Jake Valance's arm unit finished downloading the maps and medium priority security command codes to his control unit nearly instantaneously. “Thanks, now get to a safe place, I don't suggest trying to get away in an escape pod, they'll cut you to pieces,” he said to the officer through his comm unit. Without his guidance Jake wouldn't have been able to avoid most of the teams searching for him.
“I'm going to the planet with the West Keeper army. They won't notice me if I head to the dropship loading area. That's the surest way off.”
Jake stopped and looked at the smaller fellow. “How far off is that?”
“Nine decks down and three sections over, but not too hard to get to,” he replied, half smiling.
“It's an invasion army?”
“Yes.”
Jake thought for a moment, looking down the long berth hall. There were three directions; the nearest exit as instructed by his collaborator who had done far more than he had to to help him. There was the bridge, where he might get a chance at taking his revenge on Lister Hampon for everything he'd put Jonas and himself through. The last direction off the ship made the most sense to him; the main launch bay, where he might be able to slip through the service crawl ways and maintenance rooms to a ship or escape shuttle.
“You're him, aren't you? The Captain Valance, the one who frees slaves and captures Regent Galactic ships.”
“That's me,” Jake said after a moment's pause. “Though I'm pretty sure my reputation is just a bit inflated.”
“Your chances of sneaking off this ship aren't good as long as you're wearing that armour. You should drop it and find a spare uniform in one of those crew quarters you're passing. The dropships are loading so fast they probably wouldn't notice you.”
He's right. If I try to blend in like one of the crowd I'd have a chance as long as someone doesn't recognize me and point me out. We're not actually that far from the Enreega system, not far enough to be away from all the Newsnet affiliates, anyway. Even if I don't get pointed out, I'm definitely in the facial recognition database as Jonas. “I'll get off ship somehow, don't worry. Thanks for your help. Don't get caught. Oh, and why are you helping me anyway?”
“Let's just say a lot of Regent Galactic Officers think this Order of Eden cult is a great big steaming pile. Good luck out there.” The soldier said before cutting communications.
Jake didn't waste any more time, but ran for the open door facing the stern and straight on to the nearest lift. Using the authorization code he had been given he was able to unlock it. He activated his cloaking systems and waited for the car to arrive. He was well past the vapour barrier and the gravity plating. The deck layout information he had made it clear that the only areas guarded by those security measures were command and security hubs.
He stepped to the side as the lift doors began to open. Several canisters were thrown into the hallway intersection and Jake immediately turned and ran for a side passage. It was too late. The canisters exploded with loud successive pops and his sensor suite told him that his headpiece, long coat, boots and gloves had been coated with acid. The coating on his vacsuit quickly neutralized it, but not before half of his cloaking systems were either too badly damaged to be useful or destroyed altogether.
The elevator doors finished opening and eight soldiers moved into the hallway with quick, easy efficiency. These weren't normal security guards, they were heavily armoured and carried rifles that fired explosive rounds.
He spun around and dropped a shield puck on the deck, it affixed itself and started projecting a blue green barrier of energy two meters high and one and a half meters across. It was a piece of technology Laura and Ayan had pressed into service through the Special Projects Division after it was captured from a Vindyne soldier.
The first shots were stopped completely by the energy shield, and the enemy soldiers took cover around the corner. Jake pulled a belt of four stolen grenades from his inside coat pocket, armed them, tossed the bunch and dove around the corner. The three second fuse counted down and nothing happened.
How the hell did they deactivate the whole belt of grenades? He managed to ask himself as he watched the whole belt sail over the top of the energy barrier. Jake scurried to his feet and made a mad dash for the side corridor.
He barely made the next corner before they exploded. The concussive force knocked him off his feet, but he managed to avoid the brunt of the blast. Jake was on his feet and running again, and as he took the next corner his thermal and movement detection sensors picked up four soldiers ahead. They were the same grade of plated combat armour, carrying the same heavy assault rifles, and they were flanking the next hallway.
“God dammit!” he cursed to himself. He made sure his sidearm was set to full intensity and full automatic as he drew it out of its holster and pulled one of his own grenades from its secure pocket. He activated his personal energy shield, noting that it was down to seventy three percent and stopped dead in his tracks. Instead of rolling his fragmentation grenade along the floor he set the fuse to detonate on impact and tossed it hard towards the wall up ahead.
