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As Alex watched Cameron expertly land the Talon into the Legacy’s hangar bay, he couldn’t believe how much had happened in the past few days, and that he had actually made it back to the Legacy. Normally the Talons docked on the outside of the ship, but Cameron thought it would be safer to go for the hangar bay since he was unsure of the Talon’s ability to dock with the ship; Alex was quietly grateful. It would be extremely unfortunate to make it this far only to succumb to their fate on a simple docking procedure.
“WEP/NAV shutdown checklist complete,” Alex told Cameron as the rest of the ship’s systems started shutting down. He looked out and noticed a crowd was forming around the ship. Maybe word of their escapades had made it through the ranks. He secretly hoped so; a hero’s welcome is something he would certainly enjoy.
He unlatched his harness and released the seat to climb down out of the Talon. Trying to keep a smile from forming on his lips, he slowly walked out from underneath the fuselage and was instantly grabbed forcefully by a security guard. They began to guide him quickly out of the hangar bay, and before he could utter a word, he heard a commanding voice come from a Stinson security officer who was walking quickly towards Cameron. Alex had never seen this man before, and he was clearly agitated.
“Captain Steele, please come with us,” the angry major ordered.
Alex couldn’t hear the rest of the conversation as his escorts now pushed him out of the hangar bay entrance doors.
“What’s going on?” he asked the guards. “Captain Steele and I have important information we have to get to General Williams and Colonel Withers immediately!”
“You’re both being placed under arrest,” the guard to his left said nonchalantly.
“Why?”
“Don’t know. Major Werke’s orders.”
Frustrated with the guard’s lack of knowledge, Alex began looking around hoping to see someone who could vouch for him, but the walkways were essentially empty. Resigned to his fate, he started thinking of what he and Cameron had possibly done to deserve this treatment.
Within a few minutes, they had made it to an interrogation room in the detention area Alex had never seen before. Alex thought about his chances of trying to escape, but the two guards looked plenty capable of handling his small frame. One of the guards opened a metal door that led into a small room. Inside, sitting on a chair behind a table, was Captain Grace Deerfield, Legacy’s Security Officer.
“Please, come in, Captain Gonzalez. We need to talk,” she said sternly. “Leave us,” she said to the two guards.
Alex walked in and the guards closed the door behind him.
“Grace, what’s going on? Why have Captain Steele and I been arrested?”
“Sit down, Alex. How well do you know Captain Cameron Steele?”
Alex thought about it for a moment and realized he didn’t know all that much about him, just what little he had told him in the past few days, but he had acted professionally at all times.
“I just met him a few days ago, so I guess not very well, but he seems all right. Why?”
“Major Werke, Stinson’s Security Officer, has reason to believe that Steele has been sabotaging their ship. He was arrested on sabotage charges earlier, but they didn’t have enough evidence to support it, so they let him go on a mission under escort. Now, he comes back with both escorts dead and with you. Naturally, Major Werke suspects you’re involved, now, too.”
“That’s ridiculous! I know nothing about any sabotage, and I barely know Captain Steele.”
“Relax, Alex. I know you better than that, and I’m willing to bet General Williams knows that, too, although, I don’t know that for sure yet,” she said, trying to calm Alex down.
“I just can’t believe he’s a traitor,” Alex murmured.
“Spies are trained for this, Alex. It’s not your fault. He’s been lying to everyone,” Grace said, trying to console him. “I bet if you start thinking about it hard, you’ll come up with several questionable actions on his part.”
Alex put his head in his hands and started to think back throughout his past four days with Cameron. He thought back to how he and his pilot, Scott, had found him piloting an enemy aircraft during the recent battle. Thinking of Scott was no longer making him sad; anger was starting to build up inside of him. If this all was true, then Cameron was the reason his friend was dead.
The door to the interrogation room opened and a security officer walked in.
“Major Werke. I strongly believe that Captain Gonzalez has no treasonous ties to Captain Steele. I’m extremely confident that if Steele is a saboteur, that Gonzalez had no idea, and he would not have gone along with it, and would have reported him immediately. I also…”
“Leave us,” Major Werke said abruptly, cutting her off.
