High Crimes: A Pax Aeterna Novel (Pax Aeterna Universe Book 5) Read online

  I know that the man is barely fifty years old. He isn’t the most brilliant of fighters in the Terran Separatists. Nevertheless, what he lacks in intelligence, wit, and creativity, he more than makes up of in in his brutish nature and boundless brutality.

  I return to the ship and quickly change into some new clothes. I check the charges on the weapon. It’s at maximum charge. I draw a quick breath, and then let it out slowly.

  “What are you doing?” comes the familiar harsh voice.

  I’m standing in the corridor, with my back to the entry ramp. I turn to see Scar Face.

  “Getting in the right frame of mind is what I’m doing,” I reply, walking towards him. He leads me back on the landing pad, where the two groups of armed, deadly terrorists are lining the two sides of the entry way.

  They are silent, their weapons primed. Each has their finger on the trigger and ready to execute the carefully crafted plan—a plan crafted with the help of the Tyreesians. If we follow everything in the letter, we will run this colony to the ground and take what we need in the thirty minutes that we have left…but of course, nobody knows if we have thirty minutes left.

  “You’ll lead the first team to take out the security force,” he says, showing me the floor plan of the base. He points at the security complex/armory, which is on the other side of the complex.

  “That’s the security building. This base has an estimated strength of seventy guards. At least fifty are stationed in the security room, while twenty are in the complex.

  “Your team will take out the people in the security building, while my team will raid the complex and steal all the equipment. I’ve already briefed them. Stick to the Ty’s plan and we’ll be good.”

  “Since when did we start sticking to their plans?” I whisper back to him, putting on my façade of sincerity. “Isn’t that the purpose of this movement? To purge ourselves of the scum aliens?”

  The man smiles at me. I know how to pull his strings and press his buttons.

  “You’re right,” he replies. “This is just a necessary evil. Once we get what we want, we’ll deal with Ty.”

  “It may not be that easy,” I say. “The Tyreesians are very dangerous. They almost brought the Galactic Council to a halt.”

  “Don’t worry about them,” he says. “When the time comes, we’ll figure out a way to handle them. Now are you clear on the mission?”

  I nod. “Take down the security office. Give you time to get in, steal the FTL 6 data that they’re working on. Get out. Who engages first?”

  “I think you should,” he says. “That way, you can draw out some of the operatives in the complex to give us more chance at success.”

  “Okay,” I reply, even though it doesn’t make any sense. I’m contending with fifty trained guards and he’s contending with only twenty. We both have equal men. And he wants me to face more bogeys?

  I join my team at the front by the wall. I peer out the entryway. There’s an open field between the landing pad and the complex. There aren’t any guards patrolling the grounds, so that’s an advantage to us. Why would they patrol the grounds? They are the only ones on the planet.

  There aren’t any CCTV cameras as well. The security force is in the case of an invasion–ready to give the scientists here enough time to destroy their data and get the hell out of Dodge. Also to keep the peace, and prevent anarchy or insubordination, and to enforce StarTech regulations.

  Hence, no patrolling guards and no cameras. This means our journey across the grounds should be hitch free, except if some motherfucker comes out to take a leak and sees us hightailing it across the night.

  “I don’t see anyone,” I whisper. “Let’s move.”

  “Stay on comms,” the man says to me.

  I nod in response and, in a crouched position, I walk out into the open. Without looking back, I break into a slow run for the building. I only glance back once to ensure my team is following behind me.

  We move in one straight line for the complex, which is alight with internal lights. There aren’t any floodlights on the grounds, except light bots that line the external walls of the complex. These bots only give off soft lights, which adds to the beauty and nature of the complex.

  Once we get to the complex, my team and I break right, while the man and his team break left. I lead my team all the way around the complex until we spot the security building ahead of us. It’s a boxy three-story building that houses office spaces as well as accommodations for the operatives.

  The building is almost as big as the complex, but not quite so. It’s about a hundred yards to the security building and we’re moving cautiously through the night.

  Ahead, a door in the complex to our left opens and a guard comes out. I don’t pause, as I should have. Instead, I keep running until I’m within range, before leaping like a normal person should, and crashing headlong onto the guard.

  I motion for my team members go past me and not wait. I hold the man down with more than the usual strength. I punch him on the face to subdue him some more before I snap his neck. I drag his body into the corner of one of the five tips on this side of the complex, where his body won’t be found for a long time.

  By the time I’m done hiding his body, firefights begin all across the grounds. At first, it starts in the complex before continuing in the security building. Screams and panicked yells escape from the complex.

  I break into a run towards the security building. Ahead I see a litter of bodies strewn about the main entry way. So much for stealth. The guys are already inside, but I know they don’t stand a chance. Still running, I suck in a deep breath and blink twice, activating my network of nanites. I feel a surge in my legs, but I restrain.

  I pull up a heat scan of the building and identify a forward room in the last floor, where a lot of people are aggregating. I also detect a lot of signatures in the room—the armory, I conclude.

  “Here we go,” I mutter, then engage full speed.

