Reason For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 1) (14 page)

“You!  What are you doing?”  What looked like a senior engineer was running towards Valerie, her expression one of anger rather than concern.  “All of you.  Get on the backups.”  She ordered those standing around until Valerie shot her cleanly between the eyes.

With a pistol in each hand, Valerie swept them around her in wide arcs taking in those standing there.  Those further away were speaking urgently into their coms, trying to raise security.  It didn’t worry Valerie, the program she sent into the network from her quarters, activated the blackout system and prevented any calls to be made to or from the area surrounding the reactor.

“I suggest you all start running for the escape pods.”  Valerie announced in a loud and clear voice, carrying across the room.  As if to punctuate her suggestion, the reactors containment breach alarms went off, drowning out any sort of response from the engineers. 

They looked at each before bolting for the door, knowing exactly what that alarm meant and how little time they had, before the entire room was jettisoned into space.  As they ran, Valerie waited calmly until the last one ran out, before heading over to the blast door and sealed it behind them, with herself in the Reactor room.  She looked around the empty room, holstered her pistols, strolled to a nearby chair and relaxed into it, propping her feet up in front of her. 

She stayed there with her eyes closed seemingly at peace for precisely 60 seconds.  When her count was complete, she moved with speed and purpose.  Checking her wristcomp, she saw from the minicam that the corridor beyond the blast door was clear.  She set the door controls to open momentarily before cycling shut and stepped through.  The noise of the panicking engineers could be heard from around several corridors leading to the lifts.  They would have realised the reactor had not jettisoned as designed and just why Valerie told them to run for the pods.

The alarms would be screeching throughout the whole of Furioso, not just Rosso and an entire evacuation would be under way.  All Central would know is that a Reactor was going critical and would not jettison.  There was no time for them to react, they would be worried that they could not contact anyone at the Reactor, they just did not have the time to deal with it.

A single personnel lift sat just outside the reactor doors, with its doors up and display showing it was out of order.  It arrived shortly after Valerie entered the Reactor Room, immediately showing itself to be no longer functioning.  The engineers, not wanting to be delayed, left it alone to get to the larger and more numerous banks of lifts further down the corridor.  This gave Valerie a clear exit, just as she arranged.

Stepping inside, she entered the override code her assault programs had set into the system and the requested Bay 41.  With the alarms blaring and announcements telling people to head for the nearest evacuation point, it was fortunately a short trip.  Valerie stepped out and was almost pushed back in by a crowd of people trying to get passed.  Using her slight stature and superior strength she wriggled clear of the scrum.  People were dashing everywhere up and down the corridors.  Furioso had never run a drill of this nature and now people were panicking, rushing to find a way off the station.

The door to Bay 41 stood closed, its guard station abandoned.  No one took any notice as Valerie entered her ID and went through.  The corridor inside led straight forward to the Bay itself and doors stood open all along it.  Valerie could see abandoned work stations with holoscreens still active.  She was jogging now, knowing her time was very limited.  A glance at her wristcomp gave her a countdown until the Reactor went critical.  She entered the small Bay itself.  There sitting undisturbed and alone was the Spectre.

There had been no guarantee another test pilot would not be in the Bay or within reach to be called down, to save the prototype from the disaster.  Valerie was able to check the test schedule, along with the Spectre’s readiness.  No planned flights were listed and she was fully fuelled, armed and ready to go, so she took the risk. 

With her oversight over the program, it would have been well within Valerie’s authority, to order the Spectre to be ready for her to fly.  The problem with that was it left a clear electronic trail for someone to follow.  All of her movements from the reactor to Bay 41 were being deleted from the system.  An official order, on a top priority classified prototype, would have been impossible to remove in the time she had.

Sitting abandoned just two metres from the entrance to the bay was her Tea Chest.  Valerie felt a sense of almost happiness, to see Lady Luck working with her and the plan unfolding almost perfectly. 

It was fleeting and soon smothered by her pain.  She considered briefly just sitting down here and now, letting herself die with the station.  This was also momentary, she had come this far and now she wanted to see the results of her labour.  To see for herself the destruction she was about to cause.  Grabbing the handle of the Tea Chest still hovering on its active anti-gravs, she ran over to the sleek, black Spectre.

