24

Hijacked

'A' was relatively pleased by the results of his planning, as he stepped over to the control panel in the security station he had infiltrated. While the Tau Cetians were running around like headless chickens over the invasion of one of their precious ships, he had snuck in to their security compound right under their noses, taken out one of their security officers, and forced one of their technicians at gunpoint to operate the transport functions to have him sent to the ship, along with forty other people he had stashed away at the edge of the settlement.

Of course, it had to be a technician, and not a military officer. Military training for those types would prevent them from caving to any demands or threats he made, and it would be a waste of his time, but some of the technicians the Tau Cetians employed on the surface of this world were from civilian sectors of their society, and therefore more easily coerced.

And was he ever skilled at using fear and pain to coerce others to his will.

Within an instant, 'A' appeared in one of the ships' cargo bays, along with the other forty people he had conscripted into his army. Most of them had been convinced of the need to fight to free themselves of the Tau Cetians, and would willingly lay down their lives to fight for what they believed was a threat to their very species survival.

'A' knew better, of course.

Ever since he was pulled from Earth, he had planned something like this. Only the timescale was open to question, and he was a patient man, in spite of the persona he gave to others in his cadre.

The only one he had not managed to break was that upstart kid, Jason Mensar.

His only failure.

He still had no idea why, and none of his usual techniques worked. Torture was an abject failure even though it was an effective, if crude, method of coercion. Deceit was also a failure. It seemed Jason was too smart to fall for any of 'A's tricks, including pretending to have captured his sister and tortured her in a nearby room. Despite pulling a young girl from the settlement that sounded very similar in voice to the kid's sister, Jason was not fooled, and his shrewd questioning about his sister's whereabout, coupled with his demands to see her and talk to her, made that a futile exercise to continue.

'A' ordered 'D' to cut her throat earlier that day. She was useless to them now.

Jason was useless as well, but they had run out of time to deal with the other prisoners that were in their base of operations, and had to move quickly once they had the information they needed to put their plan into action.

It had taken months of careful surveillance, infiltration and seemingly-innocuous questions to learn what he needed to know about the operation concerning the Tau Cetian guard post that they had eventually taken over. He wasn't quite sure, but he had come across some knowledge of Tau Cetian command codes. How these codes came to him was anyone's guess, but 'A' was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, as the old expression went.

"Wait here," he told them all roughly, stepping up to the doors that led off of the deck to some other place on the ship. As he did, they were being wedged open, and 'C' pushed his way through. "Well?"

"We've found their arms room. Got two of our guys carrying as many assault rifles as they can just behind me."

'A' nodded. They could arm some of the guys in the cargo bay with these weapons, then go back to the arms room and arm the rest, assuming the way was still open to them and had not been closed off by the ships' own security forces. He turned back to those in the cargo bay and started giving orders.

Mephicia took a security force in to a nondescript building at the edge of the settlement. She was somewhat anxious about the outcome of this action, given she currently had to shepherd a bunch of civilians from the surviving human population with her, including the rather volatile companion that she had noticed in Stephen's company.

Miradima had ordered her to take them as an advisory team, just in case there were prisoners located there, and they needed someone or several others who were more like themselves as reassurance. While the health of the humans in the settlement were far healthier than they had been on the day of their arrival, they were still woefully undernourished, weaker and smaller than Tau Cetians were on average, and having larger people looming over you when you had been trapped for an unknown length of time was likely to cause some fear and panic in the survivors.

So, despite Mephicia's misgivings, Janet Fletcher was with the group. Mephicia point blank refused to take anyone who was injured, which meant that Stephen was still out with his broken wrist, Davidson was still at guard post fifty-three dealing with the aftermath there, and thankfully, John was in no position to engage in any sort of combat action.

Berating herself for giving even a moment's consideration for the distraction that thoughts of John were causing her, she exerted her sheer force of will to get her mind back on the task at hand, and that was to secure whatever they found at this building.

Jason's head was groggy, and he was exhausted. He had no idea how much time had passed since the creepy thin guy was there, and he had no idea what day it was, or where he was.

He was barely coherent, struggling to recall what he was even doing there.

He winced as he coughed up some more blood. Those assholes really did a number on him, he thought, amused.

He flinched as the door crashed open, and several people poured through the entrance into the room where he was. He could not make out what they were shouting, but he briefly noticed with some amusement, that they were armed with what he thought were alien weapons. He would laugh at the absurdity of the image, if he weren't so damned tired.

He must have blacked out for a minute, because when he noticed what was going on again, there were several people crowded around him, one of them couched behind him holding him in an inclined position. It was a much more comfortable position than being hung up against the wall with those bungee-cord like ropes he had been tied up with before.

His head spaced off again, as he drifted off on thoughts of what he'd like to do if he ever saw that creepy thin motherfucker again, after threatening his family.

When he came to, he saw, to his surprise, that Janet was kneeling in front of him, her face redder than the blood in his veins, tracks of moisture running down her face, and probably the angriest expression he had ever seen in her eyes. He felt something on his neck though, and he realized it was her hand...

It was very gentle, though.

