Deep Space Endeavor (24 page)

“And
, Josiah,” he added with a slightly mischievous grin. “Now we get to talk about the time I bailed you out of jail.” As he continued laughing, Josiah just shook his head, knowing it wasn’t likely to end.

______

Endeavor
left Ginderbar the next day, three hours later than planned to begin the search for the next piece of the puzzle. Josiah had gone with Suzy to pick up the medical equipment she wanted to study. Jesse had slept in on his heavenly bed, and Reece and Kora were wondering why most of the crew was bruised. After he woke up, Jesse had taken Collin back to the restaurant for a nice big lunch before they left, much to his delight. He just really wanted another piece of that steak but it was fun spending time with Collin. As the crew was getting ready for takeoff, he noticed that Kimi and Cassie were actually getting along. Their day off hadn’t exactly gone to plan, but they were able to restock. They also picked up some interesting new weapons, and gave SAMMI the time she needed to decipher the next clue.

Collin called out from the bridge, “And the next stop on the galactic tour is
Tuleah, a world full of ancient ruins, large creatures, and no people.”

Collin’s good attitude reminded him of the e
nthusiastic young recruit he had been when he first joined the Space Marines a lifetime ago in another galaxy. No one had taken the death of the Rocket Riders at Polisia harder than he did. Jesse remembered how tight knit a team the Riders were. They had been together for almost eight years before that battle. They had a very successful mission record. During those eight years, they had only lost one man, but not that day, that day they lost six of their ten members to the Pack. Jesse and the Rocket Riders led twelve Special Forces units on what many considered a suicide mission to stop the Pack once and for all. Their successful record made them ideal to lead the mission. The mission had technically been a success, but none of the men and women that survived would classify it that way. One hundred and twenty Special Forces Marines cleared the way for the Army to create a beachhead. They had to make a stand against the Pack incursion. Only twenty-nine of those Marines remained by day’s end. Jesse and Josiah had delivered the death blow while Manny and Collin laid down the cover. Once the Pack leadership was killed, victory came swiftly and easily as they retreated back to wherever they had come from.

Jesse smiled as he looked over the bridge. Collin, Josiah, Kimi, Wennagal and Cassie all had the bruises indicating they had been in a scuffle. In spite of his teasing, he knew if he had been with them he would have wound up in jail, too. Then it would have been Suzy making jokes while bailing them out. He hadn’t allowed them to wake Su
zy up to put them in the recovery pod because none of them had any serious injuries, and there hadn’t been time this morning. There they were, bruised and battered, but closer for it. Reece and Kora sat laughing as they were listening to Wennagal’s more humorous account of the incident. Apparently, Wennagal was taking some creative liberties with the details of the story. Jesse listened in as Wennagal was recapping.

“And then Captain Reed jumps on the man’s back, and he throws her across the room as if tossing a child…”

“The man was eight feet tall, Wennagal.” Cassie protested.

“So Captain Reed picks up a chair and proceeds to hit the wrong man,” Wennagal continued, a deep laugh erupting from inside him.

“I had blood in my eye, I couldn’t see straight.”

“If I couldn’t see, I might not pick up a chair and start swinging, but that’s just me.” Wennagal was really enjoying this, and the more his friends protested, the more Reece and Kora laughed.

After seven hours in light space,
Endeavor
arrived at Tuleah. The ship orbited the planet while looking for their landing coordinates and Jesse was struck by how brilliantly white the planet looked from space.

“Looks like we’re going on a hike,” Josiah called out from the sensor controls
as
Endeavor
was preparing to land. “Ten kilometers of dense jungle between our target zone and the nearest clearing big enough for
Endeavor
,” he continued.

“What about the shuttle?” Jesse asked. “Can the shuttle get us in any closer?”

“Probably, if you’re not piloting.” Josiah joked to the amusement of all but Jesse. Even the new crew members knew by now that he was a terrible pilot, and they all enjoyed reminding him of it.

“Ha ha, Lieutenant
, so how close?” he replied, pretending to be hurt by the comment.

“Not bad, only two klicks,” Josiah seemed pleased.

“Here’s the plan,
Endeavor
will make planet fall at the initial location, and the shuttle can take the retrieval team in from there. Kimi and Suzy will stay on
Endeavor
with me, while Josiah takes the rest of you to the objective.”

He really wanted to go on this one, but Collin had not been on any of the missions yet
and he was itching for some action. In fact, the most action Lieutenant Torrensede had seen was the brawl they were in at the bar last night. Jesse decided to let Collin have the fun this time, and he would stay in with Suzy. Kimi was staying to pilot the ship in case
Endeavor
was needed.

Collin landed
Endeavor
perfectly in the small clearing, happy he was going on the mission. Josiah’s team was just about to depart for the landing bay when he called over to Suzy; “Hey, do you mind if we bring Shadow with us on this one? We could use her guarding the shuttle.”

“No problem; she could use the exercise,” Suzy replied as she motioned Shadow to go with Josiah.

As they departed, Jesse hoped that this one would be adventurous enough to satisfy his crew, yet also relatively danger-free.

______

As Josiah stepped out of the shuttle to join his team, he was immediately struck by the oppressive heat and humidity. He looked around and noticed thick green leaves growing in sprouts standing nearly eight feet tall. The sprouts were dwarfed by tall redwood trees with white leaves. The trees were so tightly packed together in some places that he couldn’t tell if there were one or more trees growing out of the same place. The white leaves gave the jungle an almost wintery feel, which seemed betrayed by the heat. As the team started moving towards the treasure zone, they noticed they were being stalked by a pack of large somethings.

