Echoes of the Storm

Chapter 33

Arlee's comm pinged with a decent signal from Stone. He would have preferred verbal confirmation, but assumed the captain and Cloe maintained radio silence to avoid detection. That power locker down in the bowels of the space station was about as remote as a body could get, and despite every effort they'd made to identify routine patrols, the stationmasters didn't appear to know the word routine. Cloe and Stone were on their own.

The lack of top-notch security hadn't worked against them. Jack Gamble's insider Field had tapped into the vid monitors and looped the stream along the route to the ODP nerve center. Arlee and his four men had stormed in, taking over ODP-1 without losing anyone. Simultaneous successful ops had occurred on two other orbiting platforms. Monitors were back on real time. No one would be surprising them here.

The room was crowded with Arlee's team and the three Galilei they had overpowered. They'd made quick work of verifying access to operations across the targeted defense platforms—from weapons to comms, flight controls to sat feeds. ODP-2 was still in Galilei hands, but without weapons capabilities. She would be boarded in due time.

Arlee's chair squeaked as he rolled from one of the four tac ops' stations, past the tied up Sanduri, to the desk along the monitor-covered curved wall. Lights in the hangar bay below them had brightened, and faint static accompanied comms between the bay ops crew and an incoming transport.

The flight deck wasn't enough of a distraction for Arlee. His eyes flicked from data spilling across multiple monitors, to Torredo's dense cloud cover below the station, to the sigs coming in from Stone and Cloe. Frowning, he mopped his brow, concerned they hadn't budged from the substation. Vitals showed they were alive, but something was holding them there. "Thank you for these tax-saving, cost-cutting measures," Arlee muttered. Who needed a vid cam in a critical section of the station, or tech to show heat signatures? Unnecessary extravagance, some politician had said.

Arlee glanced at his chron, clenched and unclenched his fist. Stone would be here when he could. Or not. Didn't matter.

Maybe if he repeated that he might believe it...

"Open a channel," Arlee told Danner. The young comm tech tapped his keyboard and then nodded. "This is Big Sky," Arlee said. "We're in." He was met with silence. "C'mon, I know you're out there."

Long-range radar was quiet. Seconds of static on the channel felt like hours.

Crackle! Finally, a blip appeared on his scope.

"Big Sky, this is Main One." The baritone voice came from the Riga battlecruiser Patriot.

"Welcome to Torredo, Captain," Arlee said. "Ops proceeding as planned on ODP-1, 3, and 4. Weapons systems up and operational. Sanduri comm channels jammed. Watch for ground-based fighters. We expect to see them scrambling at any moment. We'll cover you where we can."

"We're just beyond Kona's Rings. Nothing on our scopes," the captain reported. "You'll have help on the ground shortly."

"I'll let them know." Arlee turned to Li at the weapons console. "Target any crusaders breaking atmosphere. Let's see if we can pick a few off before Patriot is clear of the Rings and the dogfights commence. Janos," he added, "watch for the Pride."

* * *

Saber was a few paces ahead of Tic, waving his arms at the two guards blocking their way out of the hangar. He pointed at the three flight crewmen chasing them. "Help! They're after us," he shouted. The men were shouting too, but the roar of another crusader launching drowned them out.