Smith's Monthly #5 Page 16

  Mattie had a hunch this might be completely over in three days. If not fewer.

  And she had contacted Sector Force, put headquarters on full defensive alert, and told them who was behind it. The Sector Force now had every operative and researcher looking for anything that might give them a clue as to the General’s plans or location.

  “Wow,” Lovell said, looking around the hallway and entry area of the ship. “Got a little money or something?”

  Red smiled that wonderful smile that made Mattie melt when he aimed it at her. “A little,” he said. “It comes in handy at times.”

  “I’ll bet,” Lovell said and laughed.

  Mattie really liked the older security chief. He didn’t pull punches and she admired that.

  The three of them headed back up the wide center hallway of the ship to the control room.

  “We had both our organizations go over the information we found on the ship,” Red said as they walked.

  “And they both found basically the same thing,” Mattie said.

  “What might that be?” Lovell asked as they got to the control room.

  Red pointed to the chair Mattie had used for the Chief to take a seat. “That the eight men who came here were just bait to trick Mattie and me into taking out you and your team. Carson was just a very unfortunate casualty. Not really the target at all as we first thought.”

  “More than likely a complete accident,” Mattie said, feeling the sadness of losing a friend. She knew it was only a tiny part of how Red was feeling. When the time came, she hoped to be able to help him release a little of that grief. But right now he was just holding it in, as she would do in the same instance.

  “Take me and my team out?” Chief Lovell asked, clearly puzzled and worried about where he now found himself sitting.

  “Don’t worry, sir,” Red said. “We saw through the ploy. Watch this.”

  Red keyed up the vid showing Chief Lovell meeting someone from the attacker’s ship.

  “I didn’t do that,” Lovell said, leaning in closer to the screen. “But that sure looks like me.”

  “It’s all doctored,” Red said. “More than likely someone got a vid of you greeting someone else and just changed out the background and made it look like it all came from the same security image. Top level work.”

  “And they planted this on the ship so it would be found after you two killed everyone?” he asked, still staring at the screen.

  “Exactly,” Mattie said. “The attacks were to get us to see this and then go after you.”

  “Glad your people are on top of this,” he said, shaking his head. “So you thought I might have had something to do with the killing of your friend for a moment.”

  “Only for a short moment, Chief,” Mattie said, smiling. “But now we need your help.”

  Chief Lovell stared at the frozen image of himself meeting a person he had never met, then turned around to face them both. “What can I do?”

  “First off, get ready for a major attack on the station and resort,” Red said.

  “What?” Lovell came to his feet, facing them, his body tense. He was taller than Mattie, but shorter than Red. But Mattie could tell that even older, he would be a tough fight in most circumstances.

  “That’s why someone spent the lives of eight men to get us to take you and your defense team out,” Red said. “They don’t want you here to defend this station.”

  “Those idiots who attacked us sure wouldn’t have been able to do it,” Mattie said. “So our guess is that there is a more trained force coming.”

  “You have that right,” Lovell said. “I looked into their backgrounds and there wasn’t a one a close match to either of you, let alone me or my core team. So you two know who wanted me out and is ready to attack this station?”

  “Not one hundred percent,” Red said and turned to his screen. He brought up an image of General Jarvis. The general was a square man, thin jaw, blunt nose and beady, rat-like dark eyes. He wore a dark green uniform and a hat with a lot of stars on it in the picture. “We think it’s this guy.”

  “That bastard still alive?” Lovell asked, clearly shocked.

  “He went missing about three years ago,” Red said.

  Mattie nodded. “We think he’s been building an attack force and staging out in The Emptiness for an attack on a couple of systems to regain his power. It would be logical to stage from this station and resort if he could take it over.”

  “If he did that, came back into public, wouldn’t your people take him out?” Lovell asked, looking at Mattie.

  “They would,” she said. “He still has a warrant on him with my organization. But he’s also been trying to destroy Sector Force first to make sure we can’t fulfill that contract.”

  “Smart bastard,” Lovell said, shaking his head.

  “I see you are familiar with him, then?” Red asked.

  “He killed my sister and her family,” Lovell said, low and mean.

  “Oh,” was all Mattie could say. She didn’t know what else she could say.

  It seemed that all of them had a personal stake in this now. That was both a good thing and a bad thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  RED SAT WITH MATTIE and Chief Lovell for the next half hour in the control room of the ship, talking over ideas. The more they talked, the more impressed Red became with Lovell.

  The man clearly was experienced and deadly, even nearing almost sixty years of age. He had a mind for tactics and strategy and could see patterns in human movements that only top police and military even understood. And his core team was filled with younger and just as experienced men and women. He had brought each one in personally to defend the station and run “errands,” as he called them, off station.

  “So you have a spy network,” Red asked, “set up on planets in the surrounding systems?”

