A King's Ship (Empire Rising Book 2) (10 page)

They stopped at the next corner. By now the low thrum of a plasma rifle firing out multiple shots was clear through the louder cracks of the other weapons. This time when the marine poked his head around the corner it was met with a number of hardened tungsten rounds bouncing off the durasteel walls of the station. “Contact,” the marine signaled.

“Harken, we’re in position to the east of the security forces. They have line of sight on us but if we rush them together we’ll be able to take them,” Johnston said over the COM. Every station had its own internal geographic layout to help humans navigate it and the marines were using one of the schematics for the station they had been able to retrieve from the RSNI data files.

“Acknowledged Sir,” Harken responded.

“Stun grenades in five, four, three,” Johnston began but Becket didn’t hear anymore as she dialed her audio output on her armor way down. Stun grenades had hardly been upgraded in the last three hundred years but they still proved to be potent weapons against unsuspecting opponents. They were actually more harmful to soldiers in combat armor in closed spaces as the armor greatly increased a soldier’s hearing.

Even with the gain way down, she heard three distinct thuds as the grenades went off in the adjoining corridor. She upped her audio and charged around the corner with the rest of the marines. All of them had their side arms out and were firing a hail of bullets into the barricade the security guards had set up. Momentarily embarrassed that she had forgot to pull hers out she nevertheless added a flurry of electric bolts to the ordinance that was raining down on the defenders.

As they got closer she could see two guards were already down injured. The others tried to pop out of their cover to return fire. A number of bullets rattled off a nearby marine’s combat armor and a single plasma bolt struck a marine on the leg. He went down with a grunt, his armor pumping him with meds to reduce the pain.

Before the guards could get any more shots off, the marines with Major Johnston and the marines with Sergeant Harkin zeroed in on them with their weapons. In a blink of an eye, all of them hit the deck as multiple bullets hit their mark.

Harkin was the first to reach the barricade and he hurdled it in one jump and spun around with his weapon pointing at the injured security guards. Coming face to face with a marine in combat armor was a fearful thing and they threw away their weapons.

“Good job Sergeant,” Johnston said, “let’s help our wounded and finish searching this section of the station.

Five minutes later Becket entered the last room in the crew’s quarters to find it empty. “Damn,” Johnston shouted as he punched the room’s durasteel wall with his power armor.

“Report,” he said into his COM unit. “Any sign of Chang on the station?”

“Negative,” came back the replies from his two Lieutenants. The Sergeant who was leading a search team came on the COM channel, “Sir I have found something you might want to see. There are a number of Chinese artifacts in cargo bay seven. They look packed up and ready to ship out but I haven’t seen anything remotely like them in the rest of the cargo bays.”

“Thank you Sergeant, I’ll come right away,” Johnston replied with a bit more excitement.

“Agent Bell, can you meet me in cargo bay seven?” he said.

When they got to the cargo bay Becket understood what had drawn the Sergeant’s attention. There were a number of large crates filled with ancient pots, vases, rugs and art. Many of the designs looked Chinese to her but she wasn’t sure.

She turned as Bell entered the cargo bay and let out a long whistle. “Well, well, this is a find. It looks like we have half the Chinese national museum here. I’d say we are on the right track as far finding Chang is concerned,” she said as she lifted a few of the items the marines had already unpacked from one of the crates.

“No sign of Chang himself then?” Bell asked as she turned to face Johnston.

“No,” he replied. “But he was here. And I bet our Station Commander knows where he is!”

“Lieutenant Adams, have you secured the bridge?” Johnston asked over the COM.

“Yes Sir,” the bridge is secured, “we’re moving all the crew to one of the cargo holds so we can watch them.”

“Hold the Commander, I want a word with him,” Johnston ordered.

As he stomped off towards the bridge Becket knew there was about to be trouble. Still, Johnston hadn’t done anything wrong so she didn’t know what else she could do but follow along.

Once they got to the bridge they found the Station Commander on the ground with a large red welt developing on his cheek and a marine standing over him.

“He tried to reach for my side arm Sir,” the marine reported when he saw Major Johnston heading straight for him.

“Nothing he didn’t deserve I’m sure,” the Major said with a wave of his hand. 

“Now Mr.,” Johnston said to Commander Chowdhury. As the Indian began to open his mouth Johnston cut him off with a raised fist. “I don’t want to know your name. I only want to know one thing. Where has Chang gone?” Again before Chowdhury could speak he was cut off. “Ah, Ah, think carefully before you answer, I’m in no mood for games.”

“Go to hell,” Chowdhury shouted when he got his chance. “You are here illegally, you will all be strung up for this.”

“That is not the answer I wanted to hear,” Johnston said as he whipped out his side arm. “One more time, where is Chang?”

This time Chowdhury simply spat at Johnston’s armor.

A loud crack echoed around the station’s control room as Johnston fired a round that just missed his target’s head.

Still on his knees Chowdhury spun around in shock and tried to scurry away but the marine guarding him grabbed him and threw him at the Major’s feet.

“One last time,” Johnston said as he leveled his gun right at the Indian’s head. “Where has Chang gone?”

