The freighter turned at the correct waypoint, in towards the planet Krix’ir. For the past three weeks, the ship had kept to its predetermined schedule and nothing had changed.
Cargo was picked up and delivered at the various ports of call, exactly as normal. No one had any idea the freighter had been boarded just before leaving Krix’ir three weeks earlier.
Captain Haarrs and his seven-man crew were rendered unconscious in a matter of seconds and secured in an unused stores hold. The eight Antistasi resistance fighters had then put into play the elaborate deception that had been years in the planning.
Major Luzin sat on one of the bridge command couches. He was alert now and a little nervous. The completion of his highly secret mission was close and the success or failure of the three-week masquerade relied entirely on the next couple of hours.
‘What time do you want the crew knocked unconscious, sir?’ asked his sergeant.
‘Ten minutes before we dock. That will give us several hours, firstly to unload as if nothing’s awry, and then time to change and disappear,’ he said. ‘I’m relying on the crew not being discovered and released until loading tomorrow morning.’
The sergeant nodded, turned and disappeared off the bridge.
Luzin took out a small communication scrambler that had been in his pocket for the entire mission. This was the first and only time he would transmit from the ship anything other than standard ship protocol transmissions. He set the device on the console, ensured it was functioning correctly and opened a narrow channel directly at the nearest Krix’ir communications satellite.
‘Meizon reporting,’ he said and waited.
Thirty seconds later he got his reply.
‘Go ahead, Meizon.’
‘Package delivered successfully on 395 as planned.’
‘Any unforeseen difficulties?’
‘Negative.’
‘Thank you, Meizon. Have a safe extraction – control out.’
Luzin stood up and walked over to his navigation officer. ‘Keep her on this course. Nice and steady for the next thirty minutes please, Lieutenant – standard Krix’ir orbital protocol.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He strolled off the bridge, straight to his cabin and unscrewed a panel in the bathroom, then picked out a small remote control and put it in his pocket, also grabbing a pre-packed bag from under the bed. Returning to the main corridor, he strolled down as far as possible away from the bridge and quickly opened an escape shuttle hatch, threw in the bag and jumped inside, sealing the hatch behind him.
Knowing an alarm was now sounding on the bridge, he quickly slipped into the pilot’s seat, removed the safety cover and immediately hit the manual launch toggle. The tiny shuttle slammed away from the freighter and, ignoring the insistent questioning coming from the freighters bridge, he steered the little ship around the freighter and accelerated so the larger ship was directly behind him. With the planet Krix’ir directly in front and, checking he was at a safe distance from the freighter, he retrieved the remote from his pocket. Next, he ensured he was tightly strapped in and there were no loose items in the shuttle. Once satisfied, he removed the cover from the remote and depressed the red button.
Behind him, the Krix’ir Emporos Class Freighter exploded. The eleven charges he’d hidden overnight at crucial points within the ship had pulled it apart from the seams.
He rammed the throttles to the maximum for a few seconds and then turned everything off, so the only sound was the rattle of debris on the outer hull. The escape shuttle began tumbling towards the planet, surrounded by debris from the freighter.
Half an hour later, as the shuttle reached the upper atmosphere, he activated the manoeuvring jets to position the ship at the correct attitude for a safe insertion. As he dropped deeper into the blinding blue of the planet, he could make out other pieces of the freighter above and around him, plummeting with their own fiery trails belching out behind, and hoped they covered his own insertion trail.
He risked a quick scan below to find out where exactly he was.
As Krix’ir’s land masses were mostly desert and he had deliberately timed the approach so the majorly-populated zone was on the far side, he knew there would be very little below to detect him.
At twenty thousand metres, he activated the anti-gravity drive and arrested his plummet to a more controlled dive, only levelling out at one thousand metres. The small mining town or settlement he had to find was around two hundred kilometres away, so he slowly made his way in that direction. Scanning for movement ahead was his main priority, as he didn’t want to bump into anyone who could report his arrival.
When he began to get life readings around five kilometres ahead, he scanned below and landed the small craft in a narrow rocky valley. With one last glance at the scanner to ensure he was alone, he set the final explosive charge inside the escape shuttle, changed into local dress and began to walk in the direction of the town.
A few minutes later as he activated the charge, the low boom went unnoticed – it was an everyday background noise in a mining community.
On reaching the small town, he was pleased to find he could get a seat on a miners personnel transport the following morning to Goss’inray, the main settlement seven thousand kilometres away. He was slightly less enthused on hearing that all off-planet transportation had been postponed due to an unexplained orbital accident. The fact he might be on Krix’ir for a little longer than anticipated had been foreseen. Forever the consummate planner, Luzin had grown a beard, which was all the rage in the local mining community. He’d bought locally made clothing and ensured he had plenty of Krix’ir mining chits, and not the GDA interplanetary Prosfora currency.
Sitting back in his seat in the rear of a small café, he allowed himself a little smile – the first for weeks. The hard work was done. Getting home and back underground where he belonged should now prove the easy part.
Other than the dust and flies that permanently invaded every orifice, he didn’t anticipate encountering any problems from now on.