The Orion Deception (13 page)

"Jax Areospace Port."

"Jacksonville?" asked Lainne. "Isn't that where we don't want to go?"

"Precisely," answered the ex-lawman. Lainne just shook her head and gave up trying to figure things out. The man was being illogical and unpredictable. But so far, that was exactly what had kept her alive and she wasn't going to question it.

Chapter

Five

~

The journey to Jacksonville Aerospace Port was going to be a long one by boat. The river, though uncrowded, did not truly allow for great speed. And with daylight soon to break, the trio did not wish to be seen in a stolen police boat.

"We should make landfall, Mr. Thomas," suggested the Israeli. "It will not be good to be in this boat when dawn breaks."

"You're reading my mind, Gelad. We're in Palatka right now. We can lay low here until nightfall and try to secure land passage to Jax. If that doesn't pan out, we'll take another boat and head north. Seems the least conspicuous mode of travel."

"Fine. But let us do it soon, Ms. Connor truly needs to rest."

Heck nodded. Lainne looked terrible, pale as though she were getting ill. She didn't seem to be sea sick, so Heck assumed fatigue and stress were catching up to her. She looked as though she might fall asleep on the bench seat next to Gelad.

"Gelad, is my brother ok?" Lainne asked, suddenly. Her eyes were bleary and she was fighting to stay awake.

"I do not know what happened to Dr. Connor, but I am sure I know where he is," began the Israeli enforcement officer. "My government has received intelligence that a number of the most brilliant minds in the Solar System have chosen to live permanently on  Rigel's Escape.

"The reports were shocking, as you can imagine. Why would these brilliant scientists abandon their renowned work to spend their free time gambling and whoring?"

"What are you saying?" Lainne demanded, angrily.

"Please, Ms. Connor, hear me out." Lainne nodded reluctantly and Gelad went on. "Your brother is certainly among the brilliant, if not the wealthy, who have relocated to the luxury drift. I have seen recordings of this activity myself. But I have questions. How would people like your brother, of modest income, come into the money necessary to afford life on the drift?"

Lainne let out a sigh of resignation. It was all coming together now. "They said he had become a gambler, that he was working for organized criminals and running drugs."

"Indeed. I am sorry to hear that your brother's good name has been so soiled by this, and your brother is not alone. But something beyond the obvious is bothersome."

"What does it all mean?" she asked as Heck cut the engines on the sleek boat and glided up to a wooden dock. Heck hopped out of the boat and tied it to a large cleat with a mooring line.

"When we looked at the background of the scientists who have joined Rigel, we found something else that they have common with your brother. Each and every one was working on breakthrough projects related to space engine propulsion."

"How could you know that, Gelad?" asked Heck with a smirk, offering Lainne a hand getting out of the boat. "As a foreign national, wouldn't that have been classified from you?"

"Mr. Thomas, I will be frank. Since the downfall of the once great United States, Israel has had no choice but to look out for herself. That includes espionage. We know a great deal about what's left of the United States and of the Commonwealth Government. In this case, the Orion Project will have ramifications for the entire Solar System. Our own future, and that of our settlements in space, could be affected by the FTL project were it to fall into the hands of a renegade state."

"That doesn't matter to me now, Gelad," said Heck sadly as the Israeli climbed from the boat. "I am a man of no nation. I have no home now, and no allegiance to anyone."

"I understand. However, as I am certain Ms. Connor has already informed you, the FTL project Dr. Connor was working on is certainly providing the core of the project that is under way now. The Orion Project was formed a few years ago, according to our reports, when the reports of First Contact with the aliens were made. I believe the directors of the Orion Project kidnapped Dr. Connor, and others, to provide the brainpower needed to complete the project.

"The FTL project will affect your decision to search for your lost girlfriend."

"My brother mentioned Orion in passing a few times. But he was never specific and I never understood his meaning."

"He was referring to the constellation, Ms. Connor. The intelligence reports concerning the aliens always led to Rigel. Now the reports seem to make sense."

"Rigel's Escape,"
Heck said aloud. "Rigel is a star in the Orion constellation."

"Indeed. Documents show that the drift belongs to a conglomerate of corporations not belonging to the Commonwealth states. Following the leads of these companies has only led to a spiderweb of people and businesses, many of whom are merely ghost entities, with little information gained. Our best hackers have not been able to crack the programming of the systems running the drift or any of its member states or companies. It is has been an incredibly frustrating endeavor."

"Alien technology?" asked Heck.

"I do not know, Mr. Thomas. But I intend to find out."

"We are wanted criminals. By now, even you are surely wanted by the United States authorities. What's your plan?"

"We will find out when we go to Rigel's Escape."

