Eighteen
“They’re back.”
The captain lifted his head and worked his neck where he’d been sleeping in his chair.
“What time is it?”
“Just gone seven.”
“Seven, they’ve been at a party for ten hours?”
“Not that strange, us younger types have more stamina is all.” Snacks stopped talking and left.
***
“Success?”
The three girls looked a little tired, but they also looked as if they’d had a great time.
“No, Trevorn doesn’t do social events, or parties, or anything. Other than personal meetings which are very rare the only time people talk to him is comm calls or from the bridge of his Union.” Russet collapsed gracefully into a chair and reached down to unstrap her sandals.
“Or his mech. And we aren’t going to be digging him out of there, not an Atlas.”
“Which leaves getting him in the Union.” The captain straightened up and supressed a groan as he back twinged.
“Which is going to take a lot of planning, and training.” Russet yawned
“Later, we need to go to bed, well, to sleep, some of us have been in beds already.” Amber glanced at the other two.
“Alright, get some rest, food and whatever. We’ll talk this afternoon. Mission done; you’ll be returning the dresses then?”
The looks the three shot him would have punched holes in mech armour!
***
The Union glowed in the holo display, with bits glowing red as options were selected.
“So, possible ways it, this is everything, right?” Russet pointed at various hatches that were currently red.
Simz nodded, “I’m not a Dropship engineer, but yea, this is every way a person can get in, anything else is like airtight cable access.”
“So, on the ground, what’s workable?”
“Landing gear will be deployed, but that blocks access through the landing gear hatches, so those are out. These are outside engineering access to the drives, but there’s no way inside from those. There’s the main hatch, the docking port up there and these are engineering access ports.”
“Main hatch will be guarded.” Grits and the others sat back a little, so they could see but weren’t in the way of people walking around the holo table.
“Docking port leads to the upper decks and comes out close to the bridge according to the maps, that will be guarded as well, or locked from the inside with physical locks.” Simz pointing.
“So, that leaves these, engineering access you said?”
“Yea, but up high, not a problem in space for going outside with a space suit for repairs, but on the ground that’s a long way up.” Simz used a hand to measure the distance from the ground to the hatches he was pointing at, it took widespread fingers.
“The baron has dropships, right?” Russet leaned back from the holo.
“Several, why?”
“Because we need to practice this, we’ve never tried infiltrating a dropship before, and we don’t want to try it for the first time with armed guards waiting to shoot us.”
“I don’t think the baron has a Union.”
“Doesn’t matter. He’s got Leopards, which are military dropships so we can practice breaking in on them, and he has at least one spheroid cargo hauler, so we can practice climbing up it. At a friendly spaceport where people will let us know if they see us rather than sound an alarm.”
“Good idea, I’ll contact him and ask.”
***
“Broad daylight?” The captain glanced at the sky, dark blue and bright, with the sun high overhead.
“Yea, climbing this is going to be hard, I want to learn how where I can see what I’m doing. Which is why the safety ropes are there as well.”
“Well, you two have fun, I’ll be watching from over there.” The barons castle had a small spaceport inside the curtain walls, enough room for a few dropships but also with support facilities, and barracks and a kitchen for the crew and ground staff. Which had put its tables and chairs outside and a lot of off duty crew were seated, sipping cold drinks, and taking bets.
The ones who bet on Calico to fall first, lost.
***
“You alright?” The captains voice came over the tiny ear bud Russet had tucked in her left ear. She looked toward him, spun around a bit, looked again then adjusted for the fact that she was twenty meters off the ground and hanging upside down.
“Great. Just great. You want to come up here and try.”
The captain chuckled and Russet waited till the crew at the emergency hatch far above activated the winch and lowered her to the ground on the safety rope.
***
“Calling it a day?” The captain had been watching from the small canteen at the edge of the landing pads, and had a cooler next to hm, now half full of melted ice and a few cans.
Russet grabbed an offered cold drink and downed it in one, Calico was half a second behind her. “Yea, did you get the images?”
“Every angle, and all the ranges. Even up on the roof, good job I’ve got the balance of a goat.” Snacks waved his tablet toward the two cat girls and laughed.
“How did it go, from down here it looked like you had it sorted?”
“Yea, a bit of practice with those magnetic clamps, the hard parts the bottom where it curves up and out, but once we got past that it was easy. Now we have to do it without being seen.”
“Ideas?”
“Yea, we’ll be working on that tomorrow and trying it at night probably the night after. That’s what the pictures are for.”
The captain stood. “Good, once again a mission where the team is carried by you two, I may even consider a pay increase.”
“Really?” Calico faked joy.
The captain laughed. “Maybe a Christmas card.”
***
“You’re sure this is the same sort of hatch?” The Goblin, who went by Hairy Harry, was hanging from a rope that was hanging from a maintenance crane beside the Leopard class dropship.
“Yea, we’re using this one because it’s the same shipyard as made the barons Union, our other Leopard is a slightly different configuration from another world. This one though, they use the same systems and components, I checked with the tech manuals, engineering emergency access hatch, it’s exactly the same one on the Leopards, Unions, Mule class cargo haulers and light carriers.”
“Good, good. Let’s have a look, oh, captain, I do the technical stuff, not the heavy lifting, send up one of your goons please, to work the manual hatch opening.”
Down on the ground the captain laughed and picked on of his ‘goons’.
“Why me?”
“Climbing and balance, aren’t you always boasting you climb like a goat,”
Laughter, well, everyone but Snacks who stood up and clip clopped his way across to the crane vehicle and the safety crew, who saw him approaching and lifted a climbing rig.
