The Plasma Master

  Chapter 20

  Mirana Kelar had gotten herself into more places where she was not allowed than she cared to count, but this time it was different. It was not that Sigma Omicron was so heavily guarded; she had been to Venom itself without being suspected. It was not that she was afraid of being recognized; although her face was known by many Imperial officers, none of them knew of her ties with StarBlazer. At least, none that were still alive. The thing about this mission that made it more difficult than her previous ones was that this time she had to rely on ten other people, and experienced as they were she did not fully trust them.

  The preparations had been easy. Mirana had taken her group to the agricultural world of Vrelin, where they had landed after three days of travel in an old transport shuttle. Mirana told startraffic control that they were a group of workers being hired on one of the many plantations, and she had provided records of her dealings with the plantation’s owner as proof. The records were flawless because Mirana had fabricated them herself.

  On reaching the plantation, Mirana had immediately departed for a spaceport several thousand miles away. She provided her group with Anacronian military uniforms and uploaded more falsified records. The group was now part of the crew of a freighter that had been ordered to deliver a new supply of food to Sigma Omicron. The ten Mirana had chosen from among General Marnax’s agents had blended superbly into the roles she had created for them, and so far things had gone smoothly.

  The first problem arose just after they had boarded the shuttle. Mirana and a few StarBlazer agents were alone in a junior officers’ lounge, and Mirana had sliced into the ship’s computer again to double-check their flight plan. It had changed. “This is very, very bad,” she told Randar, her second in command. “Apparently they’ve decided that Moldrona Kren needs the supplies more than Sigma Omicron does. They’ve rerouted us to there.” Mirana knew Marnax would not want her to mention that StarBlazer was about to attack Moldrona Kren and that anyone caught there would stand a good chance at being killed, but the problem was big enough even if one ignored that fact.

  “I assume you can’t change the schedule again without looking suspicious.”

  “Right. Somehow we’ve got to get the Captain of this ship to make the decision for us.”

  “We could flood the ship with toxic gas and take control of it, but I recommend against it.”

  “The way I see it, the only way the Captain will stop at Sigma Omicron instead of Moldrona Kren is if it’s physically impossible to do otherwise.”

  “Sabotage the engines?”

  Mirana was pleased that Randar was not as slow as she had feared. “Good. I could program a defect from here, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t have time to cover my tracks fast enough.”

  “Then we’ll have to go down to engineering and break something ourselves.”

  “I can handle the security cameras if you can find a safe route.”

  “You’re sure you can handle it?”

  “Sure. I’ll just program false images over the recordings of wherever you go. I’ve done it a million times. I’m doing it with this room right now.”

  “Great. Cover the crawlspace above the room as well, and I’ll be going.” Randar called over two of his men and opened a panel in the ceiling that everyone else but Mirana had missed. The three StarBlazer agents disappeared up into the crawlspace, and the remaining agents resealed the opening. Mirana monitored Randar’s progress as he crawled toward the ship’s propulsion systems. Years of experience allowed her to mask all traces that anyone had left the lounge. It would have been more difficult if anyone had been watching the passageways in real time, but Mirana had conveniently arranged that all jobs on the ship that might pose a threat to her were given to her men.

  Randar’s task was not as simple, but he was just as confident. He was older than Mirana Kelar by a good ten years, and he had not put that time to waste. No detail escaped his senses as he and his men moved silently through the passageways that allowed access to the starship’s inner workings. The passages were intended for maintenance purposes, but as far as Randar was concerned they served just as well for sabotage.

  It had been just over six minutes when Randar reached the spot he wanted. He was positioned just outside of a dantonium conduit. The conduit pumped fuel into the main fuel reservoir, which in turn pumped fuel into the warp reactor chamber. If he could disable this conduit, the ship would lose access to half its fuel supply, and it would have to stop at a station for repairs. Sigma Omicron was not the only possible destination, but it was the best. The freighter Captain would almost definitely stop there, especially given his previous orders, but even if he did not, Mirana would probably have time to fabricate new orders for the group to be transferred to Sigma Omicron from wherever they ended up. Just as long as it was not as far away as Moldrona Kren; even if they managed to get passage from there to Sigma Omicron it would add over a week to their trip, and by then Nemesis would already be launched.

  As his companions took up watch positions to his left and right, Randar opened a maintenance hatch near the conduit and removed several tools. It was not an uncommon error for a starship’s dantonium conduit to fail; it happened all the time to older vessels. Imperial ships usually took good enough care of their engines that such occurrences were relatively rare, but Randar worked with such precision that even the most skilled engineer would mistake his work for an accident.

