Deep Space Endeavor (32 page)

"We are having trouble locating the younger Topanar's ship," he bega
n in the low gravelly voice common among the Jar-Kargen.

"Put every available pirate on it, pay off some locals, do what you have to do. We need his map or we will not find the treasure. Once we find the planet, Topanar's map leads us to the treasure. Without it, we have to search an entire planet which could take a lifetime. I will not come this close and fail, do you understand,
Channa?"

"Yes, Mighty Garrinoras," he turned to leave, but stopped as a thought occurred to him. "What if we let Colonel Marcos find it for us? What if we let him steal it from Topanar, and once we have heard of the theft, we then send the communiqué to trade for the human?"

"Brilliant, Channa," Garrinoras boomed. "We shall do both, either way we wait to make the trade until after Topanar's map has been stolen." He strode down the corridor, knowing the treasure would soon be his and then his conquest of the Lawless Sector would begin.

______

A few hours later, Jesse had everyone gathered in the common room. “Alright, I have a plan,” he started. “It’s gonna take some doing, but I think it might work. First, we have to break into Topanar’s ship and get back the fakes Kora stole….”

“And steal his map and artifact,” Josiah added.

“Right,” he continued, not missing a beat. “Then, we find
Endeavor’s
spare flight recorder force field.” As everyone looked a little puzzled, he explained. “We are going to put one of the artifacts inside the force field and throw a thermal charge in there. We’re going to blow it up, right in front of Garrinoras. Then we’ll tell him that if he touches Enso, we will destroy them all. It might take two or three before he believes us, but if he knows about Topanar’s map, then he knows he’s going to need at least seven artifacts to get the treasure. We have nothing to lose. The only way Garrinoras makes the trade is if he’s scared enough of losing the treasure to give us Enso. All we have to do is get him to believe that if we don’t get Enso, he’ll never get the treasure. Are there any questions?”

“What happens if he does release Enso to us?” Wennagal asked.

“Good question, we have to make sure it’s within
Endeavor’s
most powerful jamming radius, because he’s still Garrinoras and he’s still going to betray us. He will more than likely have some sort of device he can remote trigger to kill Enso. Or a sniper he would contact after he had the goods. Either way, the jamming field should work. If he pulls a weapon right there, he’ll have to fire through me wearing a battle suit to get Enso. It’s not perfect, but it’s our best shot. Our main priority is to get Enso to the meet alive, as long as we can do that, then we at least know there's a chance to save him.”

“Are there any contingency plans?” Josiah asked

“I don’t have one, but I welcome ideas. This is our best shot, though. I believe that, but I’m leaving the decision up to Cassie. It’s her cousin out there.”

“Do I
have to decide right now?” She asked

“No of course not, either way we are still about to go hit Topanar’s ship. You can make your decision
whenever you’d like.”

Sh
e nodded her assent as Jesse, Kimi, Collin and she made their way to the landing bay hatch.

“Wennagal, Suzy and I will
keep an eye on things here,” Josiah called after them, as they were waiting for the hatch to lower.

As they exited the ship, Cassie grabbed Jesse by the arm and said, “Listen, I’m sorry about earlier, I was….”

“Don’t mention it, Cass, it’s already forgotten. Let’s just get through this mission, and then get your cousin back.” He smiled, she smiled back, and they took their seat in the waiting aircar.

Sandstorm looked up from the driver’s seat and began his tactical assessment. “We are going to land about two blocks from the warehouse. Two of my lovely young assistants are going to meet us there. Collin and I will be wearing the same black tactical garb as the building’s guards. My two friends will walk up to the guards and ask them if they want to party. When the guards are distracted, and don’t worry, these girls will be plenty distracting, Kimi is going to hit the signal jammer, taking their cameras
offline for about nine seconds. During that time, we will incapacitate the guards and drag their bodies behind the bushes. Then, the three of you head inside while Collin and I take their places. The girls will still be there when the cameras come back on to sell the ruse. They will continue to flirt with Collin and me for a couple more minutes before they leave. I know it's not a big window, but that’s our way in; the rest is up to Jesse.”

“T
hank you, Agent Sandstorm," Jesse replied as he looked at his team. “Let’s get moving. We know Topanar is not currently at the warehouse, but we don’t know how long he will be gone.” 

The aircar pulled away from
Endeavor
and began the thirty minute journey to Captain Topanar’s ship as Kimi was saying. “I hope he does come back while we are there. I would very much like to kill him for what happened to Reece.” There wasn’t a person in the aircar that didn’t share her sentiments.

Sandstorm landed, and the infiltration team made their way to Topanar’s ship. They stopped across the road from the warehouse, and Kimi said. “The
Interrogator’s
in there,” as she pointed to the large building. They worked their way into position, and waited for Sandstorm’s friends to show up.

The area immediately around the warehouse wasn’t very busy, but within a block or so there were many things to do. Restaurants, stores, and entertainment were big business in this part of the city. Some of the buildings were business offices, but it was mostly entertainment, and no housing. This time of night, the area was still bustling with activity, but not the kind of activity that would have anything to say about a couple guards getting beat up, if anyone
were to even see it happen.

After two or three minutes, two young ladies began to approach the warehouse, pretending to be a little bit drunk and a little bit lost. The first young lady was a beautiful Qualoosh woman. Qualoosh women had light, purple
almost lavender skin with metallic specs that almost looked like glitter, as opposed to the deep purple of the males. They also had no hair on their body, except for the long, deep purple hair on their head, and their eyebrows. They really were quite a striking species and this young lady in particular. She teetered as she walked, with her arm around a lovely, young, human woman. They looked to be about university age, just out having a bit of fun.

