No Surrender - Jeff Mariotte [17]
“Once they were all on the shuttle—except one—that final saboteur reset the defense mechanisms to normal and wrecked the gyrostabilizer units and the atmospheric controls. Since he or she could no longer be transported off, he or she put on an environmental suit and went into the shuttlebay and left the station that way—just as we came on—and was beamed onto the shuttle once he or she was past the shields. That last part is an extrapolation, since by that point the station’s logs were no longer recording,” he added with an almost apologetic look, “but it’s the only reasonable one to make, considering the evidence.”
“So it’s a safe bet that anyone who was involved in that plot is long gone—and the prisoners still here were not part of it.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“And not only that, but they slept through it—only waking up after we restored the oxygen levels.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“No wonder they’re still kind of dazed. Thank you, Soloman.” She watched his departing form as he headed back to the operations center, his bulbous bald head and narrow frame catching the light. She thought he had recovered nicely from the loss of his bonded pair. Bynars were not supposed to function well as individuals, and she wasn’t sure what his emotional state was really like, since he tended to keep that sort of thing to himself. But as a member of her crew, he was as worthwhile as they came, and she was glad he’d been willing to stick it out.
But the big question he hadn’t been able to answer remained—what had become of the missing crew, and Augustus Bradford?
* * *
Augustus Bradford strode purposefully across the large room toward the communications system they’d set up at one end. He and his fellow fugitives from justice were ensconced in an industrial building in a remote outpost on Val’Jon, half a world away from the New Terran colony. Now they were truly fugitives, in that they’d gone from merely speaking out to actually committing an act that would be considered criminal by the Kursican authorities.
“Are you ready to make the call?” Malkety asked him. Malkety was a Kursican, but a sympathizer to the cause, a staunch opponent of Federation membership for the Kursican system.
“It’s time,” Bradford said, suppressing a scowl. “But only because Gold’s ship messed with our timetable.”
Augustus Bradford still cut an imposing figure, as he once had on the bridge of a starship, though he was dressed in old, faded work clothing and his shock of red hair had mostly gone to white. His jaw was still firm, though, his eyes steely, his mouth a thin, determined line.
He had counted on the chaos aboard the Plat to disguise his disappearance for a couple of days at least, giving him time to get his plan into motion. And his plan was nothing less than an uprising: finally motivating the majority of citizens across the system—on Szylith, Val’Jon, and Kursican herself—to rise up, to throw off the yoke of Kursican authority, and to take their futures into their own hands. The groundwork had been painstakingly laid for months, waiting only for Bradford’s triumphant return from the Plat to set it off.
But spreading the word of his return, and setting the wheels of revolution in motion, would take time. And time, apparently, was what he no longer had—thanks to his old friend, David Gold. “I owe you for this one, Gold,” he muttered to himself. Then, turning back to Malkety, he composed himself and said, “Let’s do this.”
Malkety flipped a series of switches and nodded his head. Bradford looked into the screen. “Citizens of the Kursican System,” he began, “and representatives of the corrupt so-called Kursican Planetary Government—you know who I am. I am Augustus Bradford of New Terra, formerly a political prisoner on the Kursican Orbital Incarceration Platform. But now I am a free man, thanks to the support of the vast majority of you. Not only do you know who I am, you know what I stand for. I stand for the self-rule of the Kursican system. I stand for an end to negotiations with some distant interplanetary