Cleo, with Rayl and Ed’s help, had electronically redesignated the Gabriel into a Deelataynian luxury yacht and quietly and discreetly docked at the Vasi Stathmos station above Dasos during the night period. Luckily there weren’t many windows overlooking dock 89X and they trusted there wouldn’t be anyone in docking control studying the cameras at this time of night with an intimate knowledge of specific ship design.
Ed had paid for a week in advance and as the docking clamps had clunked home, he’d checked with his DOVI to ensure he could override docking control and release them in case of an emergency.
Andy, meanwhile, had picked up the now sizable group, taken the crowded Cartella inland to the continent’s huge dividing mountain range and cloaked while unnoticed in a deep and unassuming ravine. Once happy the ship was no longer observed, he picked his way carefully and invisibly up through the planet’s atmosphere, which was swarming with traffic, to the Gabriel’s port hangar while it was attached to the space station. He likened it to negotiating the M25 London orbital on a summer public holiday, only this time manually operating an invisible vehicle.
Ambassador Dewey and his crew were given passage back to Earth on a large commercial liner leaving that evening. Dewey ensured their jobs were secure while the situation was resolved and a replacement ship was provided for them. This time, perhaps something that could defend itself a little more diligently, he’d insisted.
As it was the night period, once Ed had seen Dewey off, he suggested everyone get some rest and scheduled a planning meeting up in the blister for around lunchtime the following day.
The attack came in the early hours. What Ed had assumed impossible went without a hitch for the special forces involved. Four commandos of the GDA’s elite Fantasmata (ghosts) unit dressed in dock authority exterior maintenance suits, quietly, without drawing attention to themselves and under the pretext of dock maintenance, touched a military-grade pulse generator to the Gabriel’s hull, thus knocking out every system on the ship including Cleo and causing the main airlock to be vulnerable from the outside. Shields were not permitted to be active on any ship when attached to a station, as they all tended to nudge against each other, pushing the station out of its stationary position and causing undue stress on the space elevator peduncle.
The second this happened, the airlock was breached and twenty more Fantasmata stormed into the ship, quickly overpowering the unprepared bodyguards in Xutan’s detail. A control pad was plugged into an interface just inside the main airlock and all the systems attempting to reboot and come back online, apart from environmental, were paused and left on standby. A powerful disenabler was carried in on the back of one of the commandos to disrupt any form of communication or independent power signals from entering or leaving the vessel.
As yet, none of the crew or passengers, all still asleep, had any inkling of a problem. Even if they did, their cabin doors were sealed and Cleo was absent and strangely silent.
Opened one at a time, the cabins’ occupants were quickly subdued, cuffed, blindfolded and had their ears covered. Then they were dragged up through the ship and dumped two metres apart on the dock just outside the main airlock. Once the commandos were happy they had everyone, they resealed both the airlock doors and waited.
The large freight elevator adjacent to the dock clunked and buzzed as a carriage arrived. Its heavy rectangular doors ground noisily open on bearings that were overdue some maintenance and grease. The Skirmat detective from yesterday exited, along with his previous entourage from the main foyer. He cast his eyes over the trussed row of bodies, glowering at them maliciously as he passed and approached one of the Fantasmata commandos.
‘All of them? he barked.
The soldier nodded, his face hidden behind the black visor they all wore.
‘Where’s that four-armed abomination?’
‘Dead, sir,’ he answered. ‘The alien’s body is in the medical centre.’
It was the Skirmat’s turn to nod.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘The best ones are. Four-armed freaks give me the shits.’
‘We also found Ganelaine and that young Klatt captain unconscious in there too.’
‘Where are they now?’
‘They were taken to the station medical centre.’
‘Had they been interrogated?’
‘Unknown, sir.’
‘Hmm,’ grunted the Skirmat. ‘We can’t risk them losing faith and talking – send someone up there to ensure they don’t wake up.’
The soldier nodded and whispered in the ear of his nearest colleague, who promptly disappeared up the corridor at a run.
The Skirmat strolled along the line of hooded and bound bodies again.
‘Which one’s Virr?’ he demanded.
The soldier walked two paces and kicked one of the figures in the midriff, who emitted a muffled groan and curled into the foetal position.
‘Make sure that one is delivered to the appropriate authorities with this,’ he said, passing a data node to the soldier.
The soldier nodded again and pointed at the still groaning figure, who was swiftly dragged into the waiting freight elevator and disappeared behind the grinding noisy doors, before the carriage clunked and buzzed away to a different level.
‘Bring them,’ the Skirmat ordered, waving his hand nonchalantly at the remaining bodies, and strolled away down the corridor towards the remaining docks stretching out down the row as far as you could see.
He stopped at an airlock three ships down the line, tapped a code into a keypad and entered an old Lynkas-registered freighter. Although the ship was intended for the shipment of bulk foodstuffs, a previous owner had had twelve passenger cabins built in to increase the ship’s revenue when moving from system to system.
‘Put one in each and lock the doors,’ grunted the Skirmat. ‘Just stun them if they play up. The client’s now decided they want them alive on arrival.’
The soldiers did as requested and filed off the vessel, leaving a team of seven onboard to guard the prisoners and crew the ship.
‘Is the legitimate cargo secure?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ came the response. ‘One hundred and fourteen tonnes of Dasonion wine.’
‘Get under way as soon as you can and don’t do anything that might encourage an inspection. You know where you’re going and what to do?’
The officer nodded and disappeared towards the bridge. The Skirmat strolled off the ship and secured the airlock. Ten minutes later, as he made himself comfortable in his own ship on the neighbouring dock, he heard and felt the docking clamps release on the freighter next door. He smiled and logged a course for the Jagnorite system before requesting his own clamps be released.