As they approached the guards, one of the guards nudged his partner and motioned towards the young ladies. A big smile crossed his face. “Ladies,” the guard began with a predatory smile, “How may we be of service today?”

The Qualoosh woman looked at him and giggled, “You’re cute, I want this one,” she said as she looked at her friend.

“Fine with me,” her friend replied, “The other one is more to my liking anyway. When do you boys get off work?” she asked in her most flirtatious tone. The human woman was a shapely brunette with a shy smile and beautiful eyes.

“Can you take off right now?” the Qualoosh began, “We’d love to go party with you.” As she spoke, she leaned on her friend, presumably for balance.

The two guards were eating this up. The first guard was trying hard and failing to suck in his gut. The second guard was looking at his communicator, as if he were thinking about calling his superior and taking the rest of the night off. They were both all smiles until Jesse and Sandstorm came up behind them and knocked them unconscious. Kimi had blinded the cameras, and within nine seconds, the guards were out. They had been dragged into the bushes, and Collin and Sandstorm had taken their place. Jesse, Kimi and Cassie were now safely inside the warehouse. To the guards in the operations center, what would have looked like a momentary glitch had just cleared up. The girls stayed in the same position the whole time, only now it was Collin and Sandstorm they were flirting with.

“You are a lot cuter than the other two guys,” the human woman was saying to Collin, and he couldn’t be sure she was entirely sober. “Do you want to come out with us when your
secret mission
is over?” They both laughed at the mention of the words
secret mission
, seeming to enjoy the possibilities of danger that it represented.

Collin just smiled and said, “Maybe another time, ladies. Though I’m sure you will find someone to have some fun with before the night is over.”

They both smiled at Collin in a way that almost made him want to abandon the mission, but Sandstorm just laughed and said. “Thank you, Teha, thank you, Sibbie. Come by my office tomorrow around lunch time. Colonel Marcos has thrown in a rather large bonus for you for a job well done.” The young ladies just laughed, turned around, and walked away. They left, happy that their evening had been both fun and financially rewarding.

Jesse looked at Kimi as she tapped into the ship’s vid feed. “Which way to our artifacts?” he asked while keeping an eye out for any guards on patrol within the
Interrogator
. He counted four inside the warehouse that were patrolling the outside of the ship. There were two in the operations center, and the two they had knocked out. This, according to Kimi’s report, left at least seven guards unaccounted for.

“All right, I’ve found our bag
,” Kimi began. “Topanar’s artifact and his map look to be with it. You and Cassie go procure the objective. I will plant some charges around the ship to make sure she will no longer be a problem for us.”

As they split up, Jesse whi
spered, “Stay on comm, Kimi, let me know immediately if you run into any trouble.” As they navigated the corridors of the
Interrogator
it took Jesse and Cassie no time at all to find the room with the artifacts. Topanar hadn’t even taken them out of the bag yet. He had opened the synthetic bag, and it looked like he had inspected some of the artifacts. But then he had put them back in the bag, and had even added his artifact to the contents. Right next to the bag on the table were all of the map fragments and clues that looked like they had been studied and pored over for days. Topanar was no doubt trying to be first to the treasure. He swept all of the information into his bag. Then he saw it, the map to the treasure. Once the planet could be deduced, this map would guide them the rest of the way. He definitely wouldn’t be leaving that behind.

“Kimi, we got it, and are on our way out,”
he excitedly reported, as Cassie and he exited the room.

“Copy that, on my way.” Kimi’s replies were always crisp and short when she was on comms.

This was going to be a death blow to Topanar. Jesse couldn’t wait to see the smug look disappear from his face as he figured out he wouldn’t be getting anywhere near that treasure.

Jesse and Cassie were only meters from the stairway that would take them to the
Interrogator’s
exit, when they heard a familiar voice call out, “Going somewhere?”

They
turned to see Kora, with four armed guards behind her and a big smile on her face. “Look who it is,” he taunted. “Little Miss Traitor. This is the thanks I get for saving your life? I wonder what I would have gotten if I feel in love with you? Oh wait, I already know that, too.” He could tell that last comment had stung Kora as he had intended it to.

“I was supposed to try and seduce you,” Kora began. “But you only had eyes for her. I realized pretty quickly that
it wasn’t going to happen.” She pointed at Cassie as she spoke. “So I had to go to plan B, which, quite honestly, wound up being more fun. Thank you for saving my life, by the way. Joldas would have been so sad if Garrinoras’ men had killed me.”

She laughed and then she looked at
them and coldly shouted, “Take them.” As the guards aimed their rifles, Jesse and Cassie took cover. Being this close to weapons that strong meant the shots were going to hurt. They would hurt a lot, even through the battle suit. Jesse just had to make sure they didn’t get hit much. He dropped the bag behind him, and in one move had Helga in his hand. As the first shot grazed his shoulder he fired twice and the energy beams took out two of the guards. Kora was firing on Cassie, and Cassie was using a support column for cover. She had already been hit in the leg, and was limping slightly as she returned fire, hitting Kora square in the chest of her stolen battle suit jacket. Jesse hit the button, and Helga morphed into a blade. He threw it, impaling the closest guard as he took out his blaster, and dropped the fourth guard.

As he retrieved his MAT
U, he noticed eight more guards coming their way. If two had stayed in the operations center, this was likely the entire remaining contingent. Kimi had put the cameras on a recorded loop, so none of this battle would be captured on vid. That was a good plan, because they were still technically committing a crime by trespassing. These men were not Kaldor Law Enforcement, but hired guns. Jesse felt no pity, as they would have known what they were signing up for. Still, he didn’t like to kill if he didn’t have to.

“We need to go!”
He yelled over to Cassie, not using her name in case anyone was listening.

“We have to take her out first,”
she angrily replied as she hit Kora in the chest again with another shot.