The hatch stood open and Valerie went up the ramp in long loping strides.  Hitting the close button as she reached the top and swinging the Chest round in the cramped space.  She engaged its magclamps and felt it secure itself to the metal floor.  Half a dozen steps took her through the tiny living quarters with its two bunks, shower and equipment lockers, to a simple ladder leading up to the cockpit.

An abandoned datapad sat in the pilot’s chair, where a technician left it before running for the escape pods.  All the systems were already online, the diagnostics programs scheduled for today working in Valerie’s favour.  Quickly strapping herself in, she brought the engines to full readiness, switched the landing gear magclamps on, initiated the stealth and activated the weapons systems. 

Bay 41’s doors were sealed shut.  There was no way Valerie could open them without leaving another electronic trail behind.  She had a much more simple solution in mind.  The twin Pulsar Cannons mounted under the nose, glowed green on her display and she pulled the trigger.  Two bright blue bolts shot forward, too fast for her to see, and slammed into the doors with an incredible amount of power and energy.  Far more than the doors were designed to deal with, they exploded outward in a rain of shredded metal, along with the entire atmosphere from the bay.  The magclamps kept the Spectre fixed in place through the quick, explosive decompression.

The rush of air subsided in moments.  Valerie released the magclamps and gently floated the craft up.  Quickly flipping through the various weapons at the Spectre’s disposal, Valerie selected a small energy bomb.  Timing it to denote after twenty seconds she released it and pushed the throttle forward.

The Spectre shot forward, leaving confines of Furioso with thousands of other shuttles and escape pods.  Bay 41 exploded in a blast of plasma behind her.  Valerie’s screen filled up with the icons of all the craft leaving and speeding away from Furioso.  Unlike them, the Spectre was not emitting a transponder code and was invisible to their limited sensors.  She picked her way through them all, with an awareness they could head straight at, what they thought was empty space, and crash into her.

The computer flashed a warning of a massive energy spike behind her.  Heedless of the chance of collision, Valerie spun the holoscreen to show the rapidly receding station.  A cruiser was reversing out of its Rosso docking slip when it was engulfed in a blast of plasma.  The reactor itself was on the underside of the station so she could not see it blow, but all across Rosso explosions ripped it apart.  Furioso itself was too massive for a single Reactor to destroy it; even an antimatter one.  What it did do was cause the station to yaw out of line and begin to spin away from, normal its position.

Hundreds died in that single cruiser, thousands upon thousands more were dying every second as the gravity and life support failed, their bodies being pulverised on the walls or the air being forced out of their lungs, as the atmosphere escaped into space.  Later, many more would freeze to death or run out of oxygen in parts of the station that survived.  Countless pods would fail due to poor maintenance or just expire before they could be found, there was so many of them. 

Never in the Pantheon’s history had a disaster of this magnitude occurred, safety protocols were literally centuries out of date.  There were not enough shuttles and escape pods for all the personnel on the station.  Worse still, although the number of ships in the Olympus system had the capacity to recover all the pods, there was no plan and there had been no exercises to practise such a complex operation.

Valerie knew this.  She knew exactly what she had done.  She watched coldly for a moment before piloting the Spectre invisibly away.

The setting sun glistened from Grand Admiral and Legion Commander in Chief, Antonio Cestari’s silver grey hair.  At four hundred and thirty-seven years old, he looked like a man in his mid-fifties.  He had a former weight-lifters physique and was still fit from an hour’s workout a day, even if he no longer pushed himself as he once had.  At this moment he was enjoying a very peaceful Saturday evening on his yacht out on the Aegean Ocean, twenty kilometres from the Steps of the Gods.  These were the Islands making up the homes of the oldest and most powerful Families in the Pantheon.  Cestari Island was the furthest out from Zeus, the most peaceful and sought after.

Unlike many of his contemporaries and even his own Family, Antonio earned his rank the hard way, working his way up from Navy Ensign to the highest ranking officer in the Legion.  His Monday to Fridays were long and very full.  Often he was one of the first to arrive at his palatial office at the top of the Legion Navy tower and one of the last to leave.  In contrast, his weekends were sacrosanct.  Sundays for the children, that were his great many times grandkids, and Saturdays for him alone.

The buzz of the boats com interrupted his peaceful reverie.  The sigh that escaped his lips was more habit than meant.  His staff knew not to disturb him unless it was truly dire so he was sure it was important.  He pushed a button on his wristcomp and the image of Wioletta Standring’s head and upper body appeared from a holo projector built into the boat’s railing.