  “There,” he said at last. “This conduit has exactly twenty minutes before it shuts down completely. Someone’s going to get in big trouble for this, but it’s not going to be me.”

  “If my mom saw what I was doing, she’d pass out.” Despite the ridiculously dangerous situation Ned was in, though, he was enjoying himself. The view from the barrel of the Chelaris’s starboard laser cannon was somehow relaxing: all those stars out there, just sitting in space. It was almost possible to forget that there was a war going on.

  Ned felt a slight vibration through the cannon’s metal casing as the weapon charged. Then everything disappeared in a blaze of red light as supercharged brenitium plasma – the normal kind – discharged into space. Blue energy flared all around Ned, but he was pleased to find that he could protect himself with ease. The Chelaris fired again and again, but Ned stayed where he was, rooted in place by attachment clamps that had been built for him on the inside of the laser cannon; his Shield Plasma was also protecting these.

  It was the second day of his preparation for the upcoming battle; there were zeld days left until the battle itself. Ned was progressing magnificently. The power he had absorbed from Markan Dren’s attack and from the Blast Crystal had significantly strengthened him. Not only was Ned able to withstand repeated laser blasts with increasing ease, but he was becoming a better-than-terrible pilot, as well.

  Another series of laser blasts fired out of the cannon, and this time Ned started to tire. “Okay, hold off for another couple of minutes,” He called through his intercom to the officers in the Chelaris’s primary command.

  Going over Koral’s teachings had been a tremendous help to Ned as well. One of the most important things Koral had taught Ned was that Plasma was, more or less, everywhere. It was concentrated around bodies with large mass, which was why Ned had felt it so strongly surrounding Earth. (He had wondered why he had not felt it around Varlax Kanlor and other worlds, and for the time being he assumed that it was because the Plasma in him originated in Earth, and that somehow made him more sensitive to Earth’s collective Plasma field.)

  What this meant in terms of Ned’s training was that, given enough time and skill, he could absorb Plasma from just about anywhere. Absorbing power in this way was not nearly as easy for him as it had been to absorb Kayleen Rax’s Blast Plasma; the Plasmatic ether, as Koral had called it, transferred energy only very slowly, and it was very difficult to speed the process up.

  Yet, that was exactly what Ned, and presumably the other Plasma Masters, had learned to do. It still was not a quick proce
ss, but now, as Ned sat there inside the barrel of the laser cannon, he could feel the power he had expended returning to him. Ned was getting better at it each day.

  Still, all this optimistic thought was starting to make Ned suspicious of his luck. After all, if he had these skills, then surely Dark Viper and the Shadow Master would have them as well. Given the respective amounts of time that Ned and his enemies had known about the Plasma force, his enemies were probably much more knowledgeable. That would have applied to Rax and Dren as well, though, and he had defeated them, so this was not the main point of Ned’s concern.

  The thing that had continually interfered with Ned’s satisfaction in his progress was the prospect that, while Ned was increasing his power of invincibility, the barely-grown members of Dragon Force were very likely preparing for their deaths. Ned had told himself time and again that the choice was theirs, that there was nothing he could do about it, but that answer just did not seem good enough. There had to be something he could do. There had to.

  Randar’s work was successful; just minutes after he left the sabotaged conduit, the starship’s engineering crew detected the defect and the Captain ordered their course changed to stop at Sigma Omicron for repairs. The rest of the six-day trip passed without incident, and Mirana smiled at her success so far as they approached the massive station. Larger than some moons, Sigma Omicron was the primary starship production facility for the Empire after Venom. The main part of the station consisted of a large, mostly hollow sphere inside which the starships were actually constructed. Surrounding the ball was a torus-shaped ring, which made the station look something like a gas giant planet. It was within this ring that most of the station’s inhabitants lived. Connecting the ring to the ball were four cylindrical tubes positioned at ninety-degree intervals to each other, which served as docking ports for the starships that visited the base. Mirana knew that Nemesis would be finished by now, and it would be docked either at one of these connecting tubes or inside the central sphere. None of the ships in view registered as Nemesis, so if it was on a connecting tube it would be on the opposite side of the station.

  Since the freighter needed repairs as well as maintenance it was scheduled to dock inside the sphere. As it approached Sigma Omicron’s “underside,” the bottom of the sphere split into four claw-like door sections. The sections opened like an upside-down flower, and the resulting portal was so wide that even Devastator would have been able to fit through it. In fact, it was right here that Devastator had been built.

  At last the freighter docked, and Mirana, Randar, and the others walked through the airlock and onto the station. It would be several hours before the freighter was repaired and ready to go, and Mirana hoped to be long gone before that time.