Dirty Deeds (The Omega War Book 6) by Mark Wandrey

Author:Mark Wandrey [Wandrey, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seventh Seal Press
Published: 2018-10-23T23:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

Chapter Nine

An hour before dawn, four ships fell into the atmosphere of Valais. The vessels trailed streaks of plasma as the atmosphere was heated to many thousands of degrees by the hot drop. Further away, out in space between Valais and the emergence point, the system’s pair of defensive gunboats were now slowly-expanding debris fields. None of the planet’s officials were aware of the incident; the crews hadn’t had enough time to send a warning.

The four dropships split up as soon as they’d slowed enough and entered the lower atmosphere. A crab boat working an early morning string of pots caught sight of a single bright streak of light splitting into four, two one way, another two in a different direction. The crew watched curiously as two of the sparks went westward and were eventually lost to sight behind low storms near Pinnacle Island. The others went south and dropped until they were out of sight.

The operations center at the Atlantis Starport was usually dead unless traffic was expected. A commercial freighter had landed only three days earlier, and none were expected now. Two of the government’s four gunboats were up on patrol, as was standard. While piracy in Gliese 1214 was rare, it had occurred a couple times in the past. While the gunboats weren’t warships, they were at least a deterrent. When they failed to check in at the 05:00 watch, a supervisor was summoned from home.

“What’s going on?” the supervisor asked when she walked in. She looked half asleep, and the cup of tea didn’t appear to be helping.

“Buttercup and Tea Kettle aren’t responding,” the technician said. He didn’t look much better; his shift was due to end in just three hours, and the off times were boring beyond belief.

“So what, they’re probably screwing around.”

“Buttercup said they thought a ship came through the emergence point,” the tech said, “and half an hour later, they stopped responding.”

“Have you checked the emergence array?” she asked. A series of sensor satellites, the array used the gravitational eddy zone of the Lagrange point to hold position and monitor for ships.

“The data is coming in garbled,” he said. “It’s like a solar flare.”

“Gliese 1214 is in a quiet cycle,” she reminded him.

“I know, why do you think I called you?”

The supervisor took a sip of her tea and dropped into a chair. She logged into the computer and queried the sensor array. Just like he’d said, the data was coming in clipped and incomplete. Not a single packet was getting through. Wait, she thought, not a single packet?

“Call the crews for Hopscotch and Doppelganger,” she said.

“But they’re not due to fly for three days.”

“Do it,” she ordered, “on my authority.” He shook his head and picked up the phone while she accessed the planet’s orbital defenses. Solar-powered lasers, they stayed in powered-down mode until called upon, so they were hard to spot. Valais only had twenty-three, which allowed for five to cover any single approach vector at a time.

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