Insurrection (Athena Lee Chronicles Book 5) (13 page)

Recognizing the Marine officer, the defenders stopped. Orders of “hold your fire” echoed down the corridor.

An older Navy officer approached the doors. He shook Lieutenant Mutai’s hand and patted him on the back. The officer turned toward me and walked over. I could see the captain’s bars on his uniform. Unable to salute in a suit, I greeted him instead.

“Sir, Lieutenant Athena Lee. I have with me members of the Hong Kong planetary Militia special forces.”

The captain looked as though he had aged considerably through this ordeal.

“Sir, I need to speak with whomever you have in charge of engineering. This ship is in serious trouble in,” I checked my timer. “ about 40 minutes. If we don’t change its course before then it will slam into the moon and explode.”

The captain had a shocked look on his face. “What? Explode?”

“Yes, sir. Explode. Boom! I really, really need to talk to your engineer. Is he around?”

With a now dazed look the captain waved toward engineering. I took that as a dismissal and took off at a trot.

____

Chief Engineer Kościuszko was trying to get the engine console to update when a woman wearing a spacesuit entered his department. He stood and gaped at her. Not something he sees everyday.

“Chief Engineer Kościuszko? My name is Lieutenant Athena Lee are you able to control the ship’s navigational functions from here?”

“Excuse me, what?” He seemed to freeze a moment. “Control the ship? No. We can only control the power functions from here. You need either the bridge or CIC for that.

“Damn it! Chief, this ship is going to crash into the moon in about a half hour if we can’t stop it. The bridge is in ruins and the pirates ripped out all the controls in CIC.”

Chief Tad sat down heavily on his console. “Without those controls we are all dead!”

“We have two combat assault shuttles in the hangar bay so we can get the crew off. I wish we could save the ship though.”

I stood and studied the ship’s schematics on the wall. There was something I was forgetting. It was on the tip of my tongue. Something one of the Special Operations team had asked. Fubuki class. I swear I hear a ‘ding’ inside my head when everything clicked.

“Chief, I have an idea.”

“This is a Fubuki class destroyer. Your ship was designed to be worked on without a ship yard. All of your control runs including the navigational ones are in the central core engineering tube. On newer ships we couldn’t do this, but , with yours we should be able to rig up some very basic controls. We are running out of time if you want to save this ship.

“Hell yes I want to save my ship! Let’s get moving.” He raced to his office and yelled. “Kovak, get out here!”

A small woman in a techs uniform came out of the office holding a computer. “Did you call me Chief?

“Yes. As fast as you are able I need a control system to steer the ship with. Nothing too complicated just something to attach to the navigational and steering control conduits. If we don’t turn the ship it will explode when it hits the moon in less than 30 minutes.”

“Uh, what? Did you just say we are going to die?”

“Control system, Kovak, get moving! Now!”

She sprang into action and ran toward the tech room. Chief Tad was already opening the engineering tube and had a tool kit open.

I heard my name being called and looked toward the door. Sergeant Yannos was there calling for me.

“Athena we need to get off this ship! I’ve got the rest of the crew headed toward the hangar bays. I called the pilots they will get the the bays re-pressurized and start loading.”

“We think we can save the ship Yannos. YOU know that the Militia really needs another ship. I think we can save it. Go on without me. I have a spacesuit on I can always just jump for it.”

“If you think I am leaving you here you are completely out of your mind! Both your father and sister would have me turning over a small fire if I leave you here. That doesn’t even include what that Marine Lieutenant of yours would do to me! You stay, I stay.”

There was a loud crash to the right, both of us spun around reaching for weapons. Kovak stumbled out of the tech room, with the sounds of things hitting the deck behind her. “I’ve got something we can use!”

In her hands was as small drone controller. It duplicated what would be found on the larger units only this was hand held.

“The FLEA scientists had us test this thing last year. The drones they gave us were junk, but this thing worked good. It, uh, sort of got left behind when we boxed everything up to send back.”

“It got forgotten huh, you sound like a couple of techs that I know. If we survive, I will introduce you to them.”

I took the controller from her and walked over to the Chief. He had the conduits opened up and circuits ready.

“Chief we have something for you.” I handed him the controller. “I remember this thing! Kovak, forget something? We will talk about it later.” He popped the back off the controller and started pulling out connectors. He rewired the connectors and attached them to the circuits he had already exposed. Testing them quickly he winced a bit.

“Good thing bad thing Lieutenant Lee. The controller will work, but only for a moment or two. The ships conduits are too powerful for this little thing to keep up. It should work to turn us. But we will have to kill the power to the ship as soon as the controls die. This will take both of us Lieutenant!”

“Chief, it’s your ship you know how it handles. I will take the controller, you take the power. Do any of the life pods work?”

“They should.”

“Yannos go toss Kovak in a pod. Kovak launch if this does not work, OK?”

The two of them left the room.

“Wilson are you paying attention in there? I need for you to tell me when I have turned the ship enough to miss the moon and anything else.”

“Of course Athena. Please don’t die you are my only real friend.”

“Buddy I intend for us to have a great many adventures together. Now pay attention!”

“Chief are you in position?” I heard a faint yes.

I studied the controls for a moment. When I turned on the controller it began to hum. I carefully began a turn to starboard to take us out of line with the moon. I could hear Wilson talking to me. “A little more Athena. About 20% more. OK, you got it tell the Chief to cut power.”

