Authors: Thomas DePrima
"Um, yes, sir. And I'm prepared for that eventuality."
"Good," Burrows said. "Okay, you have my permission to recruit all these people for the mission. The
Denver
will reach the jump-off point in three days. You must be ready to go as soon as we arrive there. You may use this room to interview potential team members. As soon as you provide the names of any volunteers, I'll see they're relieved of all shipboard duties aboard the
Denver
for the duration."
"Yes, sir. I'll begin contacting them immediately."
* * *
"So let me get this straight," Caruthers said after Sydnee had told him that she was recruiting for an extremely dangerous and strictly voluntary mission. "You expect me to join you and a bunch of Marines on another crazy dirt-side mission. This wouldn't happen to involve Diabolisto, would it?"
Weems chuckled. "If it does, I'm out before we even start."
"No, it's not Diabolisto, but I can't give you any specifics unless you sign on."
"You want us to risk our lives on a highly dangerous mission, and you can't tell us about it?"
"I can't brief you on mission specifics unless you've volunteered to go, but I can tell you the mission objective. We're going to retrieve the person responsible for the bombing of the GA Trade Show on Earth's Freight-One orbital station."
Neither Weems nor Caruthers said anything initially. They just stared at Sydnee's face.
"You're serious," Weems finally said. "You wouldn't be able to hold that somber look this long if you weren't."
"Darned right, I'm serious. We're going to get that bastard— or die trying."
"Now see, you had me until you said 'die trying,'" Caruthers said.
"This isn't a joke," Sydnee said.
"Who's joking?"
"Okay, you're out. Jerry, what about you?"
"I'm in, babe. Just tell me what we have to do."
"Okay, welcome aboard. Caruthers, you'll have to leave."
"How come you call him Jerry and me Caruthers?"
"Because his name is Jerry and yours is Caruthers. Do you want me to call you Jerry also?"
"Yes, call me Jerry also."
"Okay, Jerry Also. You'll have to leave since you aren't part of this operation and can't hear the specifics until it's over."
"Come on, Syd, I was only joking."
"So you don't want to be called Jerry Also anymore?"
"Now
you're
joking. I didn't mean
that
. I mean about going. I'm in also. I want to get the bastard responsible for the deaths of those three thousand innocents just as much as you do."
"Okay, Jerry Also, you're in. I believed you'd want to be a part of this, but you had to say it."
"Come on, Syd. Just call me Pete, or Caruthers."
"Okay Pete— and Jerry, here's the plan. We're going to ferry a group of Special Ops people into Clidepp space. They know the location of the person who planned and financed the terrorist attack. We're just providing their ride. We never leave the ships. And the ships are Dakinium-sheathed, so the danger to us should be minimal."
"This sounds like my kind of operation," Caruthers said.
"I knew you'd like it. None of us enjoyed our time on Diabolisto."
"So, where is this person we have to retrieve?" Weems asked.
"On Yolongus."
"I— uh— take it back," Caruthers said. "This isn't my kind of operation after all. You want us to fly to the capital of the Clidepp Empire and kidnap a Clidepp citizen? Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously. One of the terrorists on Freight-One talked and named the person responsible."
"I bet he didn't talk willingly," Weems said.
"I didn't ask. Marine Captain Blade is heading up the retrieval mission. We take them in, drop off two observation teams, and fall back to wait until they ascertain the situation. Then we bring in the remainder of the Special Ops folks and half a dozen fire teams from the
Denver
and pull back to wait until they're ready to be picked up. When they call for their ride, we pick them up and head for home."
"Home?" Caruthers said.
"GA space."
"It can't be that easy," Weems said.
"Easy?" Caruthers said in a shocked voice. "We have to fly for weeks through a foreign nation without permission, then somehow sneak down to their heavily fortified home planet, then wait around to be discovered while the Marines are planning their raid, then pick everyone up and try to get away unnoticed. That's
not
going to be easy."
"Whether it's going to be easy or not, we're going," Sydnee said.
