Star Force: Canderous (SF16) Read online

  Several more boat crew came aboard after finishing the first load of four buoys, leaving the remaining 36 for subsequent trips out onto the lake.

  “Staying or going?”

  Jules turned around, having been lost in thought for a moment. “Ah, I’m riding along on the first trip. Wouldn’t do to get a new toy without enjoying it for a while.”

  “You want to drive?”

  “No, no…I’m strictly a passenger on this cruise,” he said, smiling as he felt the gentle, cool breeze coming off the lake competing with the heat of the sun on his skin for dominance. He sucked in a deep breath, already feeling good about having made this purchase. It had seemed a bit over the top just to run out to the buoys and back, which smaller craft could have accomplished, but he’d wanted one large, more or less unbreakable piece in his supply chain that he wouldn’t have to worry about…the large party deck on top had just been an unexpected bonus.

  “Sunscreen then?” she joked.

  “I’ll manage, thanks,” he said, smile intact, as he turned his full attention back to the lake as the pilot retreated into the bridge and worked with the pier crew to get them underway.

  As the boat started to move and the breeze increased Jules got the sense that Davis had been right about this being an ideal spot for a resort. He’d been so busy that he hadn’t had the time to really soak up the scenery, but then again he hadn’t been out on the water before either. Yes, this was going to be an ideal location if and when he could push his infrastructure to the point where he could establish a proper resort and begin accepting tourist traffic. That day was long in the future, but it comforted him to know that the location he’d been given had the potential to be very profitable if he could get this colony firmly established.

  And that fact made all the annoyances he’d had to face over the past year more than worth the trouble.

  5

  July 9, 2261

  Epsilon Eridani System

  Corneria

  Manfred Ilsa rode the freight elevator up to the nighttime surface, cursing his blasted memory every meter of the ascent. He’d forgotten his emergency locator again, and the mining foreman had sent him back up to get it out of his locker before he’d let him get to work in the subterranean tunnels, docking his pay for the number of minutes he wasted going back up to get the safety device. In case of cave-in or other emergencies the locator could be activated as a powerful beacon or short range comm device, making it an essential piece of their daily work garb.

  Manfred hadn’t meant to leave it behind, knowing it was just hanging on the hook in his locker underneath an extra shirt where he couldn’t see it to remind him to put it on. He was as angry at himself as the foreman, because the only reason he’d come out here from Earth was for the pay. Five or six years of work would set him up with a tidy little retirement back home and the sooner he got to his requisite amount the better, and little deductions like he was incurring now were putting his departure date further and further back.

  It was his own fault, he knew, but he needed to vent on something or someone, so everything that passed through his mind got a verbal licking…including the incompetent idiot tipping over one of the container crates on the loading dock as he tried to remove it from the top of the stack as Manfred came up the elevator. It cracked opened in a loud clatter, spilling solid metal bars all over, some of which slid out towards his feet. With each weighing 85 lbs, the danger of injury was extreme and the man deserved every bit of the vitriol that Manfred sent his way.

  Around the 18th explicative there was a bright flash, followed by a burning sensation in Manfred’s chest that stalled further comment. He looked down in shock and horror, seeing the charred hole in his uniform along his left flank as blood began to pour out, soaking the surrounding material.

  “No…son of a bitch, no,” he whispered, clutching to the wound to try and stop the bleeding as a second flash manifested on the perimeter of the flood lights, hitting him in the upper chest and putting an end to any further words. He crumpled to his knees, then tipped over forward onto the concrete. A few seconds later a thin pool of blood oozed out around his body, marking the spot of his death on the loading dock for weeks to come.

  Sometime around 3am Jules woke to a loud knocking on his door. Being a light sleeper it roused him instantly and within a few seconds of regaining clarity he recognized the urgent power behind the knock as a sign that something was wrong.

  He pulled his thin blanket off and walked over to his quarters’ entrance and opened the sliding door with a press of the wall button, finding Uriel waiting for him.

  “What is it?” he asked. The look on her face told him that it was serious.

  “Two men are dead…out at site 1.”

  Jules face went slack. “How?”

  Uriel hesitated. “We think they were shot.”

  “Get Bates up here,” Jules said, referring to his chief of security as he turned around looking for a pair of shoes he could slip on.

  “Bates is one of the dead men,” Uriel said, sniffling.

  Jules turned back around in shock. “What? What was he doing out at the mining site?”

  “No one knows. No one knows anything right now,” she said, tears starting to leak out of her eyes as she tried to remain composed.

  Jules held up a hand to steady her…and himself. “Alright, let’s take this by the numbers. Assemble the senior staff, get security on maximum alert…if they aren’t already, and get Jennison to examine the bodies. I’ll meet you there after I get better dressed.”

  Uriel nodded and scooted off, leaving Jules to hastily drag a uniform out of his closet and pull it on as his mind raced through the possibilities. There were only a few weapons in the colony, all of which belonged to security. If Bates was all the way out at the mining site then something had to be up, and it was likely that the killer was one of the security team, which was going to make this mess even worse.

