Jim Roper 2
Jim tried to open his eyes, but at the moment, his eyelids wouldn’t budge. His head was pounding, and he wanted a shot of whiskey like nobody’s business. He took a deep breath and then sat up next to a cold wall.
“Always the same,” he muttered to himself as he rubbed his aching jaw with his hand. He fluttered his eyelids until they stayed open, and then he scanned the blurry room until he found his uniform heaped in a pile in the corner to his left.
“Oh…just a few more minutes, my man,” he said under his aching breath, trying to convince himself that he could afford the rest before he needed to move. But his will wouldn’t allow it.
“Damn you, pride,” he complained as he got to his hands and knees and painfully crawled over to his piled-up uniform. He fumbled through them until he found his black patent-leather dress shoes, then he knelt over them to prevent the camera in the top, adjacent corner of the room from seeing what he was doing.
He grabbed one shoe and, with his thumb and index finger, pressed against its heel, causing a two-by-three-inch screen to pop out. He pulled the screen out, did the same to the other shoe, and then touched the ends of the screens together, locking them into place. After they were connected, the screens fluidly merged, creating a single four-by-six-inch Simpad.
Jim remotely linked the Simpad to the ship’s computer, where he found its schematics. It was a standard Harpy cargo ship, and Jim was in her belly on the starboard side about two decks below a docking port. And as luck would have it, there was a small ship docked at that port. The docked ship’s coding was masked, which meant it was either a spook’s ship or it was stolen.
Jim scrolled through the Simpad’s apps until he found an icon of a spaceship with the letter’s ROS under it, which stood for Remote Alliance Spacecraft. Jim tapped on the app and scrolled through the various ships on the next page until he found a Capital Alliance Accipiter Fighter.
Jim tapped the Accipiter’s image, then pressed a pop-up tab that sent a signal to the Harpy, making its automated defensive system believe the fighter was in the vicinity and on the attack. The Harpy’s alarms sounded immediately, and then it banked hard to portside as its automated defensive system took over to evade the imaginary threat. The Harpy’s crew would be busy for a while.
After collecting his footing, Jim remotely opened his door and did a cursory check around it. It was all clear, so he left the room and climbed a grated set of stairs until he reached the docking port, where he used his Simpad to remotely open the docking port doors for both ships.
It was only a matter of seconds before Jim dropped into the pilot’s seat. As soon as the engines roared to life, he heard a now familiar voice blare over the intercom, “Who in the hell’s in my ship!”
“Oh, it’s just me, mister sloppy,” Jim replied ever so casually. And then in a mocking British accent, he said, “I’m just tying up a few loose ends, as it were.”
“You son of a…” Jim heard the Reaper start before he cut off the transmission and undocked himself from the Harpy.
Jim pitched his stolen ship to the side and angled it downward so that he could look into the Harpy’s bridge, where he saw two people staring back at him in awe, and a third person, the Reaper, staring back at him with a deathly scowl. He gave them a mock solute that ended with a flip of the bird, and then he sent a squadron’s worth of fake Accipiters to their defensive system.
Jim flipped the stolen ship and pushed the throttle forward, creating distance between him and the bouncing Harpy.
“Zeus Command, Zeus Command, this is Cowboy, over,” Jim said over a secured com-link.
“Cowboy, this is Zeus Command, go with message.”
“Zeus Command, please inform Aberration One, mission complete.”
“WILCO, Cowboy. Be advised that we are tracking your coordinates over this net. We’ll be with you momentarily.”
“I copy,” Jim replied. Less than two minutes passed, and he saw a massive red-blue electric square materialize in front of him as a gate began to form. It collapsed in on itself before expanding again in what looked like rippled purple liquid, and then it calmed and turned space black. The gate closed immediately after the Zeus flew through it.
“It’s good to finally have you back, Cowboy,” he heard Colonel Stoddard say over the open net. “It took a bit longer than I anticipated.”
“That’s government work for you.”
“How many teeth did you lose this time?”
Jim painfully laughed and then said, “Three, I think. At least that’s what my tongue’s telling me.”
“Well, we’ve got more replacements for you. I’ll see you on board.”
Five minutes later, Jim found himself lying on his back watching lights zoom by overhead as he was being pushed to the infirmary on a hovering gurney by two female medics. The medics locked the floating gurney into a wall in a secluded medical room. Stoddard and an older, grey-haired male doctor were already in the room waiting for him.
“I’m sure you’re going to want this,” Jim said as he reached up and painfully pulled his left eye out of its socket. He handed the fake eye over to Stoddard. “I hope the imagery’s okay. I didn’t recognize anyone. OUCH!” he shouted when the doctor accidentally poked him a little too hard in the ribs.
“Yeah, I’d say that’s broken,” the doctor told him without apology.
Stoddard wiped the eye off with a white cloth and put it into a small device that he’d attached to his Simpad. Several video icons popped up on the screen. Stoddard pressed play on one of them and immediately saw a fist coming at the screen, followed by a haze of static and an upward visual of a metallic ceiling. After a couple of teary blinks of the eye, an image of the interrogator became visible. Stoddard paused the video and then zoomed in on the distorted image.
