Theopolus seemed to be a perfect example of a stereotype, which just goes to show that sometimes there's truth in them. He was slim, pretty like a statue, and effeminate in the sort of way that makes homophobic males sick in the stomach. I really wasn't sure what to think of him and it seemed that keeping him quiet was out of the question. He chattered about nearly everything, but as long as he was quiet when we needed him to be, I could tolerate the condescending tone. Besides, I might learn something about Ebons or foldships in the process.
"The Mariella is a Class gee-eight Medical carrier with over fifteen full OR 's, six full labs, and three dozen triage stations. She has proudly served for over ninety-five years and has a crew of over two thousand when she's fully staffed."
Two thousand people living inside this 'thing'? It sounded like this ship was a small city, but you probably would need that level of resources if you were bound for a War World. The thought seemed funny to me when you considered the types of overkill weaponry they have. I mean, what were the chances of recovering enough pieces of anyone to put back together anyway?
"How many are on board now?" K'rth asked. He carefully adjusted his long stride to avoid losing the Ebon.
"Only about twenty-five crewmembers and technicians," he answered absently, intent upon his oyster. He still sounded a bit like a DL ad, but a distracted one.
"Twenty-five," I mumbled to myself. "No wonder it feels like a burnt-out tenement."
There was an unreal quality to my voice and a static rattle echoed on the end of each syllable. It also hung onto the end of the sounds of us walking and the more I concentrated, the more distinct it became. I even caught it in between the deep rasps of Obie's breathing, which seemed entirely too damn close all of a sudden and I spun around to make him back off. It turns out that but the big guy had been keeping a good tactical distance all along and I shuddered as cold chills started scaling my spine again. Even the acoustics were alien and I couldn't gauge distance from sound any more.
"When is the rest of the crew arriving?" K'rth asked, shooting me an unusual look.
I could have sworn that I heard something talking in between the syllables of his voice and shook my head. I wasn't going to become Angus and there was no way my imagination was going to run away with me. For some reason, the Ebon's smile had turned to a smirk as he looked at me sideways and kept going. Was I the only one getting really uncomfortable here? After all, the non-humans with me weren't hearing things.
"Over the next week, beginning tomorrow," he answered, his eyes back to the oyster instead of the corridor in front of him. "It will take some time for them to get used to her again."
"I imagine that it would take quite a bit of time to get used to this," I commented with discomfort in my voice, but he shook his head like I was a small child.
"Actually Operative Cole, the majority of our flight crew has remained unchanged from the last four tours and is quite acclimated to space," he answered. "The conversion is what will take some time for them to adapt to."
"A conversion?" K'rth asked. "Some sort of upgrade to the vessel?"
"What? Oh yes. A glorious one!" the Ebon stopped, smiling as his pride eclipsed his anxiety. You could certainly tell that he loved his job and the ship. "The Mariella Itaru was the twelfth most formidable instrument of vindication in SLA Industries' fleet. Now she has undergone a metamorphosis to become the grandest instrument of Mercy ever to grace SLA space!"
I could have done without the cheesy propaganda, but a light came on as few new puzzle pieces clicked into place. This foldship had just recently been refitted from being a major warship to become a hospital? It didn't seem that a medical vessel would have as much need of security and I wondered what kind of offensive capabilities it still had. Nix must have been thinking along the same lines and her voice came out as a tense growl from behind her visor. This trip had left her with little to be comfortable with and I knew she couldn't wait to get her back onto Mort for some R&R.
"How much of the old arsenal is still on board?" she asked. The wraith had slung her rifle and pulled her backup, a customized FEN 603 that she considered a poor substitute. The scope wouldn't be usable in close quarters anyway and she was always practical.
"All of the bad stuff, or at least most of it has been removed of course," he answered, not sure where this line of questioning was going. "After all, a medical ship doesn't need many weapons and now she's nearly harmless. Besides, the extra space gained made her a good candidate for the new role."
The phrase "nearly harmless" peaked my interest and I wondered what he considered "nearly harmless." Since I had no idea what these things are capable of, asking him what it normally carried and how much it had been stripped down would have been a joke. Also, the complete lack of security getting up here meant that "nearly harmless" equaled "nearly hijacked" and I chewed my lip. My watch said that only about six minutes had passed since we arrived and I wondered how much time we had left before we dropped into the atmosphere.
"What about the infrastructure itself?" Nix persisted, her voice getting harder like it does when she doesn't get the exact answer she wants. ""Hard points, weapon stations, targeting systems?"
"Most of that is still here since SLA might someday decide to restore her to a warship," he said, turning to look at the wraith. "But every offensive system has been disabled until the crew arrives to complete the removal."
"So if someone could hijack this ship, they could arm it again and it would be a warship, right?" she growled.
"I doubt anyone could manage to do that," he answered, doubt and a touch of fear creeping into his voice.
"Dark Night got up here with a small army and they'll pull it off if we can' t stop them," I answered. The Ebon stared at me with a look at like I had just folded in and I shrugged. It was a thick silence until Obie spoke up.