Jake crouched down to the ground, turned and covered himself with his long coat. The hot air and debris from the blast washed over his energy shield and long coat without harming him. His visor display informed him that the shield he had erected around the corner had depleted and was destroyed. The soldiers he had left behind were coming.
He rose and ran towards the hall that had just been filled with shrapnel and fire. The life signs of the soldiers there were fading fast.
Stepping around them gingerly, he headed down the hall in a dead run, straight back to the lift doors. They were jammed open with a wedge, he could see it, and the soldiers who had come up were still coming after him the long way. Part of my cloaking systems must be working, otherwise they'd see me coming around on thermal or motion sensors. Jake thought to himself.
The group had left one soldier inside the elevator car, a smart gambit he almost didn't see in time. His motion detection systems weren't as keen as they should have been, most likely because of either the acid or explosions he'd been almost too close to, and the outline a soldier waiting at the rear of the express car appeared on his visor at the last instant.
Jake panicked and let loose with his handgun on full automatic, peppering the soldier and the walls around him with rounds. The trooper slumped to the ground. Jake cursed under his breath at emptying half a clip into the man, the job could have been done with four or five shots. He kicked the wedge out of the doors and requested a level far beneath. With some satisfaction Jake watched the squad double back at speed towards the lift he'd stolen, they almost reached the doors in time to get a clear shot and he could hear their heavy rounds pierce the doors above as the lift car accelerated down to the hangar deck.
Without a second to spare he picked up the body of the fallen trooper and held it up in front of him, it was heavy, the man and armour together must have weighed over a hundred fifty kilos. He pushed through the strain on his arm and focused, levelling his sidearm at the doors where he could see thermal traces of more lightly armoured soldiers outside waiting.
He took aim at the guard with the clearest shot and fired before the lift car finished coming to a slow stop. The round made it through, and the thermal image burst in colours of yellow, red and blue telling him that the soldier leading that charge was dead or dying.
The group of five soldiers arranged in a semicircle around the lift doors opened fire and Jake managed to kill two before he took a round straight on in the shin. His armoured vacsuit took most of the impact but the bone behind his armour shattered and he fell in a howling heap on the floor of the lift car.
He fired at the last visible guard while the other one sought cover just beside the lift doors and caught him in the left shoulder. His framework body went to work, regenerating the bone and tissue of his shin. A little late with the nerve blocking! Jake thought to himself as pain coursed up his leg. There was no numbing of the pain that time, and he barely heard the clink of a grenade through the agony.
His vision went black, the other sensors built into his vacsuit flared then began to reset and his hearing was completely blocked. It took him a moment to realize what had happened. They used a flashbang grenade! They're afraid of damaging the elevator! He couldn't help but chuckle to himself as the pain from his shin began to subside, and his visor's light reactive shielding cleared just in time for him to see one soldier break cover.
His mind's eye watched through his gun sight camera as his arm came up and lined up a shot that hit the young woman full on in the face. The guards on the forward hangar deck weren't wearing helmets, just the protective gel that seemed to be a favourite with the crew of the Diplomat. She was dead the instant the round hit her.
“Surrender now!” Jake cried out as he got to his feet and rolled out of the elevator car. He came up on his knees with a perfect shot lined up at a wounded soldier who had taken refuge beside the lift doors. He dropped his rifle, nodding with clenched teeth. Jake could hear the thermite still burning in the man's shoulder. He was lucky, a few centimetres to the right or down and it would have burned straight through his lung. The wounded soldier tried to flinch away as Jake leaned forward and injected him in the neck with a cocktail of emergency pain killers using his command and control unit. The look of surprise on the soldier's face faded as he passed out and Jake couldn't help but look at the others who weren't as lucky. The thermite in some of their wounds was still flaring, sending out shocks of smoke and colour. I'm starting to think I should have taken my chances in an escape shuttle. These people would still be marching around guarding a quiet storage hangar if I didn't take the long way.
