• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Barjas had arrived before him. “Doctor,” he said with an acknowledging nod.

“What is it?”

Barjas pointed at the navigation display, Manazar out the forward viewport.

“Incoming ship,” Barjas said.

Manazar added, “And they don’t seem too happy that we’re here.”

* * *

Wary of being followed, Pakkpekatt had guided Lady Luck through a series of three hyperspace jumps en route to Maltha Obex. The extra jumps added less than an hour to their travel time, but vastly increased the difficulty for anyone attempting to divine their destination.

Having taken those extra precautions to ensure that they would be undisturbed, Pakkpekatt was all the more concerned to discover that though the planet was dead, it was not deserted.

“Vessel answers as Penga Rift, registry Coruscant, ownership Obroan Institute for Archaeology, captain Dolk Barjas. Supplementary: Length one-twenty-six, beam thirty-two, no registered armament, rated speed—”

“Agent Taisden, can you suppress that vessel’s comm ability?”

“Local,” Taisden said. “Not hypercomm.”

“Do nothing, then,” said Pakkpekatt.

“Colonel, you weren’t thinking about taking that ship out, were you?” Hammax asked, his face showing concern. “That’s not only a civilian boat, but a friendly—and from the size of her, probably berthing upward of thirty.”

“My concern is that we have sufficient privacy to do our work here,” said Pakkpekatt, slowing Lady Luck to give them more time before being detected. “I will entertain all options.”

“This entire expedition has been black ops from the start,” said Pleck. “Why not just drop the curtain over the whole system, commandeer the ship under NRI authority, and lock in a comm blackout?”

“I do not think we have as much authority here as you would like to presume—either in fact or in appearance,” Pakkpekatt said. “If you were her captain, would you surrender your command to the crew of a private yacht that showed up without its registered owner? Only the greenest captain would fail to suspect piracy in such circumstances.”

“Okay, so when we blip in on their sensors, they’re not going to be intimidated,” said Hammax. “But surely we could get General Rieekan or Brigadier Collomus to have them ordered out of the system. We could even wait out here, out of range, until they’ve been spanked and sent home.”

Taisden was shaking his head. “Listen, I did a turn in the Senate liaison office. The colonel’s right. Without a native population here, Maltha Obex is an open system, and Article Nineteen of the Charter applies. The Obroan Institute has as much right to be here as we do. The NRI doesn’t have the authority to claim territory for itself—not even the Fleet has that power. They have to go to the Senate Defense Council for a presumptive finding of a security interest to support the claim, give public notice to the member nations—”

“So how do we get them to leave without telling them who we are and why we’re here?” Hammax demanded.

“That’s another question, isn’t it?” asked Pleck. “What are they doing here?”

“They are here because we sent them here,” said Pakkpekatt.

That drew puzzled looks. “We did?” Hammax asked.

“Effectively. Before the vagabond escaped our control at Gmar Askilon, I asked General Rieekan for Qella genetic material, and for reasons of expediency the agency enlisted the Obroan Institute to locate and retrieve it. But we now have what they came here to retrieve for us—they should be gone.”

“Well, then, it’s simple,” said Hammax. “If we sent them here, we can order them to leave. We just have to tell them that we’re here to take over the operation and their services are no longer required.”

“I don’t think so,” Taisden said. “From the comm traffic, it sounds like they have at least three operations under way on the surface. They’re not going to believe that this ship, and the four of us, are here to take over.”

“Doesn’t matter what they believe,” said Hammax. “If we hired ’em, we can fire ’em. And maybe this yacht isn’t very intimidating, but everyone here knows that the colonel can be.