Captain Deerfield stood there for a moment deciding on whether or not to object, looked at Alex, and then quickly turned around and left the room.
Alex looked at the major and knew immediately that he was in trouble. He looked like a man not to be trifled with, and he was angry.
“How long have you been working with Captain Steele?” Werke asked angrily, as he threw down a folder filled with documents. “You may have convinced Captain Deerfield, but I’m not so easily swayed.”
Alex looked at the folder and saw it was Captain Steele’s case file. He opened up the folder and started reading the contents. Alex couldn’t believe what he was reading. How could the man he had just spent the last four days with, the man who was with him and his family, have done these terrible things?
“I’ve only known Captain Steele for four days, now, and that’s the truth. I had no idea he was a traitor and that he had done all of this. I swear,” Alex said angrily.
“Nice try. You two have done a good job of tricking everyone else, but I’m no longer falling for it. He’s also killed two men that went down to Earth with him on a scouting mission. Everywhere he goes, people die. You’re both going to get what you deserve!” Werke said loudly. “Guards! Bring Captain Gonzalez to Steele’s room.”
Alex couldn’t believe it. He was roughly pushed along towards another room across the hallway. He passed by Captain Deerfield, who was in the hallway looking forlorn at him. He pleaded for help with his eyes, but she just stood there looking helpless. He could hear Major Werke say something to Grace, but he couldn’t make it out.
The guards nudged him into the room and the door slid shut behind him. Cameron was sitting down at the table in the middle of the room. Seeing him made Alex’s blood boil, and he wanted to rush over there and beat Cameron to death. He resisted the urge, for now.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were arrested for sabotage?” Alex asked him.
“I didn’t do it. If I had told you, you would never have listened to me. I needed you to trust me.”
“Trust? Trust begins with honesty,” Alex shot back.
Cameron stood up. Alex prepared for a fight. Instead, Steele said, “Captain, I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? Great, they think I’m part of some master sabotage plan, and you’re sorry. I knew I never should have trusted you the minute I saw you crawl out of that enemy wreck.”
“You can’t believe I’m a saboteur.”
“You were in an enemy fighter during the battle. Now I’m not sure if you were really helping us or not. Then, when things weren’t looking good for you, you turned tail and ran. I stupidly saved your life. For all I know, you used me to get back here.”
“I didn’t use you. We had to get word back to the ships to warn them of the Ferus. That was our mission. If I told you of my arrest, that could have jeopardized our success. I had too.”
“You liar!” Alex yelled. He couldn’t take it anymore. He hit Steele as hard as he could, right in the stomach. Steele fell back and tripped over a chair. He felt like advancing to continue, but didn’t for some reason. He felt much better just hitting him.
“I guess I deserved that,” Steel said as he got up. “Look in my eyes, Captain Gonzalez, I’m not a saboteur.”
“I don’t know what to believe. Major Werke showed me your case file. All the evidence is there. He says you even killed the two men that went down to Earth with you on the scouting mission.”
“I did not kill anyone. One of those men, Master Sergeant Rollins, is the saboteur. Major Werke put Rollins on the mission to keep an eye on me, and it turns out that he was the one that should have been watched. I wish I could prove any of this to you, but I can’t. You just have to believe me.”
Alex couldn’t help it. He was starting to believe him. Maybe Werke had it all wrong and he just doesn’t have all the information yet.
“There was something I felt my brother and sister weren’t telling me.”
“Don’t ask me that, Gonzalez.”
“I have to know, Cameron. What were you talking to my brother about the night before we left?”
Cameron clearly didn’t want to say what he knew, but he eventually said, “I know you don’t think my word means anything right now. However, I promised your brother two things before we left. The first was that I would protect you with my life. The second was that I would never repeat to you what he revealed to me. Just hear me when I say that these Ferus do horrible things to humans.” Cameron’s eyes began to swell. “They have to be stopped. We have to stop them.”
“What happened to my family, Cameron? I want to know.”
“No, you don’t, Alex. No, you don’t.”
Alex started to weep a little, he couldn’t help it. He knew something terrible had happened to his parents. Maybe he really didn’t want to know. He wasn’t sure. One thing he was sure about, though, was that Cameron definitely didn’t seem like a traitor. If he would keep a promise he had made with his brother to help protect him, then it seemed to Alex that he had honor, and honorable people weren’t traitors. Still, he was distraught.