***
“Alarm went off!” One of the Leopard crew on bridge watch.
“Stop!” Snacks stopped turning the wheel at Harry’s word.
“Move out of the way, let me in. Let’s see.” The long-limbed goblin carefully inspected the hatch, and the surrounding frame. “Got the contact sensor. Close the door, one turn of the wheel thing. Bridge, let me know as soon as…”
“Alarms off!”
“STOP!”
“I’m right next to you, stop shouting!”
Hairy Harry shot the big freak a look then used his long delicate fingers to carefully check the hatch and frame. “Close it all the way, then open it one turn at a time, slowly!”
Snacks thought about saying something, then didn’t.
***
Both cat girls were leaning over the table, along with a young human woman and an older goblin tech type. “Colour to match is no problem, but getting the shape light enough to carry, and still match the curve of the hull. More difficult.”
“Ultra-light polymers, we could keep it under 5 kilos. It’s the size really, the slight curve so it doesn’t stand out but with enough room to hide one of you two.” The human woman was looking at the pictures of the dropship hull.
“It needs to be small enough to be carried, and not obvious. A rigid frame that big, how would we carry it across to the dropship?” Russet.
The old goblin held his chin with the fingers of his left hand, “unless, maybe, how about something you can roll up and put in a carry bag?”
“Sure, but how?”
“Inflatable.”
***
Several pages of neat diagrams, hand drawn but very precise. And sketches of several items.
“Two sensors, either one sets off an alarm, so you’ll need to deal with both, and that’s the outer and inner doors so make sure you have plenty of these. This one, use it first, see the diagram here, air pressure sensor compares the pressure at two sensors either side of the door, put this over the sensor here, it’s magnetic and an airtight seal, then use this little pump to raise or lower the pressure till this light turns green.
If they’ve got the ramp down the internal and external pressure will be the same so it may go green straight away.
The other sensor is harder, turn the opening handle one and a half full rotations, then fit this one, it’s shaped to slide into the gap that’s opened a bit, then another full turn and fit this one onto the door itself.
Do it right and no alarms, the door reads as closed.”
“Good, well done. Can we get these made locally?”
“As it happens, I know someone.”
The captain chuckled, “why am I not surprised.”
***
Wearing baggy ship suits, the almost universal jump suits worn by spacers across the kingdoms, oversized enough to just about hide the cat girls legs as they walked, just a couple of spacers, shorter than average, wearing crew caps and carrying big crew bags.
They walked across the heavily chipped and gouged concrete landing pad, from patch of light to the shadows and then another patch of light, just a couple of spacers walking to their ship or shore side.
Entering the vast shadow of the dropship both girls moved to stand by one of the landing legs, on the far side of the ship to the down ramp. Opening the big crew bags, they took out bulky rolled up items, and sets of four items wrapped in cloth. A small bottle of high-pressure air inflated the discs, carefully painted to match the ships hull, with little patches of the same rust colours, and with a net of cords inside to hold each disc into the shallow dome shape and allow it to hang onto the cats climbing rigs.
Quickly changing out of the ship suits into stealth gear, the thermal suits they had got weeks ago on another job, and webbing rigs covered in pouches and lockable rings.
A cloth wrapped magnetic clamp on each hand, and each foot, the domes tightly tied to their backs, and they began the climb, up the landing leg quickly and then onto the rounded hull.
***
“Nothing on thermals, we know where they started the climb but we’re seeing nothing.”
“Anything visual?” The captain was sitting watching a dropship, for the third day running now, first for the girls learning to climb, then the goblin hacker they had hired again the next day while the girls were getting their sneaky stuff built, and tonight as they tried it for real.
“No ones reported anything, we’ve got watchers on all sides at fifty meters and a hundred meters.”
***
Ten minutes later.
“Got something, there’s a curved shadow just appeared!”
“Where?”
“Southeast, below the mid-point.”
The captain picked up his electro binocs and walked around the ship far enough to be able to see the southeast of the hull.
“Not seeing… Wait, yea. Russet, come in.”
“You saw us?”
“Yea, it looks like one of you got close to the edge of one of the light patches, you’re still in the darkness but the dome thing stands out a bit and it caught the light. I think we saw it because we’re looking for it, it’s not that obvious.”
“We can’t allow for not looking when it comes to armed hostiles. Wait a minute.” There was talking but not on the comm. “Is it moving?”
“No.”
“Wait.”
“Yea, that’s it, it just moved, the slight curved shadow gone.”
“OK, we’ll keep going, but stay far enough from the edge of the patches of light.”
“Go ahead, we’ll keep watching.”
***
Two hours, and back on the ground drinking cold fruit juice.
“We spotted you twice in total, the first time when you cast a shadow, the second time was going up by the hatch, one of you buckled the others dome.” The captain was holding a pitcher of drink, ready for refills.
“We thought that happened, we’ll practice it, extra magnetic clamps to hold one dome in place over the hatch and we’ll use the other to cover us as we crack the hatch at the access.
It’s high enough up the dropship hull that it shouldn’t be visible.”
“Rest and drink first.”
“Yes dad.” Calico grinned.
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While on an inspection of border forces along the frontier with Terra Noire Chu-Sa Olicia Taranga was insulted by the lack of respect shown by the locals who failed to bow deeply enough or in some cases even failed to bow in the presence of MechWarrior Samurai.
Ten locals were selected at random, because they were peasants who had insulted a lord they were denied the honour of execution by sword, instead they were herded together and mowed down by mech machine guns.
Chu-Sa Tauranga was quoted as saying this will be the last time they fail to show respect to their betters.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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