“Good evening, Wioletta.”  He greeted his Chief of Staff.

“I’m sorry to disturb you Admiral.”  Wioletta replied, her eyes gazed just above his right shoulder.  The Commander in Chief had his yacht’s com set to receive image and send voice only as a default.  She was looking at a blank screen rather than being able to see him.  It wasn’t really the done thing for his sub-ordinates to see him in his swimming shorts.

“Quite alright, Wioletta.  What disaster has happened to initiate this call?”  Antonio asked with a slight smile, still relaxed in his deck chair.

“We’ve had a report from Zeus PD about one of our officers killed in an anti-terrorist operation.”  A frown creased Antonio’s face, an incident like that, while serious, was not sufficient to disturb him.  It could easily be handled by the commanding officer of the relevant regiment, ship or department.  If Wioletta called him, there was worse news to come.  His Chief of Staff paused with a look of trepidation and took a breath before continuing.  “Zeus PD informed us that the officer was Lieutenant Eleanor Doherty.”

Now Antonio sat up straight in his chair and he could not help but interrupt his Chief of Staff.  “What?  Is that confirmed?”

“Yes sir.  I checked her home address and the Lieutenant’s com tracker.  Both clearly correspond to the PD’s information on their operation.  They have also got DNA evidence of her from the site.”

Antonio knew he’d asked a redundant question.  She would not have called him without at least an initial check of the facts.  “I’m sorry, Wioletta, that caught me by surprise.  What have the Police told us about the incident?”

She smiled and nodded at his apology before continuing.  “They said a specialist unit was responding to confidential information concerning Thomas Doherty.  It was time sensitive and so they went ahead without delay to take him into custody.  The team arrived on schedule almost nine hours ago and entered the family home.  They do not yet have a clear picture of what happened after that.  They are still investigating at the site.  What they do know is that there are no survivors.  The Electron Cell on the team’s aircar detonated, destroying the house completely.”

Antonio nodded thoughtfully.  “You know what happened don’t you, Wioletta?”

“Yes sir.  Of all the places to assault, I would say that Major Carter’s home is going to be very high up on the list of ‘under no circumstances’.  Certainly not with a mere four person fire-team.  The PD are asking for clarification of her service record.  What they have for Lieutenant Doherty did not give them any reason for concern.”

“They can go whistle for that.  This is a class A clusterfuck and no mistake, they’ve cancelled the most effective covert operator the Legion has ever had.”  He shook his head and grunted.  “On top of that, I can’t see any conceivable scenario, where her husband would be involved in anything without her knowledge and I have no doubt whatsoever about her loyalty.  The Legion is all she has ever known and she is more committed to it than anyone else in the service.”

A thought occurred to him.  “Didn’t she have children?  Where were they?”

His Chief of Staff took a deep breath.  “They were in the house and the PD have confirmed they have uncovered their bodies, along with the body of her husband Thomas Doherty.”

Antonio closed his eyes, he never met the children, but he had known Valerie literally since the day she was born.  He watched as her brothers and sisters died in their hundreds, until she was the only one left.  Valerie only actually met him a handful of times, she had not been aware as he guided and protected her career.  Due to her training and experience, any surveillance on her needed to be very distant.  The reports included pictures of the two children and now he thought about it, Antonio could bring to mind the smiling blond girl and small happy boy.  He doted on the children in his family and it was a true loss Valerie’s died with her.

“What!”  Antonio’s eye snapped open as the exclamation from Wioletta surprised him. He could only stare at her as her face went almost completely white.  She had worked directly for him for over thirty years and he had known her much longer than that, as they both rose through the Legion’s ranks.  In almost two hundred years, he could quite honestly say he had never seen her react this way.

“What is it?”  His Chief of Staff was staring down at something out of sight of the com’s pick up and did not respond to him.  “Wioletta!”  He snapped and finally she looked up, her eyes wide in disbelief and shock.

“It’s.  It’s Furioso,” she stammered.

“What about it?”

“It just exploded.”

Antonio sat back, sharing her shock and disbelief when a thought suddenly flashed through his brain and he sat back up sharply.

“Check Central for the last known location of Major Carter!”

“What?  She’s dead.”  Wioletta responded, not understanding and still very much in shock.