"Den why dey try'in to blow it up?" the Chagrin asked, his deep voice sounding like it came out of a 7' tall child. K'rth turned and started walking at a faster pace and I pushed the Ebon forward to keep up.
"There have must be a mutiny within the Dark Night squad and there are two groups now," K'rth answered. "One that wants to destroy it and the other that wants to capture it."
"How did they manage to do this?" The Ebon sputtered. His voice was shrill and I thought that he had become paler, but there was no way to tell. "I don 't understand how they penetrated security!"
"They had good intelligence," K'rth answered. "This raid was set for shortly after the ship was operational and when only a skeleton crew was present."
"I wonder where Bayer got it?" Nix asked, trotting next to my elbow.
"Bayer isn't just wanted by Cloak, " I answered flatly. It's funny how time and fatigue can make things fall into place sometimes. "He had to be one of them and he was better connected than I was told."
Why the most paranoid organization in SLA would have trusted a loser like Bayer in the first place was beyond me, but putting him in any position where he had access to any sensitive info was unabashedly stupid. That alone should have gotten his handler shot, provided the slacker didn't go native and vanish along with him. Until now, I had never considered how much intelligence work and forethought this would have taken to pull off and there was no way that Bayer was only a simple foot soldier. Also, there was no way he could have planned this alone.
"I don't see how he avoided getting sanctioned in the entrance interview," I added, my voice trailing off as I listened to the wheels turning in my head.
Of course Bayer had been sanctioned but far too late and they hadn't been able to catch him. Maybe they were just overconfident and expected it would have been easy to bag him and he slipped away, but Cloak isn't clumsy when they want someone dead. The odds of one poorly trained operative ducking Dark Finders weren't that great and as I thought about the way they went after him, a lot of other things didn't add up either.
Bayer didn't have any current connections like parents or a girlfriend, so they chose to dig into his Meny background and started pulling every name connected to his file as a potential lead. The chances are that my name wouldn't have come up because I was a roommate (like they said it did), but the fight where I put him in the infirmary drew someone's attention. That one had earned both of us minor reprimands and would have been enough to draw someone's notice if you were looking for someone who might have known him in passing by. It still seemed like they were grasping at straws instead of using any solid methods and that felt wrong. With their resources, how hard could it possibly be to track a single target? Especially when he didn' t go underground and was basically running in the open?
"Alex, what is it?" Nix asked and I held up my hand. The fog in my head was clearing and I laughed.
"Son of a bitch," I laughed and K'rth looked at me.
The only way that Cloak wouldn't have gotten him was if they weren't trying.
My comment about the handler getting shot along with him made more sense than I meant it to. If Cloak were about to realize Bayer was involved in "unofficial" activities, Dark Finders would run down every possible associate and break their knees, probably starting with his handler. Now if the handler were high enough up to see it coming, he would probably try to cover his trail and that meant taking Bayer out early. The normal ways like a termination warrants were out because they'd leave a paper trail, but a basic background check like the one that turned up a list of names who would recognize him would have been enough to get started. All the bald man had to do was present himself as the boogeyman from Cloak and lean on each of us to go after the target without any cost to himself. Presto - No problem, no paper trail and no official connection just because an operative team killed another subversive.
They didn't choose me because they had pulled my name out of a hat and decided to test me and it wasn't about getting the work done cheaply. I was just the next goon in line, probably near the bottom of the "grasping for straws" list.
"Damn, I can be so egocentric sometimes," I thought aloud.
"What is it Alex?" K'rth asked, stepping up to me to see if I was okay. Behind him, the Ebon was staring with one of those "oh god, he's about to go off" looks like he'd been giving Obie earlier.
The BPN had been bogus from the beginning and there wasn't going to be any compensation at the end for any of us, provided we lived through it. Also, I wondered what was going to happen if we (or one of the other operatives the bald man strong-armed) got lucky and took Bayer down? Since the whole operation had to go down quickly and quietly under Cloak's radar, having someone show up with Bayer's head in a bag wanting their pay would be a major problem. That would put the bald man's head back on the chopping block and that meant there had to be a contingency plan.
When I thought about it, Dark Night hadn't been too surprised to see us coming and we also ran into a lot more firepower than we should have, with the vets and the "Tek Trex" bots. That meant the bald man was probably still operating as Bayer's boss and was feeding him info about what was happening. Hell, the Dark Night cell probably had full dossiers on each of us by now and might have come after us directly if they had been given the time. What had looked like a simple case of us against them had actually been a three-way shooting match with the guy in Cloak playing against both sides the entire time. If this ended today and we brought Bayer and his cell down, there was no telling what was waiting for us groundside and I didn't want to think about it. We'd deal with that one when it happened.
While Bayer might have infiltrated Dark Night originally on a legitimate mission, something had happened to change the focus. Whether he had actually gone over to the other side or maybe just gone after profit instead didn't matter to me. Both he and the bald man had gotten into something that wasn't in SLA's interest and had to be brought down if we were going to survive.
The bald man was the real enemy all along.
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