A spy or two

Rye slammed the hood down on the jump drive and frowned. The last week had been non-stop. After Dustin’s sudden question, she’d had to admit that they hadn’t tested Defia in the way he’d suggested - mostly because neither she nor Bleu had any idea how to test for that kind of disconnect. The inability to immediately put their hands on a method of checking had annoyed her, and she’d been still further annoyed by the fact that she hadn’t thought of it herself - after all, she was looking for ways to improve the jump drive and there she was, ignoring the biggest part of it… the pilot or navigator.

Even now, after a week of shakedown flight around the Sol system, she still didn’t have an answer. Bleu had scoured every database of medical science she could and had found a few possible techniques that might work, but the simple fact of the matter was that neither the Queri nor the Rabyth had been able to fine-tune a method for testing on someone with Defia’s unique physiology.

“At least Fi-oh’s spending time with Treacle, sortin’ her head out,” Rye muttered, glancing at the readouts from the drive as it went through it’s pre-checks. Seeing the dials all in the green she nodded to herself, tapped her comms and began walking away from the unit. “All clear down here, Dusty. Gimmie ten to make sure none of my engineers are doing anything stupid in the ducting, and we’ll be good to start our jump out of Sol. Assuming of course that none of the brass have decided we gotta stay for another week of hoop jumping?”

The communicator crackled, her proximity to the weave drive distorting the signal slightly. “No news is good news, bun-bun. Dusty’s busy talking with Yril’k, just let us know when you’re ready to go and I’ll punch it. Also, you still good to watch the game with me, Jaisyl and Yaerwen tonight? This first hop’s a short one, and the princess was practically vibrating earlier when I told her she’d have to wait ‘cos I wanted all of us to watch the quarter-finals together.”

Rye sighed and closed the door to the drive chamber behind her before beginning her sweep through engineering. “Ya got it, Sammie. I’ll be there. I’ll call up once I’ve…” she paused, grabbing the heel of one of her junior technicians and pulling him forcibly out from under a cart before the unstable jack dropped it on his head “…made sure my staff aren’t going to get themselves killed.”

Dustin relaxed as Sola entered the weave. At long last, they were back underway. Sure, they might be heading into a trap - that was a very real possibility, all things considered, but just the act of travelling did a lot to soothe his worries. It was odd; back on Earth he’d not travelled much, but the last few years had given him a real sense of wanderlust. Idly, he leaned back in his seat and wondered if he’d ever be able to settle down on a planet again.

The answer was obviously that he would - if his lovers or children wanted him to put down roots somewhere, or if the role of Ambassador was handed over to anyone else then he’d likely have no choice. But that was for the distant future; he was a hero and unlikely to lose his job, and as for his children, the closest to a demand they made currently was a gentle gurgling if he was too slow in turning the pages of a picture-book.

Rising, he walked around the nearly deserted room. It was a quiet shift, and most of the others were elsewhere for this little hop, but he was able to exchange a few words with Yril’k about her ongoing preparations for meeting the spies and rebels that were hopefully at the end of their current flight. Walking back across the front of the bridge, he paused to smile down at Sammie, her eyes closed with the weave piloting arms either side of her head. She looked so peaceful whenever she flew them through that strange other dimension, a far cry from the usual sprawling position she took up when she shared the ambassadorial bed.

Returning to his seat, he pondered on their method of travel. Still no answer from his engineer or medic as to whether Defia could have found her way into the weave, and still no answer to the question the enigmatic aliens had left him with. Who exactly was the weaver? Sighing, he picked up his tablet and began reviewing the information on the course they’d picked once more.

While Sola was speeding out of Sol space, in a system not far from her ultimate destination, a man ducked into an alleyway then stepped briskly through a door, closing it just before his pursuers turned the corner. On the inside of the door, a massive brute of an alien nodded down at him, grinning. “Yous made it just in time. Cutting it close, Macch.”

The man shook his head, shrugging off the thick outerwear he’d donned and adjusting the lapels of his suit. “Not close at all, Linth. Durathisian agents are woefully easy to out fox and out pace. The only reason they manage anything at all is because they’re so damn good at playing a long game… which doesn’t work when you move hideouts as often as we do. Anyway, I got the dead-drop.”

Linth raised an eyebrow, the towering figure stooping to finish barring the door as he did so. “Oh. Whats it say?”

Macch shrugged, pulling a vapor-stick from a pack and inhaling deeply. “Not looked at it yet. But given it came in this quickly, and the Durathisians were snooping around, I reckon it’ll be something big.” He pulled a small data card from his breast pocket, picked up a scrap-looking tablet and slotted the card in before turning the device on. “Gimmie a second while this decodes… Alright, so… we got orders from our handler. Looks like that horned slave-driver wants us ready to pack and go at a moment’s notice again, what else is new… wait.”

Linth glanced up at his friend. “Trouble, Macch?”

“I’ll say. Some fucking big-wig human’s gonna be meeting us at one of the rendezvous points. Agent Traz says we’re to ‘offer all relevant assistance’ and ‘facilitate a meeting with the rebel elements’. Fuck. Fucking fuck, so we gotta babysit some idiot diplomat making nice with the revolutionaries?” Macch tossed the tablet down in disgust. “Alright. Alright, we got this. You start packing up the bulk of the supplies, I’ll get the weapons ready, then we’ll make a break for the swamp we parked that star-skipper in. We still got the diving masks, right? Didn’t lose them on the last hideout move?”

At a nod from Linth, Macch continued his stream of thought. “Good, good. At least that means you won’t have to go down and bring it up on your own, we can both dive and do a straight launch, less likely to get spotted. When we’re ready to go, you start hauling stuff out of town, I’ll sweep wide and drop a few little presents around the place for our friends from Durathisian intelligence to pull their attention off our trail. I want to be in the dead system, acting like we’re just another wreck in the scrapyard those clowns maintain before this… ‘Dustin’ idiot gets out of human space.”

An hour of packing later, Macch scurried through the commercial district, looking for the electrical junction box he’d scouted on his first day on the planet. As he passed, he was pleased to see that it was just as poorly maintained as before, allowing him to lightly toss a small bundle in and continue on his way. “One down, two to go,” he muttered under his breath as he hastened through the city. “I hope the big guy’s ready to rock when I get there, these timers are pretty short…”

Macch’s final stop in the city was an antennae array on it’s outskirts. Here, he actually had to pause to wait for security drones to pass before bowling the final packet underarm up onto one of the dishes. Checking his watch, he winced and ran - it was a long way from where he was to the swamp, and time was running out.

Linth was waiting, the larger man sitting on one of the two large crates that contained their belongings with his diving mask already half-on. As Macch approached, his fellow agent tossed him the second mask, tugged his own down into position, and lifted the two crates, one under each arm as if they weighed nothing. Not for the first time, Macch was grateful that he’d been paired with the giant - they worked well together, and not having to lug tonnes of equipment by himself let him focus on the more delicate aspects of their operation.

Said delicate work included such things as making timers. The pair had barely reached the submerged craft, the airlock motors whining as it pumped out the swamp-water before the first device detonated. No shockwaves reached them in the quiet cabin as they moved with a professional efficiency, powering up systems and getting ready to run. The only indication that the main power-grid was destabilized, followed by security communications, followed by orbital monitoring? A series of beeps from Macch’s watch as each of the alarms he’d set rang. As the last one sounded, he tapped the controls, grinned at his companion, and their starship blasted out of the water in a rapid, fiery ascent. They should have just enough of a window to get to the nearest jump point before the planet below figured out what had happened.