The sub-hangar deck had been cleared of all non-critical personnel and as he scanned the large area he could see the thermal outlines of two squads making their way to the main hold through a maze of ladders, loading platforms, and elevation pads. Funny, two months ago I wouldn't even wonder if there was something I could say to stop this firefight from breaking out and now that I've got the conscience I'm at a loss for words. A better man would give up and let himself be put in a cell, but I've been there and I'm not going back. At long last he spotted his ship. It was just behind a small, streamlined high priority courier ship that hid all but the nose of the Uriel fighter. “Good to see the directions that security officer gave me were spot on, I was starting to wonder,” he said to himself as he dove into an access trench, the closest squad of soldiers were taking up positions just on the other side of one of the main hangar doors. He checked his command unit to see if there was any link to his fighter.
With a smile he powered the vessel up and checked to see if both fusion reactors were ready for operation. They were. The deck crew had locked down the thruster pods with restraint rods and disconnected its faster than light systems but they hadn't done anything to disable main power.
He tried to access the ship entertainment network but found himself locked out entirely. Jake opted for the volume enhancement system built into his visor instead and jacked it all the way up so the oncoming soldiers and whoever else was in range could hear him. “On board my fighter are two nuclear fusion power plants! Allow me to take a ship down to the planet or I will detonate the reactors! I will not allow myself to be captured!”
“It is so good to see you Mister Valentine. I wasn't sure we'd get a chance to speak after you escaped holding,” said the familiar, self assured voice of Lister Hampon.
“I can't say the same.”
“Cordial as usual. Below you is are a series of quick access drop pods. One of them will take you directly to the planet if you like. I have no need to capture you, in fact I don't truly have a desire to see you killed. There are greater things underway, things you could not change, not even while using the First Light, or the Samson, or even the Triton. I don't have time to toy with old familiar pets.”
“Even after all these years you still love the sound of your own voice.”
“And you still have a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the end you don't matter. That refined framework technology, one of a kind I'll grant you, doesn't matter when you compare it to the power we have over the Order of Eden and the Eden Fleet. We have what we need from you already, I procured it as soon as we pried you from your fighter. It is a new war Jonas. You should take a moment to decide which side you're on before you leave the ship.”
There were questions he wanted to ask, grudges he wanted to settle, and a fleeting thought that there might be just a chance, if ever so slim that he could put an end to the war if he could find his way to the command deck and kill Hampon himself. Then he regained his senses.
“I'll leave,” Jake said as he closed the channel. A red indicator came up on his visor and he focused his attention there for a moment. He was using a voice disguiser? So it wasn't the real Hampon? Why would anyone go to the trouble to gloat for him? He shook his head. Why bother figuring it out, I just need to get the hell out of here before those soldiers are given the order to rush in with guns blazing. Someone's holding them back, like they want me to leave. “Who am I to argue?” he muttered to himself with a shrug.
He increased the reaction rate of his fighter's fusion power plants to near critical and he could see the thermal outlines of the squads falling back. A lot of good that'll do you. Jake thought to himself with a snicker.
The rear hangar was clearing out and through a transparent bay door he could see the frenzy of activity as larger drop ships were being prepared for takeoff. A medical team emerged from a lift to his right and he waved them through as he got to his feet, watching them warily regardless.
“We're just here to help,” said one of the emergency workers with an upraised hand.
“Don't give me a reason to think otherwise and we'll all be happy,” Jake said as he strode towards his fighter. It was set down beside another vessel that didn't match the surroundings, a beat up interplanetary passenger transport.
“Vacsuit re-sealed.” said a voice in his ear. It was his command and control unit announcing that the hole that was made when he was shot in the shin was once again secure, the vacsuit material had come together to form a seal safe for space. “Good timing.” Jake said to himself as he looked the Uriel fighter over.
He climbed into the cockpit and armed the guns. The bars holding the ship in place had been extended across the four lower engine pods and he hoped the fighter would stay together as he increased power to the engines. The canopy was just starting to close and his vacsuit headpiece partially muted the screeching of the metal restraint rods as his fighter strained against them and won free.
One of the engine pods was pulled slightly out of alignment and the fighter's status screen blinked yellow several times as it recalibrated its new position with the control systems.
Without a second thought Jake guided the fighter down into the launch bay, scraping the bottom of the fighter against the deck before descending into an open elevation pit. He tried to guide the ship between two larger, more heavily armed troop carriers and managed to barely avoid a collision with the main rear hatch of one of them.