"Say, Syd," Caruthers said, "how come you're in command again? I'm senior in grade."
"Don't start that again, Pete," Weems said.
"I'm curious. Did I do something to piss somebody off or something?"
"Well, I'm not supposed to say anything, but..." Sydnee said and then let her voice trail off.
"What? What is it? Tell me. What did you hear?"
"Well, I heard there was time a few years ago when you made a joke about Admiral Carver. It got back to her and..."
"And what? Tell me."
"She insisted that you
never, ever
be put in charge of any Special Ops mission to Yolongus where we have to kidnap a Clidepp citizen. So, as you can see, Captain Blade and the Major had no choice."
"You're a laugh a minute today, Syd," Caruthers said with a grin.
Weems got the joke and laughed so hard he started coughing. Caruthers slapped him on the back a couple of times and that seemed to cure it.
"Okay, the truth is that I was picked because the mission on Diabolisto was so successful. That I was in charge down there was just the luck of the draw. If my MAT had suffered engineering problems instead of Jerry's, he might have wound up in command of the Marines and gotten all the attention.
"I never would have been able to pull it off," Weems said. "For one thing, that rebel Colonel would have killed me before I could draw my pistol. Only Quick Draw Marcola could have won that matchup."
"I was lucky. If the Colonel had fired a few inches lower and slightly to his right, I would have had an RPG round in my chest."
"Like the man said, if I had to choose between being lucky or handsome, I'd pick lucky," Weems said stoically.
"You got your wish," Caruthers said with a grin.
Weems just grimaced and then grinned. "So what now, Syd?"
"Spend as much time in the simulators as you can. Concentrate mostly on the CPS. The MAT-14 handles very much like the MAT-12."
"I never flew the MAT-12," Caruthers said.
"Then this is a good time to learn. The simulators are incredibly accurate and realistic."
"I'll probably crash every time," Caruthers lamented.
"Not every time," Weems said. "Probably just the first two or maybe three— hundred times."
"Just keep at it until you have a dozen successful flights in a row. If any of our people are going to die, we don't want it to be because we weren't prepared. We reach the jump-off point in two days."
~ December 29
th
, 2285 ~
Sydnee completed her recruiting interviews quickly once she had the pilot positions filled. Everyone interviewed had been part of the
Perry
crew and felt they owed their life to her, but that wasn't the reason they immediately signed on to a man— or woman. They were just as adamant as Caruthers that the person or persons responsible for the bombing be caught and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Where she didn't know the individual personally, she knew their reputation. She needed people who could handle the job and who would not crack and fall apart under pressure, because replacements wouldn't be available where they were going. Caruthers might appear to be flippant most of the time, but he was all business when the situation was serious, and he would stand by his crewmates to the end. Weems had a good sense of humor and a kindly nature, and, most importantly, he was as dependable as they come. Sydnee knew she could trust her life to everyone she selected, and she would protect them with her own.
* * *
Captain Lidden ordered the DATFA temporal envelope to be cancelled when the
Denver
reached the jump-off point a hundred billion kilometers from the Clidepp border on January 1
st
. Since maximum DeTect range was four billion kilometers, no one in Clidepp space could have any idea the
Denver
was this close to the border. Within minutes, with Caruthers at the helm, the selected CPS-14 in the shuttle bay rose up on a cushion of oh-gee waves, turned, and moved to the temporary airlock area in front of the outer hatch. The fit was so tight that he had to nudge the craft to a new position twice before it was properly placed within the alignment markers. When the bay's alignment-verification system confirmed the ship was completely within the airlock's allowable boundaries, all lights across the alignment-warning display on the helm console went to green. Caruthers then sent the command to lock the ship to the deck so it wouldn't move while the air was evacuated. Since Dakinium wasn't magnetic, the new ship's airlock had a clamping system where steel half-circular clamps rolled up over the skids, then recessed slightly to lock the ship in place. The temporary airlock walls began to swing down from the overhead area and close around the ship almost immediately.