He heard Cameron get up and felt his hand touch his shoulder. “I’m really sorry, Alex.”
“Leave me alone,” Alex said, then brushed Cameron’s hand off.
The door opened.
“Captain Gonzalez, come with us,” one of the guards said. “We’re to take you to the holding cell.”
Alex stood up and looked hard at Cameron. “I believe you, Cameron, but if you ever lie or hold the truth from me again, though, I won’t just knock you to the floor.”
With that, Alex turned around and let the guard take him out of the room. The guard led him down a few corridors to where the holding cells were. He was pushed into an empty cell. Alex sat down on the bed and put his head in his hands. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do now.
About thirty minutes had gone by when he heard a noise coming from down the corridor. Soon, he saw Cameron being dragged unconscious towards his cell. The guards opened up the cell and threw him in. Alex quickly got up and caught him before he fell to the ground. He carefully laid him down on the floor. He was bleeding out of his nose.
“Cameron. Cameron, can you hear me?” Alex asked.
Cameron slowly stirred and then opened his eyes. “How long was I out?”
“I’m not sure. You were unconscious when they threw you in this cell. Why are they doing this to us?”
Cameron sat up and wiped the blood with his sleeve. “They are trying to frame us. Werke is in on this. I don’t know how many others. This is much bigger than sabotage.”
Werke, thought Alex. Now it was beginning to make sense.
“We’ve got to talk to General Williams, he’ll listen to me.”
“They’re going to kill us before morning; make it look like an attempted escape. Besides, they would never believe us.”
Alex was thinking hard with desperation, knowing full well that they were doomed if they couldn’t figure something out quickly.
“Why didn’t I think of this earlier,” Alex said. “It’s a long shot, but it just might work.”
“I’m out of ideas, Gonzalez. Your long shot might be the only shot we have.”
Alex unzipped the pocket on his upper right arm. “Check your flight data transmitter. I linked the frequencies up with the onboard computer prior to takeoff. I had trouble with your transmitter link, it kept cutting in and out; probably a result from your crash.”
Cameron unzipped his pocket. The transmitter was still active. “It’s on.” The transmitter sends data to the Talon’s computer, including an audio transmission. “You secured all systems after we landed, though.”
“I only secured power from the main supply. During our power troubles, I had routed some systems to the backup power bus. I never routed them back, and I never shut down that power system; it’s not part of a normal shut down checklist.”
“So it’s possible it is still recording data?” Cameron thought of his encounter with Werke.
“There’s a chance. If no one else shut down the system, and your link hasn’t failed, then yes.”
“Werke said enough. We have to get that data to Colonel Withers or General Williams; they are the only ones I would trust at this moment…even if we were to get out of this cell, none of the doors would even work without us wearing bio-bracelets.”
“Even with the bracelets, the doors wouldn’t work,” Alex said. “I’m sure you have no access on this ship, and my access most likely has been pulled by Werke, already.” Alex reached into Cameron’s pocket and removed his data transmitter. “We can’t bring the recording to them, but it may be possible to have someone else do it.”
Alex started pulling apart Cameron’s transmitter. “If I use the power from your transmitter to boost the signal from mine, I might be able to send commands to the Talon. I could have the auxiliary power unit on the Talon start up. This should alert someone in the hangar bay that the ship has a problem. I could program a message into the error codes, so that when the technician downloads the data to troubleshoot the problem, he would then see our message to check the audio recordings.”
“That’s a lot of ducks that need to get in a row in order for this to work. Can’t you just reprogram our transmitters to work on the Legacy’s frequency?”
“There is a completely different encryption for the ship’s communication system. We don’t have enough time for me to reconfigure this transmitter for that encryption.”
“What can I do to help?”
“I’m just about done. All I have to do is finish sending the auxiliary power unit start up command and-” Gonzalez started to tap on the side of the transmitter.
Alex was almost finished when his hope sank.
“Everything all right?” Cameron asked.
“I hope that went through. The extra power from your transmitter fried the main board. I’m not sure if the command was sent.”