“Chief CUT THE POWER!”

I could hear the engines cut off and begin winding down. The ship was now coasting. The controller in my hand was starting to smoke, I gave it a yank and disconnected it from the conduit. At least I would not be responsible for blowing up a moon.

Chapter 10

An exhaustive search by Yannos and his team only turned up only one more hidden pirate. The former ‘ensign’ Carson’s body was found hanging in one of the communication conduits. He had gotten tangled up and had suffocated. Found with him were supplies and a well used space suit. He had apparently intended to steal from the Bad Pennies and skip out after they received payment. Our computer tech hacked his system and found that his real name was ‘Zerokool’ a hacker wanted by several planetary governments and a few crime organizations for double crossing them.

The James Cook jumped back into the system too late to have helped. The ship had been on a long range border patrol and training mission for all the new Militia Navy recruits. Captain Gorshin was apologetic that he had not been here to help. He did send out all of his training tugs and shuttle pilots to tractor the Paney to a parking orbit near the station.

The survivors of the Paney were very happy to be rescued, but felt betrayed when informed that the station was in the hands of rebels. For many of them, it was if one clan of pirates rescued them from another. All of the survivors had chosen to be interned except for Commander Garcia. The feisty Latin cook still intended to take revenge upon those who would lay hands on his people. He signed on to work in the cafeteria’s on board the station. Everyone else said their goodbye’s to the ship and joined the other Navy internees on the planet. The Paney was left sitting in orbit for now. I had estimated the internal repairs to the bridge and CIC would take several months to do. Just manufacturing the parts would take a few weeks. We used the new recruits to clean up the interior of the ship. Plans were made to use the Paney as another training vessel for now.

___

Major Minerva Lee spent a joyous afternoon having an extensive conversation with her soon to be Ex, husband Cole Whittier. As the financial aide to former Governor Norton he had knowledge and bank account information on many of his schemes. Cole had already ‘ratted’ out his boss’s secret bank accounts along with bargains he had made with some of the local crime syndicates. Cole had never mentioned any deals with known pirates though. Not even a little bit. That secret he had kept.

“Hello Cole. Enjoying yourself? We need to have a little chat.” Minerva cut a dashing figure she was dressed to kill in leather pants a silk ‘buccaneer’ shirt and a short leather jacket. This was her Pastafarian Festival clothing. Leather was nice because blood just wipes off it. No stains.

“You crazy bitch! I refuse to tell you anything. I demand to see my lawyer! I have rights. You can’t keep me here! Damn you!” Cole was stripped naked and hanging by his ankles upside down over a pool of water built into the floor.

Shaking her head she looked at her husband. “Poor Cole. The Governor’s whipping boy. Still trying to get his just rewards. Why would we just let you go? And rights? This planet has abandoned the Empire. You sir, are back in the New and Improved Pan Pacific League. We like the idea of Justice on our Planet. Criminals have to obey the rule of law. Just like everyone else. Now, we need to have a little chat about pirate clans, the sector Governor’s, and the Empire Senators. How exactly do all of those fit together?”

Cole was a pale skinned man to begin with, but now he had gone even paler. He began to violently shake his head no. “I can’t tell you any of that, they will kill me for it. My entire family will die if I tell you anything about that!”

“Ah ha, so there is something going on. Thank you Cole for confirming that for us! We could not quite, connect all the dots. But you will do that for us, won’t you Cole?” She smiled. This was fun.

“You crazy-assed-bitch! Don’t you care? They will kill me and my whole family for telling you anything.” He was starting to sob.

“You mean that pit of vipers that you call a family, right. Your own brother tried to have his way with me last year at the holiday party remember? I broke the bastards arm for that. Fell off his ‘horse’ my ass. Your Father? That man put half a planet out of work, just so he could buy a new yacht. Please.” She looked at him in disgust. “Why would I, try and save any of them?” She smiled her most evil smile for his benefit.

“No, Cole, I think you shall tell us what you know. So, how about it?”

“Forget it! I won’t tell you anything! You can’t make me.”

“Do you see the pool of water? Of course you do. You are hanging right above it. One thing that came to us from the 20th century is a little technique called waterboarding. We decided to mix that with another old earth custom called drown proofing. Why don’t you give it a try for us?”

The frame holding Cole dropped him straight down into the water head first. His scream was muffled as he swallowed a large mouthful of water. His own weight held him down in the water for about 60 seconds. Min raised him up. Water streamed from his upper body and out of his mouth, throat, and lungs. He gasped for air.

“How was that Cole? Still don’t want to talk?” He shook his head no. Unable to form words, he was thrashing wildly trying to break free of the constraints. “Oh well. Let’s try that again shall we.” Down into the pool he went again.

Three rounds later Cole was ready to talk. Norton, the former Sector Governor, was part of a cabal of wealthy individuals that believed the Empire had gotten too soft. All they wanted was money and power. By allowing big business to run the planets and controlling the populace through strength of arms, they thought they could have it all. The pirate clans were payed off to cause trouble making the colonies rely more and more on the Empire military to ‘fix’ things. Many high ranking Navy officers were on board with the plan. The governor had wanted the Paney because he did not have any local assets. Captain Pigot was not one of ‘his’ so Norton had made plans to change that. The Bad Pennies were supposed to deliver the ship intact without any of the original crew on board. Space is a deep dark place after all.