First Flight: Federal Space Book 1 by Zachary Jones

Author:Zachary Jones [Jones, Zachary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-03-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Mason held Jessica up to the biometic scanner, and a moment later, the doors to the STC center opened. The troopers flowed in, shouting for everyone to get down.

The control center was a glass-enclosed cupola filled with traffic controllers hunched over consoles facing towards the line of traffic flowing into Dagon Freeport’s northern docking port.

Located in the despun spine of the station, there was no gravity holding anything down, so when the troopers started flowing in, the stunned controllers inside floated about the compartment in random directions, dropping whatever they were holding as the troopers started restraining them. Within a minute, the traffic controllers were bundled into an adjacent room to get them out of the way, and locked inside.

Mason floated out of the large window that dominated the front of the STC room, giving a wide view of the entry into Eridu’s northern docking port. The voices of confused pilots echoed from unattended speakers.

“They don’t sound happy,” Mason said.

<“Let’s not dally then. I need a hardwire connection. Look around, and I’ll catch it.”>

Mason panned his vision across the consoles that lined the huge windows looking out into space, overviewing the traffic moving in and out of the station’s northern dock.

<“Right, there, near the center. Get me plugged in quick.”>

Mason floated over to the console. With a strip of tape, he secured Jessica to the console, along with her life support module.

Jessica’s eyes examined the strip of tape across her forehead with a bemused expression. <“This isn’t big on dignity.”>

Mason pulled out more tape to secure Jessica’s power pack in place. “At least I’m not using your hair to tie you down.”

<“How very kind of you.”> With Jessica’s head and the life support module secure, Mason pulled a wire from a spool in the console and attached it to the port behind her left ear. <“Okay, here goes.”>

A man’s voice piped over the speaker in Exo, the voice of the controller that had directed Mason when he docked.

“Sorry about that, everyone. We had a power surge on our end.”

“Whatever you say STC, just get us our docking clearance, my passengers are going to start eating each other if we don’t dock soon.”

Jessica’s disguised voice barked out instructions, and the flow of ships into Dagon Freeport’s docking bay resumed.

<“All right, that particular crisis is averted,”> Jessica said after spending ten minute speaking with the pilots waiting to dock. <“Now to look for the Colonel… Ah-ah!>

“That didn’t take long,” Mason said. <“Where is she?”

<“Security headquarters in the Orange Ring. Looks like she’s being kept there with Mister Cordial. Local security assumes she’s one of Mister Cordial’s bodyguards like Cynth.”>

“Good, we know where to go then,” Major Hauer said. “Have you contacted Mervie yet?”

<“I’ve relayed a tightbeam through the satellite network. We should hear a response from Captain Van in about four minutes.”>

Mason sighed. Even in an era defined by the stardrive that allowed vessels to leap billions of kilometers in an instant, the tyranny of lightspeed delay still reigned wherever massive objects bent spacetime too much for stardrives to function.

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