“That’s Kaevan Stall,” Stoddard said interestedly. “He works counter-HUMINT for the committee, and he’s a first-rate prick.”
“So, I noticed,” Jim replied with a gruff laugh.
“Yeah,” Stoddard said. His cheek twitched as he looked back down at Jim. “Kaevan’s the guy who, quote unquote, revolutionized offensive counterintelligence. He believed the best way to identify moles and double agents in the Federation was by infiltrating the Alliance’s spy network and making them believe that they were turning him into a double agent. I’ll give the guy credit on that front; it was a really crafty scheme.”
“So, he’s like a double-double agent? A Triple Agent?”
“Something like that. From what I understand, he has the Alliance wrapped around his little finger. It might interest you to know that he sat in on that briefing on Operation Iron Fist that I gave to the committee and the President sixteen years ago. The only other person still around is Representative Silkwood.”
“Well, now, that is interesting. I guess the good news is that they’re finally starting to take us seriously, eh?”
“Maybe. But like the committee and the President at the time, Kaevan wasn’t a believer. He thought that Boaz and Azaria were either Alliance traitors or spies, nothing more.”
“Do you think this will put Ben and Kara at risk?”
“It’s hard to say, but we can’t risk warning them. Besides, Captain Baas has a good head on his shoulders. He’ll keep them safe, and he’ll make sure they complete their mission.
“We have a long road ahead of us,” Stoddard said as he looked down at his dear friend. “You’d better get some rest.”
Stoddard lightly grabbed Jim’s arm, and then he left the room so that the doctor could finish terrorizing Jim’s battered body.
**********
Kaevan Stall made his way to a small room in the Harpy’s hull where he sat in an uncomfortable chair and set up a private SecLine connection. The face of a rather plump white man with a balding head popped up on the VisiScreen in front of him. The man looked quite agitated.
“Jim Roper escaped,” Kaevan informed him.
“You bloody fool!” the fat man scolded with a thick British accent. “Crème de la crème you are, indeed.”
“Flattery will get you nowhere,” the Reaper chided back to him.
“Really?” was the jaded response. “We’re on the verge of an historic peace treaty with the Alliance, and we have a rogue black ops unit trying to sabotage it, and you lose one of their principles, and now you have the audacity to make jokes?”
“You’re such an ass, Silkwood. Don’t for a second think that your congressional status on the committee makes you my superior. You asked my handlers to loan me to you because you couldn’t keep your own operatives in line, and they’re the best in the Federation, so cut me some slack.”
“Whatever. Did you at least figure out their plan? What’s the deal with that kid from Naroon?”
“Nothing’s confirmed, but my guess is that they’re using him as a cover for a mission to rescue their missing agent. And they’ve hired a Jack Crew to help.”
“A failed rescue operation would be the end of this treaty, and this treaty is the only way we’ll get access to Crucis One. The president had a difficult enough time convincing the Alliance that it was a rogue operation to begin with – and I almost lost my position on the committee because of it.”
“Right – and you can forget about a prisoner swap because the Alliance believes he died in the crash. I know that firsthand. But that’s not your biggest problem. Roper said that Colonel Stoddard is planning to hit Sanchu.”
“But you assured us that Sanchu is a non-player – an alcove of Alliance researchers and scientists.”
“It is, that’s why this is a problem. Thwarting a treaty is one thing, but this is an act of war, and the Alliance will view it as such. He’s fabricating intelligence to make it appear like Sanchu’s a military staging point, but I assure you it’s not. All he needs to do is convince a few battle force commanders hungry for war to go along with him.”
“This is out of control, and he needs to be stopped.” Silkwood paused for a moment and then said, “One of our units just intercepted a communication from a member of General Hyatt’s staff indicating that a group of non-combatants has been given permission to use his facilities. My guess is that it’s Kynan’s daughter and the boy.”
“Which facility? He oversees two dozen.”
“We don’t know, and we can’t ask for obvious reasons. You need to intercept those kids and take out that Jack Crew – they’re the key to stopping Stoddard. And maybe you or Terrell can put a word out to your Alliance contacts that a rogue black ops unit is planning a rescue mission – make them believe it’s not sanctioned by the government. They’ll believe you before they believe us.”
“Right. Terrell’s on his way back from the Alliance as we speak. We’ll drop a word soon enough. One more thing. Do you still keep a file on Operation Iron Fist? I’d like to see it.”
“That’s random. What’s your angle?”
“There could be a connection. Stoddard’s conspiracy theory about those two Alliance spies sixteen years ago begs some scrutiny with the discovery of Crucis One.”
“I doubt there’s a connection. Either way, I have the only file in existence, but you’d have to come here to view it. I won’t send it to you.”
“Whatever you say. Terrell and I will start looking for those kids as soon as he’s back.”
“You do that,” Silkwood said just before his image vanished.