The fighter shot through the atmosphere retention field, leaving the command carrier behind. He flipped the fighter upside down and to his relief he could see Pandem. The view from where he sat was serene, and if he didn't know it was an actively contested world he would have thought that it was paradise. They were on the night side, but his visor corrected for the darkness and after a few seconds it was as though he was looking at the planet under the full light of the sun. the blue ocean was dotted with green and gold islands, white clouds drifted lazily through the atmosphere and on the larger land masses he could see the glint and gleam of great cities surrounded by green woods, like diamonds surrounded by emeralds set in gold.
He set the self destruct system on the fighter and brought up the shields just in time. Several of the anti-starfighter batteries aboard the Diplomat began firing on him, one striking the ship several times. So much for Hampon not going out of his way to kill me.
The pulse weapons were effective, too effective. His shields were down to forty three percent before he found what he was looking for.
“I promise to never question who I am, what my name should be or which personality I should put on in the morning ever again if this works,” he said to the Gods as much as to himself as he activated the ejection system.
He was launched with incredible force straight for the planet's atmosphere. He felt naked, bare as he watched the blue ocean and brown-green land beneath grow nearer. He tried to see through the bottom of his small thermally shielded pod, and couldn't. Using his new found connection to his command and control unit he checked his distance from the fighter and it's status.
Its shields were down to eleven percent and he was already over a thousand kilometres away. He watched the counter:
SHIELDS: 11%DISTANCE: 1300km
SHIELDS: 9%DISTANCE: 4200km
SHIELDS: 6%DISTANCE: 7300km
SHIELDS: 1%DISTANCE: 9800km
Then he detonated the pair of fusion reactors on the fighter. He could see the flash even though he was looking in the opposite direction, over ten thousand kilometres away and just about to enter the atmosphere. “You should have killed me when you had the chance Hampon!” Jake cried out in the near null space of the protective pod.
It had a hard, protective layer, rudimentary emergency gravity compensators and an antigravity booster for when it was time to touch down. He had made his target the foot of the mountain in Damshir. As he began to burn into the atmosphere his visor blocked the bright light. Wouldn't it just be the worst if it all ended here? If I became just another shooting star, matter burned up in the sky? He caught himself thinking. “Think positive, think positive, think positive,” he repeated to himself hurriedly as a last minute mantra.
He couldn't help but laugh to himself as he cleared the upper atmosphere and began free falling through the clear dark sky. Then his visor flashed and brought up a transmission. Where Hampon's face had once been was a black striped and brown furred nafalli. “My name is Alaka Murlen, I am one of the freedom fighters in Damshir. To my knowledge the mountain in which I am recording this message contains the last free intelligent beings on the planet. A virus has infected most of our machines and we are under siege. On behalf of the last remaining inhabitants and defenders of this world, I beg the Carthan government to send help. I expect from the military we have seen landing on this island that there must be an enemy fleet in orbit. Come prepared, come well armed and bring as many allies as you can before we and this entire solar system are lost to an enemy we have come to know as the West Keepers.”
The transmission ended. “Well, here's to the power of positive thinking,” he chuckled to himself as he watched the altimeter along the bottom of his heads up display countdown. At ten thousand feet he felt the pod adjust his course.
The dark cityscape rushed up faster and faster, and at two thousand meters the automated system, a very small computer built into the pod, announced; “primary deceleration system failure, prepare for contingency.”
The pod split down the center and Jake was released into the open air. He felt naked, helpless, and was near panic as he looked between his legs to see buildings and streets rushing up towards him. The sound of the air whistling by was louder than anything and he tried not to stare at the altimeter display on his visor as a thought occurred to him; I don't think I heard the emergency systems hook the emergency parachute onto my vacsuit. “ Oh fu-”
He was interrupted and jarred from head to toe violently as a parachute launched from his back and was caught by the air. The ground was still approaching faster than anyone would have liked, but he was slowing. The mountain with its step like face came into view. There were places there that were utterly destroyed by heavy shelling. The building faces set into the side looked hollow, dead as the looked down the side. The ones from the middle and top still had lights on, most of them were mostly intact. Light in front of the facades was distorted, as though by a protective shield.
He was still slowing, and finally there was no more time to slow down as he struck a transit tube suspended between two buildings, cartwheeled awkwardly through the air and hit the street hip first. The streets were filled with pocked and bullet ridden machines and corpses laying out in the open.
The thin material of the parachute covered him and after a minute he rolled over, found his way out from under the material and ran for the nearest broken, abandoned building as the rain started to fall.