Cameron pounded his fist on the steel wall.
“We can’t sit around here and wait to be killed,” Cameron said. “We need to get out.”
After several hours had passed, the locking mechanism to the cell door clicked; the door was going to open.
Cameron reached down and pulled Alex up with one hand. “Be ready, this is it!”
Captain Deerfield rushed in. She whispered, “I told the guards that Major Werke needed them two levels down. We don’t have much time. Alex, is Cameron a traitor or not?”
Alex was confused. “What are you doing, Grace?”
“I know for a fact that you are not a traitor, Alex, and when Major Werke told me you were working with Cameron to sabotage our mission, I started getting suspicious. I was ready to believe Captain Steele’s involvement until Werke implicated you with him, and he’s adamant about implicating you.”
Alex looked at Cameron, giving him the green light to tell her the story. “We can trust her, Cameron. She’s on our side for sure.”
“I tricked Major Werke into admitting he is involved in all of this. He and Sgt. Rollins have been involved since the beginning.”
Captain Deerfield didn’t look surprised. “Have you any proof?” Grace asked.
“We might. Captain Gonzalez thinks we may have a recording on the Talon of Werke admitting it. We need to get to the ship to check it out.”
“Recorded him? How did…never mind.” Grace thought for a minute and then said, “We need to get this information to General Williams and Colonel Withers. We should split up to increase our chances of success. Steele, try to get to Williams and Withers to tell them the truth. Say the word ‘Praximum’ to them. It’s a secret security password used only in emergencies, and very few people know of it. That should at least get them thinking you might be telling the truth. Of course, Werke knows of it, too. Alex and I will try and get that recording, and then meet up with you. Once they see you’ve escaped, Werke will have the entire ship looking for you, so watch yourself. I doubt he’ll try to take you alive.”
“Agreed. He already told me we weren’t going to survive the night. Thank you, Captain. You gave us a fighting chance.”
“I just better not regret this decision, Steele,” She said sternly as she handed him and Alex a bio-bracelet. “I’ve modified these to give us access to every part of the ship. They register as other security officers. It should work long enough to accomplish our missions.”
“Thanks. You will not regret this decision. We need to get this resolved quickly. The Ferus are on their way. Good luck, Gonzalez.” And with that, Cameron took off down the corridor.
Grace looked at Alex. “Ferus are on their way?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later. Let’s get going. The hangar is this way,” Alex said, motioning.
They only made it down two corridors before they almost ran over the two guards that had been posted at their cell. The look of surprise on their faces was all the time they needed as Alex and Grace knocked them both to the ground unconscious.
“I was hoping to get further ahead before we had to do something like this,” Grace said, kneeling down to make sure they were both all right.
Alex agreed, but couldn’t help but be impressed with how easily she had taken out her opponent. He remembered all the way back to the first day he had seen her walk into the gym. That was such a long time ago. She was amazing.
“Hurry. It won’t be long before the alarm is sounded, and these modified bio-bracelets will only get us so far before they figure it out,” Alex said, then he grabbed her arm and started running.
It took them only ten more minutes to make it to the hangar. Luckily for them, nobody was guarding the Talon. Their attempt to start the APU had failed, but that was a good thing considering the changes to their plan. They walked briskly towards the ship. They made it unchallenged.
“Give me your PIC. Keep a lookout while I go and look for that recording,” Alex told Grace.
At that moment, a loud siren went off.
“Hurry!” shouted Grace.
Alex quickly went up the hatch. He looked over the computer audio logs and couldn’t believe it. There it was! He quickly downloaded it into her PIC. He scrambled out of the fighter.
“Got it! Let’s go!”
They made about two steps towards the door they came from, when they came to a sudden stop. Two security guards were coming through the door and noticed them immediately.
“STOP!” one of the guards yelled.
Alex noticed the other guard pull up his PIC and started to talk into it while the other raised his weapon.
Grace pulled his arm and yelled, “Quickly, this way.” She pointed towards another exit. They ran as fast as they could, hoping the guards didn’t have orders to kill them on sight. Just as they were about to go through the door, a shot rang out and hit the side of the door. So much for that, Alex thought. This was going to be close.
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