“No,” Bell shouted but she was too far away to do anything.

Becket saw no alternative, she was closest to the Major so she took two quick steps and shoulder charged him out of the way. There was another crack as the Major’s side arm went off.

“Damn you Lieutenant,” Johnston growled as he heaved Becket off him. “What do you think you are doing?”

“I’m sorry Sir, I slipped,” she replied sheepishly

Johnston grunted and then shoved her out of his way as he approached the Indian Commander again, gun already raised. Thankfully Bell was already at his side leaning over him, shielding him from Johnston’s line of sight.

“Listen to me,” Bell was saying to him. “I can’t protect you from him. You either tell me what we want to know or I let him at you again.”

As Bell moved back slightly Becket could see a nasty gash along the Commander’s cheek; Johnston’s second shot had grazed him. He looked shocked and bewildered from the sudden realization that he might not get through this ordeal alive.

“Fine, just leave me alone. I didn’t want him here anyway,” Chowdhury said.

“Want who here? Chang?” Bell asked.

“Yes, yes. He was here,” Chowdhury admitted.

“And where is he now?” Bell followed up.

“Two freighters came for him four days ago. He left on the first one yesterday. The other is here taking on the cargo Chang brought with him,” Chowdhury informed Bell.

Becket spun round to access one of the stations control panels, searching its logs. Quickly, she found what she was looking for. “Two freighters did enter the system four days ago, one of them left yesterday. The other is the freighter docked in bay five.”

“Major, you stay here until you have calmed down,” Bell said. “If you try to follow us I will be forced to report what happened here. Becket, you’re with me.”

On their way through the station Bell contacted the marines who had boarded the freighter and ordered them to make sure no one on the freighter touched anything. She didn’t want them to purge their computers.

When they arrived at the freighter a marine escorted them straight to the bridge. “Let me introduce myself,” Bell said to the Captain, “I am Special Agent Julia Bell of the Royal Space Naval Intelligence. We’re here looking for former minister Chang. There’s no point beating around the bush, we know he left yesterday on another of your freighters. We want to know where it was headed.”

“Let me introduce myself,” the freighter captain said in a strange accent Becket couldn’t place. “I am Captain Stockport of the Haven freighter
Carmen
. As our two governments haven’t signed any official political treaties and we’re not a member of the UN, I’m afraid you have no legal right to detain us. I demand you release my ship immediately.”

Oh crap
, Becket thought,
things just got interesting
.

Turning out of earshot Bell opened her COM unit, “Captain, we may have a problem. We believe Chang left on a Haven freighter yesterday. I’m speaking with the Captain of another Haven freighter at the moment. He wants us to release his ship.”

James took a few minutes to reply. A ship from Haven was the last thing he expected to find here. Only a few of them had ventured into the colonial space of the Earth nations. Whatever happened now would be a diplomatic incident.
In for a penny, in for a pound,
James said to himself. “See what you can find out from the Captain Agent Bell, I’m sending over Science Officer Scott to look at the freighter’s computers. We are here to find Chang, the political ramifications will have to sort themselves out later.”

*

Several hours later James gathered his Lieutenants, Sub Lieutenants,
Endeavour’s
Chief Engineer, Agent Bell, Major Johnston and Commander Gupta in
Endeavour’s
briefing room.

Lieutenant Scott stood to begin her briefing. As she looked at everyone she couldn’t help being nervous. Giving a scientific lecture to peers who knew you were an expert in the field was one thing. Addressing Lieutenants and the Captain who all had far more experience in space than her was another.
Still
, she told herself,
you have to start somewhere
.

With a deep breath she began, “The colony ship
Haven
left Earth over two hundred and sixty years ago. As you know the French first made contact with a Haven ship in the Mauritius system two years ago.

“Before the discovery of the shift drive almost one hundred sub light colony ships left Earth. Since then we have made contact with several of the colonies that were established, however, it seems the vast majority of them set out for planets that are not accessible through the shift drive. As a result, the last colony we made contact with was over a hundred years ago. Until two years ago we weren’t expecting to ever hear from the rest again – unless someone volunteered for a very long sub light voyage to visit one. 

“Well, as you all know our first contact with the Haven ship came as a big surprise. What’s even stranger though is that we still haven’t located the Haven colony itself. Given that their colony ship didn’t have shift drive technology it couldn’t have travelled further than here from Earth.” As she spoke Scott manipulated the holo display in the briefing room to show a red sphere projected around Earth. Outside the sphere was the system of Mauritius where the French had first made contact with the Havenites.

“Now of course,” Scott continued growing in confidence, “the chances of the Haven colony being anywhere near the outskirts of this sphere are very slim. If they have had the time to build up their colony to the extent where they can build orbital construction yards and freighters, then they must have founded their colony at least one hundred years ago. This means their colony is likely to be somewhere within this sphere.”

As she manipulated the holo display again the sphere shrunk to less than half its original volume. “Now here is the strange part. The Havenites on our freighter tried to purge their computers but their tech is not nearly as sophisticated as ours and I was able to retrieve most of their data, including their flight data. Here is the flight path the freighter used to get to the Andaman system.”