That was odd. Why was she being soft with him when she was clearly so angry with him for some reason?

"I-" He tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He had trouble swallowing.

"Where the fuck is that medic, damn it?!" Janet screeched. It took a moment, but Jason could have sworn that he heard some voice echo around the room a second later, before one of the others replied, and then that disembodied voice...

Wait, he understood that. It told them to clear a space.

He blacked out again. As he came to, he could see someone had wrapped something around his arm, attached to a bag, and they were injecting some sort of clear fluid into his veins. He had no idea what it was, and he was too weak to do anything about it. As the bag dripped fluid into his veins, the person who had not been there just a moment ago, was busy wiping a swab across different parts of his face. The irritation and stinging it caused Jason was not enough to cause much of a reaction, but he still felt it.

"If I ever find who did this to him, I'm going to kill them with my bare hands," Janet seethed as more moisture poured from her eyes.

Jason blacked out again, his last conscious thought was immense surprise that she seemed to care at all.

Mephicia had managed to secure the building, and was reporting her findings to the Fleet Commander.

"There were nineteen in this building. Twelve bodies, seven still breathing, but many are in a critical state," she reported tersely, ruthlessly suppressing her distress over the poor state of some of the prisoners. "We need medical on site immediately or we will lose more."

"I'll get it underway," Miradima told her curtly. "Send coordinates for emergency transport out of the building. What else do you have?"

Mephicia keyed in the code needed to broadcast her global coordinates to the network as she continued her report. "Two of the bodies were from our people. One was a security guard, the other seemed to be a civilian technician. Both of them have been dead for weeks."

"Idents?"

"Still waiting on their biometrics, but so far nothing has come up as unaccounted for in the network."

"Understood," Miradima replied punctiliously. "Keep me apprised and get your teams back here as soon as medical evac is complete."

The connection went dead. Mephicia resumed her task of investigating this place and how it went undetected for so long.

'A' took his team to push forward toward the ships' command center. His plan was to call for the surrender of the enemy, the handover of several ships to load the humans aboard, and then the departure of those ships back to Earth. This was his main objective, and he already had coordinates provided to him by a civilian technician he had been tipped off by in the early days of the colony settlement.

Apparently, some of the Tau Cetians didn't want the humans around, and that suited 'A' and his purposes neatly.

As he pushed his team to the bridge of the ship, he encountered resistance. Many of his own people were killed.

Too many.

This was becoming difficult already, and they had not even managed to capture the command centre yet. Just in this push forward, he had lost five people to two of their security forces, an unacceptable ratio of loss to kills.

"Fall back," he called out. "Hold position in the corridor to our backs!"

As they rapidly, if haphazardly fell back to the last corridor they had rushed through, two of the seven he had brought with him collapsed to the floor in prone position, immediately deploying their assault weapons forward and sighting them forward. Three more crouched behind them in a kneeling position, while the other two each retreated flush against the walls of the corridor, still standing, sighting their weapons down the hallway.

An object came flying past the corner of the corridor, trailing smoke. 'A' cursed himself for not accounting for the possibility of grenades, even though they were on a spaceship, as he threw himself back, abandoning those in the corridor and running quickly toward another corridor intersection.

The bright flash and thunderous explosion caused him to go momentarily blind and deaf, but he avoided the rest of it. Those that he had left behind though, were blinded, deafened and incapacitated, and would no doubt be immobilised permanently by the security officers.

Taking an opportunity to turn back around, he fired a burst of energy projectiles back the way he had come, and sprinted off toward the outer sections of the ship.

He had a backup plan and was about to enact it.

'C' had just infiltrated the midsections of the ship. They were not far from one of the alternative cargo bays this ship had aboard, as indicated by the plans that 'A' had managed to somehow obtain.

How exactly 'A' got this information was a puzzle that 'C' could only guess at, but it wasn't his job to know these things.

What he needed to do now, was to find someone who was still alive, but who was not able to put much of a fight up against him,. and that meant some sort of convalescent facility, like a sick bay or whatever he could find. Whoever he found would need to be able to operate some of the ship functions and override the lock-outs that the original crew no doubt had put in to place. They needed to do this so that they could send their message to the others in the system and let them know that Earth was not to be messed with.

Jogging through the vessel, through darkened corridors lit only by emergency lighting, 'C' shot anyone who seemed armed, killing them in an instant. Those who were not, he ignored unless they came running at him, then he shot them too. So far, he had seven more kills since boarding the ship, and he knew he wasn't done yet.

There. That seemed like a good candidate.

'C' approached a set of double-doors, which slid open at his approach without interference. The bay within was dimly lit, like the rest of the ship, but the presence of what clearly looked like medical beds was confirmation.

Unfortunately, no-one was in here.

Stepping into the bay, 'C' quickly scouted the room out, looking around privacy dividers and curtains to see if anyone was present. He even took a quick look in the restroom stalls that sat adjacent to the room itself.

No-one.

Cursing under his breath, he stepped out of the room and back into the corridor. Hopefully, he would be able to come across others on this damned ship.