  It’s like I’m shoved from behind. My speed peaks up, allowing me to cover the distance in seconds. A few yards to the building, I leap—more like shoot—into the air. I blast up to the third floor and crash through the window into the room. I land on my feet and one hand. Thirty men, my nanites show, all of whom are currently in shock at what has just happened.

  I lift off into the air, rolling three times and letting loose blast after blast of my weapon. When I land on the floor again, the men are grabbing weapons from the racks on the walls and trying to fight back, but there are only twenty left. I run to the nearest cluster, then fall to my knees and slide through into their midst.

  I slam my ankle into the back of one’s neck, killing him instantly, while I send my fist into another’s chest, cracking through and puncturing his heart. I pull out my bloody fingers and flick them at the eyes of the nearest soldier, who screams and goes for his eyes. I grab him and use his body as a shield, while I spray the remaining soldiers on my side of the armory with blaster fire. They all fall dead.

  There are five reaming on the opposite side of the armory. I pull out a grenade from the one I’m holding in a tight fist and lob it over to the five. Before it lands, and while they’re still tracing its trajectory, I pull up my rifle and fire.

  It explodes over their heads disintegrating them.

  I snap the neck of the one I’m holding. He falls to the ground, dead.

  Thirty dead.

  I hear a sound behind me and immediately swivel on my heels, bringing up my gun to shoot. The man raises his hand in surrender.

  I exhale softly, cursing.

  “I could have shot you,” I say to the man, who’s on my team.

  “I just got word from team leader,” he says. “Terran Patrol is coming. They’ll enter the system shortly. We don’t have time to steal the data. We need to leave.”

  I nod.

  I blink twice to deactivate my nanites and following the man back outside. We meet up with the team leader’s team on the grounds.

>   “How did they know we’re here?” I ask.

  The man shrugs. He keeps silent. I look at the other men. They were able to get some equipment out, but it’s far less than what we expected.

  We make it back to the ship and lift off in time. We are shooting out of the atmosphere when, at the same time, three Armada heavy cruisers drop out of FTL space. Before they can begin firing, we engage our FTL drive and slip into the safety of interstellar space.

  Chapter 3

  No One

  We pop back into normal space twenty minutes later at the outer edge of a neighboring system in Tyreesian space, where a Tyreesian war ship is waiting. The large vessel is shaped like a bullet with wings. One end houses the control center, while the other end houses the engines, the thrusters, and the FTL and sub light drives.

  As we make our approach to the thirteenth deck of the behemoth of a ship where we are to be received into shuttle deck number ten, I wonder why the Tyreesians make such powerful vessels. They are so cunningly twisted that they can probably win a fight against three Mariner class cruisers (the most powerful arsenal in the Terran Armada) with a frigate. Yes, they’re that smart.

  “Tyreesian vessel, this is the away team,” the team leader says in the co-pilot’s seat beside me, interrupting my train of thought. “We are approaching.”

  “Proceed with approach,” replies the Tyreesian in charge of the comms.

  I take one good look at the vessel again and think, so why build such massive ships?

  I realize a fundamental problem the Terrans have faced since our first contact with an intelligent species. We’ve always been overpowered and overwhelmed. First, it was the Sonali, whose ships were so large we couldn’t even comprehend how such things could be capable of traveling at a speed faster than light. I mean, those guys’ ships ran for as long as five hundred yards, which at the time was a technological wonder.

  At the start of the Earth-Sonali war, it took about three to five ships to destroy a Sonali cruiser. And about ten to twenty to bring down a dreadnought (thank God they only built a few of those fuckers). Sure, there were a few exceptions, but more often than not the Sonali were too much for anyone to handle. They were a big leap ahead when it comes to upgrades on equipment and ships.

  Terrans were dying all across the galaxy, from Sarelia II to New Sydney. I led the team tasked with obtaining Sonali technology to be studied, reversed engineers, and applied to our ship design process with expediency.

  Once, I recruited a space pirate to help me destroy a Sonali cruiser that had laid siege to a planet. The space pirate succeeded in getting a bomb aboard the ship, which led to its destruction. After sending the pirate off on his way, my crew swept in to salvage all we could. There were many more missions like that, and all the while corporations suspiciously seemed to become very productive and very profitable.

  The space pirate brings a smile to my face. Jeremy and I had a deal and I need to find him. It’s been too long since he held me.

  Of course, my contributions during the war went unnoticed by the greater Terran Union. All I got was a commendation, secretly awarded by the Council of Admirals at Operations Command. After the award was handed over to me, it was then taken back and kept in a vault classified above top secret.

  Many people see Captain Jeryl Montgomery as the one who ended the war. They don’t know that if I hadn’t done all I did behind the scenes, Captain Jeryl Montgomery would long since have perished and the Terran Union would be under Sonali rule. Earth would probably have been glassed. And there would be no Galactic Council.

  Then came the Omarian Gambit the Tyreesians had played during the formation of the Galactic Council. When the ship appeared out of its hiding place behind the sun of that Nova Corporation colony, Jeryl Montgomery, who was then a Vice Admiral and was commanding The Seeker alongside Ashley Gavin, the Captain of the ship that time, had to fire a proton bomb into the sun to cause a mini thermonuclear explosion that incinerated the ship. That’s when the Galactic Council was started.