  “I sure do,” Lovell said. “Some of it pretty high up in the governments as well. I figured those planets were the most likely to produce some nutcase that would think of taking over this station. We stopped a few ideas like that before they really got started.”

  “Makes sense,” Red said, laughing. “I really like how you think out ahead of problems.”

  “I didn’t get ahead of this one,” he said, clearly not happy with himself.

  Mattie was just shaking her head and smiling, which meant she was impressed as well in the Chief.

  “So who owns Bodie?” Mattie asked.

  “The Bodie family,” Lovell said.

  Red was surprised. “You mean the Bodie family from the First Sector? The ones that own a couple of planets and do more charity work than anything else? And have ships that are faster than anyone has figured out in this sector?”

  “The same ones,” Lovell said. “They have their own private wing here in the resort, although they are rarely here. They built this place and pretty much just let me run it. I oversee a staff of managers in the different areas, but I run it and report to old man Bodie himself once per month.”

  “No wonder General Jarvis wanted you out of the way,” Red said.

  “And the Sector Force in this sector out of the way as well,” Mattie said. “He could take this over and there would really be no one that could go up against him without the Sector Force.”

  Red agreed completely. “And we almost walked right into his plan and helped him.”

  “Glad you didn’t,” Chief Lovell said. “I’m not sure me and my little bunch could take you two.”

  “Let’s not find out, shall we?” Mattie said, patting Lovell’s arm.

  Red couldn’t agree more. Having the Security Chief on their side with his core team was going to be a real advantage.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MATTIE AND RED were walking the Chief back to the hatch when Mattie asked the Chief one last question that had been bothering her a great deal.

  “Chief, you have any indications through your network how General Jarvis could build a staging station out in The Empt
iness without anyone knowing it?”

  Lovell just shrugged. “I haven’t heard of a thing. But not the kind of thing we usually are digging for in our intelligence, to be honest. But I’ll have my operatives check if they have heard anything.”

  “No planets or asteroids or anything large enough to live on out there either?” Red asked, following her line of questioning.

  “Nothing,” Lovell said. “On the other side of that curtain that is the nebula, it really is a vast expanse of emptiness. It takes almost a year at most ship’s top speed to cross into the edges of Sector Four. Not many have tried it that I have heard about.”

  Mattie nodded, feeling disappointed at that news. Jarvis had to have a base out there somewhere, and far, far closer than a year away. Chances are it just wasn’t a bunch of grouped ships either. That would be too vulnerable to attack.

  Chief Lovell started to go out of the hatch when suddenly he turned around. “I just remembered. Bodie Station Resort Two is out there, on the far side of the nebula curtain. It was going to be called by another name, but the construction was never finished. It was abandoned almost twenty years ago from my understanding, before my time here. The passenger liners and big transport ships would not go that far out and when the liners declined, the Bodies knew the station was doomed and abandoned the construction.”

  Mattie knew at once they had found the General. She could feel the surge of adrenalin going through her. Beside her she could tell Red felt it as well, his stance shifting, his entire posture straightening just slightly.

  “You have plans and the exact location?” Red asked a half second before Mattie could ask the same question.

  Chief Lovell hesitated, clearly thinking. “I should. Give me an hour, let me see what I can dig up.”

  “Great,” Red said.

  “But first,” Chief Lovell said, “I’m putting the station on high alert and full defensive posture.”

  “Good idea,” Red said, nodding.

  “Watch the ships coming in as well,” Mattie said. “And the passengers on the liners. Jarvis is going to try to get people inside in a lot of different ways.”

  Lovell actually laughed. “Don’t worry, we have top scanners and no weapons will be allowed on the station until this clears. Except for the weapons you two carry, of course.”

  With that he turned and headed away from the ship with a fast and purposeful stride.

  “Have I said how happy I am that he’s on our side,” Mattie said, watching the chief for a moment before Red shut the hatch and secured the ship again.

  “Yeah, me too,” Red said.

  Then he leaned down and kissed her firmly on the lips. “And I’m very happy we’re on the same side.”

  His smile made her melt just a little, but then she kissed him in return and pushed him back toward the control room. “We have research to get our people doing on this second station. So no kissing.”

  He pretended to pout, but couldn’t pull it off, which made her laugh.

  She couldn’t remember a time she had laughed this much before. Or felt this good working with another person on something this serious.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  AN HOUR LATER Mattie pushed back from the control panel and stretched. “I’m starving again.”

  She glanced over at Red who still worked over his screens. They both had gotten their people to research everything they could about the abandoned space station.

  From what Mattie could tell, it sat beyond and behind the curtain-like clouds of the nebula, in a place that allowed for the colors of the nebula and the second sector stars to fill the sky. They had found some early construction images and sales flyers for the station. It would have been spectacular, of that she had no doubt.