“Major Carter is the most dangerous soldier in the Legion.  Our most secure space station, where she’s based, explodes hours after her family is killed.  If you think that’s a co-incidence, I’ll sell you a nice habitat that just happens to be orbiting a black hole.” He could see realisation dawn on her face as she came to the same conclusion he had. 

She bent forward, checking her computer, before sitting back as the simply query gave a quick response.  “It’s an old entry,” she explained as she read the information.  “We haven’t received the hourly update for the obvious reason.  It shows Carter arriving at the station and entering her quarters....”  She trailed off and slumped back into her chair.  “Oh, shit.”  Realising what she said, she sat back up straight.  “I’m sorry, sir.”

Switching the com over to send visual as well as voice using his wristcomp, Antonio shook his head and waved the remark away.

“It’s fine, Wioletta, that sums it up perfectly.”  He paused thinking furiously.  “I’m heading into the office.  I’ll take the yacht directly to the tower.  Get everyone in and I do mean everyone.  My full authority.  No excuses.  If they aren’t dead on Furioso or already directly involved in rescue operations, they will be there.  For the rest of the Legion in the system, send out the recall, code Ares.”  Wioletta nodded her understanding.  Issuing Ares put the Legion at full war footing.  All leave would be cancelled and every ship, squadron, regiment and company in the Navy, Army and Commando’s would be on high alert and ready for deployment.

As Commander in Chief, Antonio knew how unprepared they were for this emergency and as of right now, only himself and Wioletta held, what was probably, the truth behind what happened.  The chance of anyone else connecting Lieutenant Doherty to Furioso were incredibly slim.  They would presume is was Billy Bacc’s rebels, or an attack from one of the many nations jealous of the Pantheons power.  Ares would also put all of Olympus’s resources at the Legions disposal and give Antonio room to manoeuvre, while he managed the situation.

“Two other things.  First of all, the President’s office will be on screaming for answers.  Keep them up to date with live data from the rescue operation.  When they ask how this happened, tell them we are investigating, but due to operational security we can’t give them anything until it is complete.  They will ask to speak to me.  Tell them I am busy and I will brief the President personally as soon as I can.  Secondly, get a small team of investigators together.  It’s obvious the PD is lying to us about Tom Doherty’s terrorist connections, but we’ll use that and add to it.  It will come out that Carter was responsible for Furioso and it will give us a useful way to spin this to the media.

“More importantly, I want to know what really happened.  Who sent that fire-team to Carter’s house.  Someone pulled that first brick and made all of this come crashing down on us.  I want to know who that is and why.”

“I will get right on it, sir.”

“Good, I will see you shortly.”  Antonio switched off the com and sat there for a moment to watch the sun slide down below the horizon.  It truly was amazing how your expectations could change in such a short amount of time.  He thought of his own children, when they had been as small as Valerie’s, so many years ago and he considered how he would have reacted had they been murdered.  Not so different from Valerie, he supposed.

Antonio hoped Valerie had not survived the destruction she caused.  Someone unleashed a dragon this morning, one that would not stop until she was dead.  If she wasn’t, they would hunt her and they would find her, it would be difficult in the mess of escape pods and shuttles.  She could be on anyone of them, but they would be all be found and accounted for.  Everyone would have their ID’s checked as a matter of course and she would be found.  More deaths would follow, of that he was certain.  You did not capture or kill someone like her easily.  They would still do it, no matter what it took.

The last rays of the sun petered off as Olympus’s spin turned Antonio away from it.  The air immediately felt cool against his bare chest and he shivered.  How much of that was from the cooling air and how much from the dread of what he would have to deal with, he wasn’t sure.  Nothing could be done from his deck chair, so he pulled himself to his feet, retrieved the shirt he discarded in the hot sun earlier from the deck and pulled it on, heading for the craft’s small bridge.

Reclining in the comfortable captain’s chair, he brought the Electron Cell up to full and initiated the anti-grav’s.  The yacht lifted gently until it was clear of the water and hovered two metres above the surface.  A flip of a switch caused the traditional wet ship’s steering wheel to retract and fold away to be replaced by the controls of a top of the line aircar.  Another control sent a slight shudder through the crafts frame and it reconfigured for air travel, the water propulsion system replaced by powerful thrusters.

Entering his destination into the guidance system, the yacht rose straight up into the air until it reached the Blue traffic zone.  Antonio brought the nose round and headed to the centre of Zeus.