  Of course, they paid him by demoting him from Vice Admiral back to Captain. Before I left, I even got whiff of another ploy that was brewing to take him down for good. Those fuckers back at Armada Command seem to wallow in their own stupidity.

  I heave a sigh. It feels good to be outside the Armada. No oversight. Nothing to worry about. No reports to file. No one to suck up to. I hated doing all those things—but it was a necessary part of my job.

  Well, not anymore. I’m free.

  I guide the ship through the shielded open entryway into the wide bay of the shuttle deck. We land safely and I power down the ship.

  “We’re in trouble,” the team leader says, pulling off his mask. “We’re so in trouble.”

  I shrug.

  “We’re the ones running this op, sir,” I say. “Yeah, we may not have gotten everything out, but this is our show. The Tyreesians are only helping.”

  “Do you seriously believe that?” He asks.

  No, I don’t. But I don’t say it.

  “These are Tyreesians we’re dealing with,” he says. “Their backup plans have back up plans of their own.”

  And he walks out.

  I almost admire the Tyreesians. I mean, I can be crafty sometimes. I can be cunning. In fact, being crafty and cunning is part of a normal day in being a spy. However, there’s a limit to how crafty and cunning one might be before it becomes a chronic psychological problem. It becomes an obsession.

  The Tyreesians aren’t just past the limit, they are light years in excess. I wonder why they haven’t all gone mad because of this. Maybe it has something to do with their larger brain size than ours. Maybe they have higher brain power. That would explain how they’re able to build such great ships and the matter transport technology.

  I follow the team leader out of the ship into the shuttle bay. Our men are milling around the ship, their guns slung on their backs. I count. There are about nine of us.

  A few engineers enter the ship to check out the transport technology that was installed recently, while others go about the ship, performing checks.

  The transport needs two platforms. One for sending. Another for receiving.

  The shuttle bay is really large, like a small corvette may fit into this place. There are stacks of equipment on both sides of the bay, while ahead is a raised platform, where the exit and entrance into the bay is, and a ramp that leads up to the platform.

  The entry way opens and a couple of Tyreesians walk in. They are all holding assault rifles, which makes me stiffen. I feel the urge to go for my gun, but I bite down on it. The last person to enter isn’t crating any rifle. And he’s dressed in white—immaculate white that glares under the harsh white overhead light.

  “You blew it!” he roars as he makes his way down.

  The team leader and I make our way through the retreating men until we are standing between them and the ranting Tyreesian.

  He’s short before us, at only four feet tall. His silky skin glints as he gesticulates in anger. They might be small, but Tyreesians are thick and have a sturdy build, hence they are averagely powerful. Tyreesians have slits for eyes and ears, and a third eye on their forehead that is perpetually closed.

  I heard that the third eye opens only at the point of death. The Tyreesians are a little guarded about that matter, so very little is known about it. It’s supposed to give them sight into the immaterial realm, to see thoughts, feelings, or to possibly peer into the future.

  “Why did you blow up your chance?” he yells again, his gaze shifting from me to the team leader. “We put so much into this and you humans go and spoil it. The Terran Union is going to develop FTL 6 technology and it will make our matter transport look like a child’s toy! The balance of power in the galaxy will shift ever in your species’ favor, human!”

  He calls humans like he’s calling ‘vermin’. I almost recoil at the voluminous amount of hatred that he spouts.

  I look ahead. The rifle-totting Tyreesi
ans on the platform are standing in a line, as if in a firing squad. I wonder if this is it.

  I look over my right shoulder to a man that’s hanging on the edge of the milling terrorists. He meets my gaze. We don’t speak or make any motion, our eyes only connect, yet volumes are communicated.

  I glance back at the ranting Tyreesian.

  “Look, Commander, it wasn’t our fault.”

  I’m forceful in my words, doing my best to create and channel anger into them.

  “What do you mean?” he blasts back. “Half of your men are gone. You did not even get the equipment we were hoping for. You were almost caught by the damn Armada, yet you had all the time. You had the element of surprise. You had more men than you needed. You had our superior weapons and our transport technology.”

  He waits for me to explain, but I remain quiet. How can I explain, when the evidence against me is overwhelming?

  He’s about to continue his tirade, when I begin to think of something.

  “Look, we didn’t plan for the Armada to show up,” someone says from behind. It’s the man I was looking at earlier. He leaves his position at the edge and comes to my side.

  “And who are you?” the Tyreesian commander asks.

  “I’m Zhang, Commander,” he replies. “I went with the team. Anyways, the alarm went off so soon I think the ship triggered something while it was landing that alerted the Terran Armada. By the time we were just starting to take up the equipment, Armada heavy cruisers dropped into the system unannounced.”

  I jump in, “Right, the good news is that we have caused StarTech so much loss with what we took. They’ll have to reassess the cost of running that colony now, and I think they’ll pull out when they realize the cost.”

  The Tyreesian seems pacified. “You know that StarTech is working on this world as a subcontractor to the Terran Armada on mining rare metals for the FTL 6 drive. I hope for your sakes you are right and the corporation pulls out. If it does not, you are the ones who will suffer.” he says.