  But it also made her uneasy just thinking about it. She was used to the depths and emptiness of space, but in the main areas of the sector, and even in the short distance between Sector Three and Sector Two, there were always stars and systems relatively nearby.

  Going to the other side of that big nebula curtain was a long distance beyond the edge of the sector, far enough that she understood why the big space liners, the main transportation between systems for most people, would never go out there.

  Under normal conditions it would take at least two days to get there around the edge of the curtain, and two days to get back. Just too far out for a resort.

  “Hungry, huh?” Red said. “My breakfast not enough for you?”

  “That was four hours ago,” she said, laughing. “A girl’s got to eat to maintain her energy.”

  “How about we stop by to see what the chief has for us on the station and if he has heard anything from his networks in the nearby systems, then grab some lunch in that wonderful restaurant we ate at the first night.”

  She nodded. She liked that idea. “Then I really need to go get a change of clothes and some of my own equipment from my suite.”

  He smiled. “I’ll bring the bomb-sensing equipment to make sure none of those idiots got to our rooms before we took care of them.”

  “Good,” she said, stretching some more to loosen up muscles tightened by hours at a computer board.

  “You keep doing that,” he said, watching her, “and we’re never going to get out of this ship before dinner.”

  She went over and sat in his lap and kissed him long and hard, enjoying the sense of his passion on his lips.

  Then, as things started to heat up, she pushed back with every bit of will and self-control that she could muster. “We need food and a plan first,” she said.

  “How about the plan being that I lick every inch of your body and then make love to you slowly and gently?”

  “I like that plan,” she said, kissing him long and hard again before climbing off his lap.

  “After lunch.”

  He smiled at her. “You have far, far more self-control than I have.”

  “Oh, no, not far,” she said, turning and heading down the hallway out of the control room before she changed her mind and that smile of his melted what little control she had. “Barely more, and only because I’m starving.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  MATTIE AND RED first stopped at Chief Lovell’s office. He loaded all the plans for the abandoned space station and at what level it had been abandoned into both their data pads.

  Mattie was impressed that by the time they got there, only about an hour after he had left Red’s ship, Chief Lovell had all his top team members in the station and they were coordinating how they were going to check everyone already in the space station and resort for guns and explosives.

  The station port was already locked down and one passenger liner was docking and the passengers were going to go through very tough background checks and scans before ever being allowed to come into the resort.

  Something dinged in the back of Mattie’s mind when she heard that, but she couldn’t put her finger on what bothered her. There was no doubt this station suddenly felt a lot safer. As each hour went by it would become more so.

  Chief Lovell also introduced them both to his top lieutenants. All four of them had been with him since he took the job. All four seemed intimidated to meet them and said little.

  Chief Lovell joked that they had seen the vids of the firefight in the mall and how they had taken care of the three in the lobby. “You two are their idols,” he said laughing.

  Two of them actually blushed at that, which almost caused Mattie to laugh, but she managed to keep a straight face. What she did learn about them was that all four of them had young families on the station. She had no doubt that would make them defend this station even more.

  Chief Lovell gave them all his men’s backgrounds as well and asked Red on the side to double check his men with deep background checks through the DI sources. Lovell was taking no chances at all.

  Mattie really liked that as well.

  They were going up against someone as ruthless as General Jarvis, and someone smart enough to elude t
he Sector Force for years. They couldn’t take any chances at all.

  Thirty minutes after arriving at the Chief’s office, she and Red were headed for lunch at a restaurant Lovell suggested called Karen’s Café.

  Mattie was feeling better about the security of this station, but even more worried now that they didn’t really have a lead on how General Jarvis was going to attack the Sector Force. Even with the Sector Force on high alert, a good attack could still get through.

  Karen’s Café looked more like an old-fashioned mall diner that could be found on most any planet. It was tucked off to one side of a small shopping wing near the lifts to one section of the resort. It was clearly the kind of place that employees and those who were regulars at the resort ate at. A normal fresh-off-the-liner visitor would never find this place.

  Mattie loved it at once.

  There were old-fashioned cloth seats on the booths that could hold six people, soft jazz was playing in the background, and the smell of baking fresh bread filled the air.

  At the moment there were only two tables with customers. Two cleaning staff at one small table, clearly in some sort of relationship, and two security staff at another. The two security men saw Mattie and Red come in and turned white, quickly paid and left.

  Mattie knew, without a doubt, that she and Red’s reputation had spread ahead of them. But that kind of reaction was normal when someone discovered she was a member of the Sector Force. It wasn’t something she really ever told anyone except an authority that needed to know. But now, here on the station, it seemed most everyone in the security force knew.

  Red just laughed as the security men fled. “Do I need a shower that badly?”

  “Don’t worry,” Mattie said. “I’ll help you scrub all the hard-to-reach places later.”

  “Promises, promises,” Red said.

  “No promise,” Mattie said. “That’s a threat.”