  To date there hadn’t been so much as a single altercation amongst the colonists and Bates had joked that he was being severely overpaid for his role here. Apparently he had been wrong, and Jules wished earnestly that he was still alive and able to help him sort all this out. The fact that he was one of the dead men really unnerved him, above and beyond that fact that he had just lost two of his people.

  He grabbed a pair of shoes and forced himself to take the time to lace them up properly before rushing out the door, down the stairs, and across the street to the command center where the others were still gathering. He spotted Greggory, the second highest ranking security officer, and made a beeline to his position.

  “What do we know?”

  The man shook his head. “Not much. Two dead, killer’s whereabouts unknown. We think this happened about four hours ago but we can’t be sure because the bodies weren’t found until the shift change. They were on the loading dock. Ilsa was apparently sent back topside to get a locator beacon he left behind then never came back down. They found him dead just outside the elevator shaft. Bates was found on the far side, some 300 meters away, so we’re thinking it was two separate incidents. We’re pulling a weapons check now.”

  “You have guards posted?”

  Greggory nodded. “On the armory, dropships, and command center.”

  “Where’s Jennison?”

  “Not sure…probably attending to the bodies.”

  “What about a head count?”

  “Everyone at the mine is accounted for, and there are no vehicles missing.”

  Jules shook his head. “Pull a full head count. I want everybody in lockdown until we find the shooter.”

  “Alright, we can try that,” Greggory offered. “But it’ll have to be voluntary. I don’t have enough men to cover every building.”

  “Keep everyone in groups then, even if they don’t have a guard. I don’t think this is a conspiracy, though in truth I really don’t know what is going on.”

  Uriel walked up beside the pair, an even more urgent look in h
er eyes as Jules turned towards her. “We didn’t think to look before now. I don’t know how in the world someone could have pulled it off, and with the murders nobody thought to check…”

  Jules put a firm hand on her shoulder to stop her rambling. “Check what?”

  She bit her lip, almost as if she were about to get scolded for doing something wrong. “The ingots on the loading dock are gone.”

  Jules blinked, unsure of what he was hearing. “Gone how?”

  “They’re not there anymore,” Uriel said, not sure herself.

  “How many are missing?”

  “Unless our numbers are wrong…but I double checked them with the foreman…there were 18 crates waiting to be transferred over to the factories. They’re all missing.”

  Jules released her shoulder and took a step back. “What the hell is going on here?” he said, looking around at the four other people in the command center holding similar conversations as they tried to piece together the growing mystery. They all stopped and turned to the colony director as his voice raised.

  “Tell me how someone can move 18 four-meter square crates. I thought all our vehicles were accounted for?” he asked, turning back to Greggory.

  “They are as of ten minutes ago.”

  Jules threw his hands up in the air. “Where could they have even put them?”

  One of the other men cleared his throat to get Jules attention, then meekly floated another possibility. “It might not have been an inside job.”

  Jules’ eyes narrowed. “Is that possible?” he asked Greggory without looking at him.

  “Without a sensor tower we don’t have any way to track air traffic. If Bates heard something and went to check on it…”

  “The only people on the planet are Star Force, right?” Uriel asked the group.

  “As far as I know,” Jules said icily, turning to another woman in the group. “Get me a comm channel to the Sabers.”

  A little under four hours later, with the sun already having broken through into morning, a Mantis appeared over the lake and headed for the main landing pad. It settled down next to Jules’ dropships with a host of blue uniformed personnel spilling out immediately upon landing, half of which carried weapons. Leading them all was a quartet of Archons in their distinctive red-striped white uniforms, Harrison among them. He spotted Jules out of the waiting colonists and ran over to meet him while the others dispersed, already having been given deployment orders.

  “I checked every sensor log we have,” the Archon said without preamble. “None of them cover your colony directly, but there has been no unaccounted for traffic in or out of any Star Force possession, and our orbital satellites haven’t picked up any high atmosphere traffic. I don’t have an answer to who did this, which means we have a significant problem. I brought a security team with me and have four more on the way. If whoever did this is still around, we’re going to make things difficult for them.”

  “And if it’s one of our people you’ll be prepared as well?” Jules asked, following the other logic thread.

  “Your lost cargo suggests otherwise, but I’m not ruling anything out at this point. You’ve confirmed it isn’t an accounting error.”

  The way Harrison said it, Jules knew it wasn’t a recrimination, but rather a request to dismiss that possibility altogether.

  “18 crates confirmed missing.”

  “How much mass?”

  Jules hesitated, concocting a ballpark estimate. “400 metric tonnes each, give or take.”

  “And the only roads lead here?”

  “Here, the other mining site, and the docks. Our boat is still moored and site 2 has already been searched.”

  “Any other offshoots or paths along the roads?”