John carefully pulled himself out from under the medical bed as he heard the assailant step quickly out of the room. As soon as power dropped to the ship's main lighting functions, and as soon as the telltale hum of the vessel's reactor suddenly went silent, John knew the ship was in trouble, and that it could only be because it had been boarded. There had been no collisions, no sign of weapons fire hitting the hull or the vessel's shielding, and no sign of explosions or decompression.

Who was it?

He needed to know. Though his injury to his neck was still tender, he had rested sufficiently to be able to at least keep alert and check out the situation.

Grabbing a fabric belt, he tied his medical gown to himself to aid in his movements, grabbed an injector and plugged it into the dispensary. He keyed in the panel and opened the medical dispenser program, only to be told he did nit have access.

"Shit," he cursed under his breath. There wasn't much time. He stepped quickly to the main control panel set into the far wall and waved his hand across it. The display came to life, in low-power mode.

He accessed the internal sensor systems and waited as the AI on board checked his credentials. He was not a member of the crew, nor were any of his friends, but Miradima did give special dispensation to Helen for her access, and he was technically under her care, and a trusted ally. He hoped that some provision had been made, even if it didn't make sense from a security perspective.

A small sensor window appeared in the bottom-left corner, and John examined it. There wasn't much here, except for a series of unidentified blobs on the deck he was currently standing, and three green outlines. He tapped one experimentally.

Leila Mensar. She was with another, and John confirmed it was Edward. They appeared to be hiding in some small out-of-the-way corridor or shaft, far from the unidentified blobs on the chart.

John tapped the third outline.

Security Sub-Officer Adirim.

Deceased.

"Fuck," John cursed under his breath. He tapped at a control cog to see if there were any options, and the controls to switch decks appeared. He flipped between them all, seeing a number of outlines, but he had no way to know if they were still alive, and a large group of them were among the unidentified blobs.

The Bridge appeared. All of the blobs there had outlines, and some of them appeared to be moving. He tapped one.

Tactical Sub-Commander Gerinar. Alive.

John risked speaking aloud. "Can I make requests from here?" he hoped that the AI would respond.

"Affirmative, John Malakhi."

That was good enough. "Do we have communications to the surface?"

"Negative. The communications array has been locked out by command crew as part of Code Black intrusion protocol."

Great, John sighed. "Do we have internal comms?"

"Only with select officers."

"Can you tell me which floor Helen Deckland is on?"

Instead of replying out loud, the AI flipped the deck plan on the sensor window to show another deck, this one with a small number of green outlined spaced across the ship. One of them began flashing, and John tapped it.

Helen Deckland, guest medical officer. Alive.

"Connect me to her comm device."

A moment passed where nothing happened, then John heard a whisper. "John?"

"Yeah, it's me."

"Are you still in medical?"

"Yeah," he told her. "I was trying to fill a hypo with a sedative. Can you authorize it?"

A pause. "John, what are you trying to do?" Her voice was tense despite still whispering.

"Someone needs to get a signal to the surface so they can send security up here and retake the ship."

"You're in no condition to-"

"Save it, Helen," John cut her off forcibly. "Those fuckers have been killing crew members. Very few of those I've discovered are even alive. I can't get a hold of anyone on the bridge because it's locked down, and there's a whole bunch of unidentified heat signatures outside that door now. Someone has to do something."

The pause after his words lasted even longer. "You don't risk your neck, you hear?"

"I'll do my best," John told her. "That's all I can promise."

Helen's sigh was that of a long-suffering mother who was always bailing her kid out of scrapes. John was amused by that thought, given she was about to have a child of her own. "I've given you access to the dispenser. It's been coded for the strongest sedative I could find in the ships' stores."

"I'm on it. I'll try to get a message to the surface. Talk later," John told her, and then tapped the comm symbol on the panel, closing the connection. "Show me a route to a communication array access panel," he ordered the AI.

"Access to that information is outside of your clearance level."

John was not pleased. The computer was going to scupper his efforts based on protocols that were no longer useful in this situation. "This vessel belongs to the Klankharis Realm, is that correct?"

"Affirmative."

"There is a Code Black intrusion alert currently engaged, is that correct?"

"Affirmative."

"All authorized crew members are either dead, or sealed in a location they can no longer grant access to the communication array, is that correct?"

"Affirmative."

"Then how do you expect anyone to be able to come to the assistance of this vessel if the only people allowed to send a distress call and our coordinates are locked out of being able to do so?"

There was a lengthy pause as the AI processed a series of alternative courses of action, or at least that was what John assumed it was doing. After almost half a minute, the voice replied. "There is no possibility of an authorized crew member currently able to send a message to Fleet Command or any other authorized command station."

"Then don't you think, since I might be able to get to a communications array, that it might be helpful for you to show me how, and then what to do when I get there?"

There was another pause. This one wasn't as long, but it was still lengthy enough to concern John.

"Temporary authorization to ships functions granted under the command codes for security Sub-Commander Mephicia," the voice replied, causing John’s heart to skip a beat. "This access will be noted in the command logs for review at a later date."

Well, John sighed. At least he was able to get around the lack of access. "Now, show me a route to the nearest comms array access point."