Once the CPS-14 had deployed from the
Denver
and was sitting a few hundred meters away, two MAT-14s left another of the
Denver's
bays and linked with the CPS. Piloted by Sydnee and Weems, one MAT was linked on either side of the CPS in the top link location. It took a few minutes to get them properly aligned, but once locked to the CPS, automatic systems took over and pulled both small ships tight against the CPS, forming an airtight seal around the access hatches as the final step.
As Sydnee and Weems were shutting down the systems aboard the MATs, small, remote-controlled tugs were bringing two enormous storage tanks to the ship. One tank was attached to each side of the CPS in the lower MAT linking location. Meanwhile, other remote-control tugs were detaching three habitat containers from the keel of the
Denver
and ferrying them over for connection to the keel of the CPS. Each container was already fitted to a modified version of the Lewiston container link.
The Lewiston, as it was known, was a linkage section that allowed up to four full-sized cargo containers to be locked together. Abutted end to end, they extended one hundred sixty meters in length when complete. The entire section would then be added to a freighter's cargo load and increase the length of the ship by ten meters, plus two meters for each link section. The modified link for the CPS was only one-eighth as long and only held one container, but it created the same type of airtight tunnel above the containers that allowed access to each of them.
Although containers were attached to the rear of a freighter, the habitat containers were attached below the CPS-14 to the keel. When the three containers were connected to one another, the assembly beneath the small ship was twenty meters high and twenty meters wide. Like the full-sized Lewiston links, the modified links were twelve meters deep, so the habitat group would extend thirty-six meters from bow to stern.
As the habitat units were locked into position against the keel, the electrical and electronic connections made the containers part of the ship. Marines who had traveled over in the two MATs walked through the ship and climbed down into the center habitat container as soon as the airlock seals were tested and certified.
All in all, it took just twenty-eight minutes to fully prepare the CPS for deployment from the second it left the shuttle bay. No one seeing the assembled ship configuration would ever guess it came from the
Denver
.
"Captain," the com chief said to Sydnee, who had entered the bridge and taken her place in the command chair, "the
Denver
is asking if we're ready to depart."
"Engineering, are we a go?" Sydnee said to Lt. Barron at the console on the starboard side of the ship.
"Everything is secure and Engineering is a go, Captain."
"Navigation, is the course laid in?"
"Course laid in and we're a go, Captain," Lt. Olivetti said.
"Tac?"
"We're a go, Captain," Lt. Templeton said.
"Helm?"
"We're ready to build our envelope on your command, Captain," Caruthers said.
"Com, inform the
Denver
we're ready to build our envelope and depart."
Seconds later, CPO Lemela, the com chief said, "The
Denver
wishes us good luck and a safe journey."
"Helm, build our envelope."
"The envelope is built, Captain," Caruthers said two minutes later.
"Engage the drive to Light-9790."
The image on the front monitor shifted from real-time vid to a simulated view created from sensor feeds as the ship instantly achieved the maximum speed. Since travel was inside a temporal envelope, there was no sensation of acceleration.
"We're away, Captain."
Lt. Olivetti at the navigation station said, "We'll cross into Clidepp space in roughly thirty-four seconds, Captain, and reach Yolongus in twenty-nine days, eighteen hours, sixteen minutes, and forty-one seconds."
Sydnee swiveled her command chair to face where Marine Captain Blade was standing. "Captain, you'll have full bridge privileges while you're aboard, but since there can only be one captain aboard a ship, you'll be referred to as Major from this point forward."
"I understand, Captain. I'm going to check on my people now."
Sydnee nodded and turned her chair forward as Blade left the bridge. There were no ships in evidence at the border as the
Denver
passed into Clidepp space seconds later.
"May I have your attention, please?" Sydnee said as they began to settle into a routine. "It occurs to me that we should have a name for this ship. It's certainly more than just a tug. Does everyone agree?"
It seemed that everyone nodded their head.
"Okay. Any suggestions?"
"How about Revenge?" Lt. Barron, the engineering officer said. "We're getting revenge for all the people they butchered."