’m glad I ran into you two then,” the pilot replied, gesturing for them to follow him into the living quarters. “Is it all top secret or can you tell me what’s going to happen?”

“Need to know basis, it’s highly classified,” Lorza replied sternly, mimicking Boyd’s accent.

“Oh, in that case I’d better not pry!”

Boyd turned to glare at Lorza and she suppressed a smirk, ducking under the human-sized door and into a short hallway lined with cabins. They followed the pilot down to the cockpit, far larger and more spacious than the one in their shuttle or that of the Zemchug, not quite as expansive as a capital ship’s bridge but this civilian freighter was jump-capable and it was a big vessel. The pilot sank into a rotating chair at the main console and punched in coordinates, a computer monitor displaying trajectory, fuel consumption and other miscellaneous data as he programmed their flight path.

“We can get to a UNN fueling station one system over in about two days, you guys have food with you?” Boyd nodded. “Good, pick a cabin, there are harnesses on the beds for superlight travel and there should be some plastic bits in one of the drawers. I’m not sure about your ... friend here, have her bite down on a shoe or something.”

“I’ve done plenty of jumps,” Lorza said, “won’t be a problem.”

“Well we’re keyed in, so I’ll give you fifteen minutes to bring your gear in from your shuttle and get secured before I initiate the jump sequence.”

Boyd and Lorza left to fetch the crate of food, Boyd whispering once they were out of earshot of the pilot.

“You’re not a spy, what are you doing?”

“Just having some fun! He totally bought it too.”

Boyd shook his head, mounting the ramp and dragging down the crate, Lorza elbowed past him and plucked it from his hands as she grinned down at him. He could barely lift it but to her it was practically weightless. They returned to the living quarters and set the crate by a bed in one of the cabins, Boyd opened a drawer in the bedside table and rummaged for a bit, wiping it on his sleeve and placing it in his mouth. It would prevent him from biting off his own tongue during the jump. When the ship’s superlight engine fractured reality and plunged them into a parallel dimension, where space and time flowed differently, his nervous system would go haywire and he would suffer everything from uncontrollable muscle spasms to temporary insanity. It got easier the more times you jumped, but it was always a good idea to take precautions.

He lay down on the bed, securing a harness across his chest, and then his ankles and wrists. Lorza stood beside the bed, looking down at him with a sultry expression, and he suddenly felt oddly vulnerable.

“What’s with that look? Get to a bed, you need to strap in, we’ll be jumping in a few minutes.”

“I was just thinking, we’re going to be here for a couple of days and I can come up with some ... interesting uses for these harnesses.”

Boyd blushed and she grinned at him, encouraged by his involuntary reaction.

“Just get to a bed, go on, shoo.”

She wandered over to the door, sneaking another lingering look at him over her shoulder with a smirk before ducking out of the room. Another couple of minutes passed, Boyd staring at the ceiling as he waited for the jump, a warning siren startling him as it rang out through speakers embedded in the walls. Jumps didn’t worry him, he had done hundreds, but somehow the siren was never any less alarming. He felt the familiar sensation as the superlight engine began to charge, like static electricity coursing across his skin as the engine concentrated all of its stored energy towards the bow of the vessel, preparing to create a small black hole that would allow it to pass through and out of conventional space. The ship’s superstructure shook violently, the forces at play wrenching and twisting the metal, until everything went black.

Boyd took in a sharp breath, his muscles quivering as he strained against his bonds. Where was he? Had he been captured? Was he being tortured? He fought ardently, exhausting himself as he realized he was trapped. He couldn’t see anything, did they have a bag over his head, was he blindfolded? Bit by bit his memories returned to him, and he remembered what was going on, his delirium fading away as his senses sharpened and he thumbed the release catch on the cuffs that secured him to the bed.

He removed the harnesses and sat upright, rubbing his shoulders to drive off the cramps, his heart rate normalizing as he stood and walked unsteadily to the door. The jump was complete and the ship would have traveled a dozen or so light years, now it would have to coast in normal space while the superlight engine recharged.

He met Lorza in the hall, rubbing her head and leaning against a door frame, grumbling to herself as she nursed a headache.

“Just another day in the corps,” Boyd joked, but she didn’t laugh. He made his way towards the cockpit where the pilot was recovering in his chair, and the man turned his head to greet him.

“Successful jump,” he said as he rubbed his eyes. “It’ll take a couple of days for the drive to charge up again, and then it should only take us one more jump. Make yourselves comfortable, I need to get in contact with my depot and explain why I’m not currently docking at Hades.”

Two uneventful days passed, there wasn’t much to do on the freighter besides wait around and eat, and so they ended up doing a lot of the latter. Lorza worked more of her magic on the rations and supplies that they had been given, even wowing the pilot, and she became somewhat of an unofficial cook for their small crew. Though the fires of their passion still raged, the presence of their host frustrated them. There were no opportunities to spend time together away from prying eyes due to the cramped nature of the hab module. They would have to bide their time and make up for lost opportunities later.

After two days, and six meals that would have shamed even a cruise liner chef, they completed their second jump and materialized a few hundred thousand kilometers out from the UNN fueling station. It was remote, there were only a handful of defensive interceptors and two frigates that were being loaded up on their way to the inner systems. The pilot asked for emergency docking permission, and was approved, two Penguin interceptors flying out to escort them in, so named for their stubby wings and bulbous hulls.

The freighter was almost as large as the station itself, and Boyd again reassured the pilot that he would be compensated for the help that he had provided, joining Lorza in the hangar bay and taking their shuttle over to the UNN fueling station. They were met on the hangar deck by the station’s overseer, a younger officer who immediately gave Boyd the impression that he took his position here far too seriously. He was greeted with a salute, returning it as the prim officer led both he and Lorza into an adjacent office. They wouldn’t get much help here, the station couldn’t have more than a dozen crew members, but with any luck they would be equipped with a quantum communications array that could get word to the fleet. It was the only way to send a message over interstellar distances in any timely fashion, as even light-speed laser communications might take decades to cross the voids between stars. Every quantum array had an entangled counterpart somewhere else in human space that would be able to receive broadcasts almost instantly. Boyd sat at the officer’s desk as Lorza stood nearby, there being no chairs sturdy enough to take her weight.

“Your credentials check out, Agent Boyd, I have to say that I’m somewhat surprised to see a UNNI operative on my humble station. I assume that if you had to reach us through such unconventional channels, you must be in dire need of assistance. How can we be of service to you?”

“I have information concerning a coup on Hades that I need to relay to the Admiralty as soon as possible, it’s of the utmost importance. The longer we delay the more time the enemy will have to fortify their defenses, and believe me that’s what they’ll be doing. By this point they’ll no doubt be aware of the fact that I’ve escaped the system.”

“Am I to take it that you were operating on Hades, and you were discovered? Are you able to tell me who this ‘enemy’ is and what their capabilities are, or is that classified? Is there a threat to my installation?”

Boyd leaned back in his chair, considering.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter now, the situation is no longer contained, this is all going to be public knowledge in a few days regardless. There is an alliance of criminal organizations on Hades that is conspiring to take control of the colony from its corporate investors, they recently raided a UNN jump freighter and stole a shipment of surface to air missiles in order to defend their claim by force should either the UNN or corporate security come snooping. As I understand it they have most of the colonists on their side and they’ve either turned or bribed the planetary defense forces who were supposed to be preventing this kind of situation from developing. I need a full strike force, a Jump Carrier with a contingent of Marines and support craft to take back the planet. There will be resistance, we need to end this quickly, before they have the opportunity to become so entrenched that this turns into a full-scale war.”