  “Nothing vehicle sized, no,” Jules said, having already been up and down the connections himself looking for any break in the foliage.

  “It had to be air then,” Harrison said with disgust. “Permission to examine the bodies?”

  “Granted,” Jules said, pointing off to the west side of the city. “We have a small morgue…up until now we hadn’t had cause to use it. Doctor Jennison couldn’t find any remains of the bullets for analysis.”

  “Show me,” Harrison insisted.

  “This is Bates, our head of security,” Jules explained as Jennison pulled back the plastic cover on the body, revealing a mess of what used to be his chest.

  “I counted four impact points,” the Doctor explained as Harrison and a Saber medic looked on. “The other has two, more distinct than this one,” he said, pulling back the plastic on Ilsa. “The points are separated enough to give a better impression of individual damage. Both men died of shock, coupled with severe loss of blood.”

  “There’s charring,” the Saber medic said, taking a close look at Manfred’s wounds.

  “My guess is they were attacked at point blank range, with the charring resulting from the power burn following the projectile.”

  “You said there were no projectiles?” the medic clarified.

  “None that I could locate, but as you can see,” Jennison said, flipping Manfred’s body over so they could see his back, “there’s a small exit wound here.”

  “It’s charred too,” Harrison said, exchanging a glance with the medic.

  Jennison shrugged. “Powder followed the bullet through, I’d guess.”

  “No,” the medic said casually. “This isn’t bullet damage. All of your weaponry is projectile?” he asked Jules.

  “Star Force wouldn’t sell us any of your stun weapons, so yes, they’re all projectile.”

  The medic dug his finger around the man’s chest wound, feeling charred, stiff bits of flesh where normally there would have been soft gore.

  “This is plasma,” he whispered to Harrison.

  “That’s not what I wanted to hear,” the Archon said, knowing that meant either Star Force security forces or the Canderians were responsible. The other Archons were beyond reproach, and nothing happened in their Clans without them knowing about it.

  “It’s worse than that,” the medic said, raising his voice back to normal tones. “This was a powerful weapon. There’s way too much tissue missing for our standard weaponry, and I don’t know of any that can leave an exit wound.”

  “I know a few,” Harrison admitted, turning to Jules. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but I promise you we’re going to find out. These are either some highly placed traitors within Star Force, or someone got access to weaponry they weren’t sanctioned for. My Clan will watch over the colony until this is over, so you don’t have to live in fear of a repeat incident.”

  “So you’re saying their deaths couldn’t have been at the hands of any of my own people?” Jules asked for clarification.

  “I highly doubt it.”

  “But you can’t rule it out entirely?”

  Harrison sighed. “It’s possible there was an insider, but if that was so then it was probably an informant. Whoever shot these men did so with a weapon your people don’t have. The idea that someone could come here and give it to one of your men to use is farfetched. The weapon probably went with the attacker along with your missing cargo.”

  “Any clues where they might have taken it to?”

  “To avoid our sensor beacons they’d have had to stay far outside any Star Force installation and remain low enough to the ground to keep our tracking satellites from picking them up. Those satellites aren’t equipped with visual scanners so we have no surface surveillance to work with, and whoever pulled this job probably knows it. I’d bet they’ve got a rogue base out there with at least one Mantis, probably more if they took all 18 crates.”

  “What can they do with the metals, other than sell them on the market, which you’d immediately know about?”

  “One can never predict stupidity,” Harrison said angrily. “There’s no way Star Force is going to let them get away with this, especially on a planet where we control everything. No one else is even close to construc
ting a jumpship, which means they’re stuck in the system. No one else has any ships in Epsilon Eridani, which means they’re stuck on planet or in near orbit. Unless they’re planning to build something with the metals they stole from you I have no idea what they intend to do with them.”

  “Do you have any suspicions?” Jules asked, being remarkably forgiving considering this appeared to be the work of Star Force personnel…but then again he knew it had to be rogue Star Force personnel, which meant Davis and his organization weren’t to blame any more than Corvati would have been if Bates’ and Ilsa’s murderer had been in their employ.

  “I know where we’re going to start looking,” Harrison said firmly, “and as soon as we can get enough birds in the air we’re going to start a perimeter search around Outlook and expand outwards until we find their hidden base. I’d also like to install a sensor tower here, with your permission?”

  “On the condition that you allow Corvati to purchase it from you. It’s an oversight on my part for not having one in the first place.”

  “If you wish, but the fault isn’t Corvati’s or yours. Star Force is responsible for planetary security. You’re supposed to be able to build here without worry.”

  “If this were your colony, yours personally, would you leave it blind and defenseless counting on Star Force for protection?”

  “No,” Harrison was forced to admit.

  “An oversight on my part,” Jules reiterated. “Get that tower here ASAP…I’ll let you pay for the shipping.”

  “Deal,” the Archon relented. “Now get me out to the mining site.”