“Everyone, stay alert,” Josiah began. “We don’t know if these creatures are friendly or not.”
He had his blaster at the ready.

Cassie commented back, “They also may just be curious
because they may have never seen humans before so hold fire unless they attack.”

The creatures seemed to have the body structure of a large chimpanzee, but also rough reptilian scales and slits for pupils. They were powerfully built and agile. The reptapes, as Josiah
called them, were swinging through the trees around them, but so far had not tried to engage them. He was hoping they were friendly, because they looked like they could do a lot of damage if they put their mind to it.

“Someone should get some vid
of these; Kimi will want to see them.” Josiah said, loud enough for everyone to hear. Collin put on his visor and began recording through the HUD.

Josiah’s team made it the entire two kilometers without incident. Kora noticed that all of the rep
tapes, as they were being called, were dropping into a large hole in the ground. Unfortunately, it was the same hole that they needed to go down. “Could be a coincidence,” she observed.

“They could be trying to lead us to the next clue,” Collin hoped out loud.

“Or,” Josiah had to say what everyone else was thinking. “They could be leading us into an ambush. But we have to go down, so look alive, and keep one hand on your blasters.”

They looked up and noticed that there was a
tree limb hanging over the hole where they had to descend. The limb was small compared to some of the others they had seen, but still almost five feet wide. Josiah decided it would easily be enough to hold their weight, and they all shot their grappling guns into the limb. They slowly began making the descent into darkness. When they reached the bottom, Collin checked his grappling gun and noticed they had only descended about ten meters. Collin looked around, but could not see any of the animals they had called reptapes. There were two tunnels, but Josiah did not want to split the group up, so he motioned for them to stay together as they went down the wider tunnel to the left of the opening.

______

Captain Topanar was tired of all the walking. He was sure the clues Kora had given him led here to Tuleah. His techs had already begun trying to reproduce the artifacts from the holographic images that she had also provided. He really wanted to find the next clue before
Endeavor
arrived. Right now, this was a race that
Endeavor’s
crew was winning, and he wanted to change that. He had arrived on his own personal frigate, the
Interrogator,
and had to land almost fifty kilometers away from where they were supposed to be. Speeders had gotten them within fourteen kilometers, but that still left quite a walk. He had thought about taking his shuttle to within eight kilometers, but he didn’t want to risk it after Kora told him what Colonel Marcos had done to the pirate’s shuttle. He only had one shuttle, and he did not want to risk losing it. Consequently, it would be a long walk. He was assured that the men he hired to start a fight with
Endeavor
’s crew would get them at least a two day head start. He wasn’t worried about
Endeavor
, but he didn’t want to run into Garrinoras' men, so he compelled his men to clear the brush faster. He thought briefly that it might go even faster if he were to help, but he decided he wasn’t in that much of a hurry.

______

Jesse heard another ship land, and by the sound of it, a pretty large one. He immediately tried to comm Josiah, but the signal wasn’t getting through.
They must be underground already,
he thought. He grabbed his visor and went to the viewport. The ship was landing almost fifty kilometers from the treasure zone. The ship didn’t look like any of the pirate ships they had gone up against, or the bigger ship Janus had been orbiting Kaldor in.

“SAMMI,
what kind of ship is that?” He asked, hoping SAMMI would have enough information from Kaldor City’s repository about the Kalephi galaxy to have an answer.

“That ship is an older model Kaldorian Frigate,
Colonel Marcos. It is legally registered under the name Joldas Topanar.”

“Topanar,” he repeated suspiciously. “How did he even find this place? I thought only we and Garrinoras had this level of information on the treasure.”

“It is unclear how Captain Topanar has come to be at this location, Colonel Marcos.” SAMMI replied.

“SAMMI, track crew movements over the past week, and report anything suspicious to me and me alone, please.” Jesse asked, not liking the feeling he had in his gut.

Kimi shot him a questioning look, and as she was about to ask, Jesse answered. “I think one of our newer crew members may be working with Captain Topanar.”

“How certain are you of this?” She replied, trying to cycle through her mind anything that might stand out as suspicious.

“At this point, it’s just a feeling. Not even fifty percent sure, but I may as well have SAMMI start working on it while I try to work it out in my mind.” He continued, “SAMMI, has anyone made any transmissions or sent any encrypted messages from the ship since we took aboard new crew members?”

“Negative,
Colonel Marcos. My communications jamming software is always engaged inside the ship so that no one may communicate without your approval and my knowledge. There were, however, two encrypted signals to leave the area while we were on the planet Crunaris during the time of your last mission. I could not trace the source of either, but I was able to decrypt one of the messages.”

“Excellent work,
SAMMI. What did it say?” He was hopeful to gain a clue as to what might be happening.

SAMMI answered, “The
decrypted message was text only; it contained one word."

"Ginderbar.”

“Oh, that’s not good,” Kimi mused as she was shaking her head. The thought that any of these people she was starting to become friends with betraying them made her quite angry.

“That still doesn’t necessarily mean it was one of us, Kimi.” He began, as if reading her mind. “All of us knew we were going to Ginderbar, someone could have had spy
tech on us and overheard it. We need to keep fleshing this out, but we need to make sure none of our newer crew members know we may be on to something. SAMMI, that goes for you, too. Cassie, Wennagal, Kora and Reece are not privy to this information.”

“I understand,
Colonel Marcos.”

"Jess
e," Kimi began a little unsure. "Kora was alone for several hours while we were on Ginderbar. Do you think?"