"I like your style, Gelad!" said Heck. Something was coming alive in the ex-lawman, something that he thought had died when he lost Laylara. That spirit and thirst for adventure that he had never been able to satiate, the same thirst that had kept him from settling down, was coming back. "I assume we will have the authority and backing of your government?"

"We do."

They walked up the dockway as the sun began to peek above the horizon, the city of Palatka was coming to life. It was a busy city, far busier than the sleepy and long-forgotten town of Astor, and boasted a thriving business in eco-tourism. Visitors to the city often came for wildlife tours up and down the river, legendary bass fishing, and even alligator hunting.

"And how do we infiltrate that tight-lipped drift, Gelad?"

"We need to get to Roosevelt Orbital Station where we can meet my counterparts in the ISP."

"Ok,” said Heck, after a moment's thought “Jax Aerospace Port is only a twenty minute ground ride from here. This city still has a pretty good ground transport system, so we can stay offline."

"How will we board any spacecraft? Surely our 3-D point reference scans will be downloaded into every database in existence," said Lainne. "Don't they have those scanners in the aerospace port that scan everyone walking around?"

"There are ways to fool the ID scans, Lainne," answered Heck. "I have some contacts here in Palatka that can give me ID cloakers and passports, but it will cost us.

"Luckily our recently deceased friend had enough Commonwealth Credit Currency in his pocket to pay for it!"

Lainne remembered her last experience with identity cloaking microbots, she wasn't sure luck was the right word.

Heck stepped out of the taxi and stood a moment as the hatch slowly closed. When the dirty gray door locked into place with an audible click, the taxi released a blast of air from its undercarriage and began to float above the road. Heck stood in front of the ground entrance to an abandoned Rite Stop convenience store and waited for the taxi to rise above the Jacksonville skyscrapers and disappear into the smoggy sky.

Satisfied that the taxi driver had been paid well enough to forget him, courtesy of the deceased assassin's wallet, Heck turned and shouldered his way through the vagrants and drug dealing thugs who had taken up most of the space on the sidewalk. None of them seemed to pay any interest to the ex-lawman, his hard features and cold glare warned potential assailants that this man would be no easy mark.

Heck crossed an intersection and left the thugs behind, sucking on a cigarette as he went. He continued down the road and made his way to Lakeside Drive, a place that had once been prosperous and influential. But that was long ago and none alive today knew of that history. The Lakeside Drive that Heck knew was a hangout for criminals and those who shunned proper society. Jacksonville, like much of Florida, had been hit hard when the colonization of space became popular. The days of Jacksonville's legendary status as a mecca for businesses and sports venues were long since past, and now the city was but a shell of its former glory. The wars with Cuba and Mexico had taken their toll on the Sunshine State; the northern half of Florida, along with the rest of the Gulf Coast, had never been the same.

Heck flicked a cigarette out into the waters of the St. John's River as he made his way down the waterfront. A pelican swooped in, seemingly from nowhere, and with a dramatic splash and flap of its great wings it picked up the barely smoked cigarette. Then the great, ugly, bird gave Heck a nasty look as it realized the cigarette was no tasty morsel and let out a great pelican bellow in his direction. Heck laughed, happy that something could make him laugh these past few days, as the aquatic bird noisily took to the air and disappeared. He rarely smoked, but when it was necessary to present a different image of himself, he did so with pleasure.

Heck turned around and noted that no one was following him, of that he was cautiously certain. There was very little monitoring of this part of the city as people of importance did not venture here unless it was to indulge in one vice or another. A few ground cars buzzed passed him, some very nice and others not so, as he crossed the waterfront to reach the ramshackle store on the other side. Peels of thunder told him that he had arrived just in time to avoid the legendary clashes of the Florida sea breezes, which were known to create violent and unpredictable weather.

A blast of refreshingly cold air greeted him along with the chime of bells as he opened a glass door and walked inside. A tall black man stood behind the counter along the right side, and three aisles of convenience sundries ended at a large walk-in cooler on the left. There were a variety of people here, some Hispanic, some Asian, some white; each coming and going through the busy doors. He walked straight on, passing a display case containing a wide selection of cheap glass marijuana pipes, walking directly to the soda fountain. He waved his hand at the holographic selections and a large styrofoam cup full of cold cola appeared on the platform.

He took deep swig from the bright red straw and looked askance at the clerk and said, "I think the fountain mix needs some fine tuning, my friend!"

The clerk blew out a frustrated sigh and nodded toward the open door next to the soda fountain. "You welcome to go on back and tweak it yourself," he said as he continued ringing up customers in the busy store. Heck nodded and walked through the doorway. He turned right and entered another doorway marked
employees only
and proceeded into a tiny office. He pulled the chair out from under the desk and lifted a false panel in the filthy floor underneath. Then he crawled under and dropped into the hole, landing just far enough below the floor where he could still reach up and replace the panel.