She secured her storage space and turned to see Peregrine weighed down with various bags and cases. She hadn’t even bothered with a cart. Show-off.
“I like that we’ve all stockpiled for doomsday.” Peregrine almost smiled.
“We’ve got to have hobbies, right? Let’s go.”
Back on the Nefarious they stored the heavy gear in weapons lockers, then Fallon headed to the bridge. Peregrine went to keep an eye on Colb while Hawk returned to Jamestown to grab his own belongings.
Fallon dropped into the pilot’s chair and stabbed the initialization sequence. Ross had scooted over to the adjacent seat when he’d seen her, without saying a word. She wondered what it had been like for him, listening to events unfold while he remained here. She wouldn’t have handled it well.
As soon as everyone returned, Fallon launched the ship. She burned the engines hard just long enough to get a good distance from the station, then continued at a more reasonable pace.
Raptor and Peregrine joined her and Ross on the bridge. Hawk had returned to keeping an eye on Colb. She wished she could turn Colb in to PAC command, but even if she could have trusted them, she didn’t know where the remaining members and support staff of PAC command were now.
And where was the noise about that? The datastreams should have been alive with the story of Jamestown going dark. So it must have happened very recently.
She wanted to bury her face in her hands and wallow in frustration for a minute or two, but had no time for that. She had a team to lead.
“Here.” Raptor held something out to her and she extended her palm. He dropped a tiny chip into it.
“What is it?” She turned it over with her fingertip, but it revealed no distinguishing characteristics.
“I was doing an encryption algorithm search. It didn’t yield any data, but it told me that PAC files had been downloaded and encrypted. That means they took with them the data that they wiped. I also found what’s on that chip.”
“What is it?”
“A message, I think. I didn’t take the time to look at it. I almost didn’t find it, but I noticed an odd pattern in the sequence of the systems had been deleted. It was a code.”
“What was the message?”
“Not really a message. It was the date of our first day at the academy. Not a series of numbers that would be significant to anyone else. When I followed it back, I found this little file tucked away in a location that matched our graduation year.”
“Wow. Nice work, Raptor.” Fallon was already sliding the chip into a slot, but she paused. “And you’re sure it’s not a virus or something that’s going to blow up in our faces.”
“Positive.”
She inserted the chip and an image of Krazinski appeared on her panel, apparently seated at a voicecom and staring into it. He looked rough. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his uniform had a small tear in the fabric at his shoulder. He began speaking gibberish.
She looked to Raptor, who rushed forward and leaned over her to fiddle with the display. She opened a channel to Hawk. “Hawk, we need you up here for a minute.”
After a few minutes Raptor said, “There. The admiral sure didn’t want this being seen by the wrong person.”
“Just play it.”
“Fallon,” Krazinski said. “By now you know that Blackout has been corrupted. I realized too late, and wasn’t able to protect you and the rest of Avian Unit. I’m sorry for that, and for your headache. I can only hope we can reverse what’s been done to you. And now I’m forced to leave my own station.” His gaze tracked to the left, away from the voicecom, then flicked back. “I don’t have time to tell you everything I need to, and I couldn’t risk that information falling into the wrong hands, anyway. What I can tell you right now is that Masumi Colb is the one behind all this. I’ve known this for over a year, and have been working to quietly take care of the problem. I don’t have to tell you that if certain facts become publicly known, the entire Planetary Alliance Cooperative will be at risk.”
His eyes flicked to the side and back again. “Colb was bringing you here to get you to attack the command. He intended to take over Jamestown in order to complete his plans. I had no choice but to make the place useless to him and to purge the people who were about to stage an uprising to assist him. Unfortunately Jamestown is now also useless to us, without months’ worth of repairs. I can’t tell you where we are now, as this file could become compromised. But if you put your head to the ground, you’ll figure it out.” His gaze jerked to the left.
“I have to go. I hope to see you soon. Whatever you do, don’t trust Colb.”
The image disappeared, but Fallon kept staring at the screen.
Hawk arrived, and they replayed the message. Fallon didn’t get anything more the second time around, but it gave her time to think.
“Hang on,” Hawk said. “Krazinski isn’t the bad guy here?”
Fallon weighed the facts in her head. Losing Jamestown was devastating, even if they’d managed to take the databanks with them. Krazinski wouldn’t have leveraged the entire station as an attempt to convince her team he wasn’t guilty. He’d only do so in response to a much greater threat.
She rubbed her hand over the short, bristly side of her hair. “Per, is ‘put your head to the ground’ one of your odd Zerellian phrases?”
Peregrine shook her head. “No. Never heard it. I wondered what he meant by that.”
“It’s an odd thing to say.” Fallon kept rubbing her hair. The sensation against her fingers
