Escape From Argus

By William Lavell

After the events of The Augustine Agenda, both sides are licking their wounds and gathering resources.
On the heels of Commander Straker’s failure to capture Ryan and his crew at Beauregard, President Aarla has entrusted a new man, Commander Crim, with the task of bringing them to justice.
Ryan tries to address his crew’s needs with a salvage run to the mining asteroid XK-7. When their shuttle breaks down and almost costs them the mission, Ryan realizes that his crew needs a mechanic. And he knows just the person for the job.
Adam Traynor is an old friend who Ryan’s. He’s such a good friend that Ryan would trust him with his life. The only problem is that he’s a prisoner at the Argus-2 mining camp on a moon appropriately named Diablo. Argus 2’s mine is radioactive, and the crew only has a short time to rescue him before they all fall prey to its deadly effects.
Rescuing his old friend is a fool’s errand at best, but the added prospect of his sister Jade also being held at the camp makes Ryan determined to go on an adventure even riskier than their first.
With time running out, the Company men closing in, and death all around them, Ryan and his friends must find a way to...
ESCAPE FROM ARGUS

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Lavell
• Release date: Feb 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781463588595

William Lavell

William Lavell was born and raised in Northern New Jersey. By "day", he works as a supervisor at a transportation company that he's been with for the last 20 years. He's been writing for just as long. He finally saw his first novel, The Augustine Agenda, published in 2010. It has received Honorable Mentions at the 2011 New England Book Festival and the 2012 London Book Festival. He has since followed it up with Escape From Argus, which was published in 2011. His latest novel, The Treos Dilemma, was published in February of 2012. He's currently hard at work on a fourth untitled book in the series, which he hopes to finish by the end of this year. He currently lives in Central New Jersey with his wife, Michele.

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Escape From Argus

by William L. Lavell

© 2011 by William L. Lavell

SMASHWORDS EDITION

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced – mechanically, electronically, or by any other means, including photocopying – without written consent of the author.

ISBN – 1-4635-8859-3

Printed in the United States of America.

First printing July 2011

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Per Aspera Ad Astra

(A rough road leads to the stars)

CHAPTER ONE

Aarla had her shortcomings, but she knew how to make an entrance.

Instead of making a grand spectacle of herself as she strode through the corridors of Corporate Headquarters, she simply let the clicking of her heels announce her presence. She guessed that she was about fifteen minutes late for her meeting, but she wasn’t going to be rushed today. On this walk, she kept her pace steady and deliberate. In her position, she felt entitled to the luxury of being fashionably late from time to time.

She’d purposely taken extra time dressing that morning to get just the look she wanted. She decided on a loose white dress made of the finest material in the Three Systems. It was a stark contrast to the black fatigues of the soldiers who flanked her. The neckline started high enough that it didn’t expose too much, but it showed enough of her tanned skin to attract the eye. The dress’s hem nearly touched the floor, but at the same time the material was sheer enough to reveal the white bodysuit she wore underneath. It didn’t show any skin, but it left nothing of her curvy figure to the imagination.

She finished her outfit off with a simple black belt and boots. Her dark hair cascaded over her shoulders without a single strand out of place. As she sauntered through the corridors, she refused to make eye contact with anyone. She held her head straight, and kept her gaze level and self-assured, as one might expect from someone of her station. She didn’t stop to see if her outfit was having the desired effect, but she could tell that it was. The troopers tried not to be obvious about their staring, but she could feel the eyes of every man in the corridor on her as she passed them.

She only hoped that the effect would be just as striking at her meeting. With the news she had to deliver at this appearance, she wanted to look intimidating. At the very least, she thought she could use her looks to distract her audience from thinking too much about what she was going to tell them.

Of all her responsibilities as President and CEO of the Three Systems, attending board meetings was the one she enjoyed the least. She referred to the Board of Directors not so affectionately as the Old Men, or the Jury. For her, a jury was exactly what they were. The Board of Directors was comprised of twelve old men whose combined fortunes had built this division of the Company from the proverbial ground up. They were the oldest money in the sector, and their mission statement was simple: they wanted results, and they wanted them quickly.

Board meetings were held once each month. The minutes from the meetings would be sent to the home office on Old Earth, a process that took almost two years. At that point their data would be discussed at a meeting of the Earth office, and a reply message would be sent. Of course it took these messages another two years to get back to Olympia. It was just a formality, though. Four year old information was completely useless to the Board on Olympia, but protocol was protocol. No matter how counterproductive it seemed, protocol was followed to the letter. Other than following procedure however, the Three Systems branch of the Company ran its own affairs and answered to no one.

As a rule, the Board didn’t take an active part in the day to day workings of the Company, so long as Aarla’s decisions earned them all a healthy profit. When she could make them money, she was given the proverbial pat on the back for her hard work and dedication to the job. But when she lost them money, her actions were met with blistering criticism, usually from all of them at once. Board members had approached her time and again to reassure her that their treatment of her in meetings was strictly business, and should not be taken personally. But she still believed that at least some of the Old Men really meant to do her harm.

Of course the Old Men all had their own ideas about how The Company’s money should be spent. They also had very definite ideas about where certain budget cuts would be appropriate. Their ideas differed sharply from Aarla’s, which was fuel for constant conflict. The biggest point of contention was the budget for the Security Forces. The Old Men found the cost of maintaining a standing military prohibitive to say the least. Aarla held the position that although each planet had its own law enforcement, the Security Forces were better equipped to handle large-scale threats. Since the Company basically owned the Three Systems, she reasoned that it was their duty to ensure that they were protected, and that would be impossible to do without the Security Force. That line of logic usually put an end to the argument for that day, but she still found herself continually fighting the same battle with the Jury.

As she reached the conference room doors, her mind wandered to thoughts of the escaped fugitive, Jace Ryan. Her plan to eliminate him and three other prisoners in a shuttle accident on Beauregard did not go at all as she’d planned. But in reality, he’d been one of the best things that had ever happened to her. That fiasco couldn’t have come at a better time. The news of Ryan’s escape was traveling quickly through the systems, and the effect it was having on the masses made the Old Men increasingly nervous. No one had ever escaped the Security Forces before. In fact, no one had ever escaped from Commander Straker before. But now here was a ragtag group of convicts who not only stole a spacecraft from under the nose of Beauregard’s law enforcement, they had engaged Straker’s flagship with it and survived to tell the tale. They were quickly becoming the stuff of legends, and the legends were spreading. The more people heard the stories, the more of them were foolish enough to think they’d fare as well if they resisted. It was job security for the Security Forces, as long as it was kept under control.

Some of the stories were true, and some of them were exaggerated. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the stories were out there, and they were giving the people hope. Aarla thought things were going well, but there were those on the Board who thought that hope for the masses was simply too damned expensive for the Company. There was no doubt in her mind as to what the major topic of discussion at this meeting would be. The board wanted Ryan stopped, and they wanted him stopped soon. Aarla was sure that she could use this situation to get what she wanted.

She took a deep breath to steady herself before she pushed through the doors. The circular room, which had been awash in a sea of outraged voices, fell silent as the president entered. The clicking of her heels was the only sound in the room as she strode past the circular hardwood conference table and took her place at a brass and smoke-tinted glass podium at the front of the room. Her blue eyes panned the room and were met all around by expectant looks from ‘the Jury’.

Greetings gentlemen, she began. I now call this emergency meeting of the IHC Board of Directors to order. Let the minutes show that the current date is the twenty-first of September, twenty-five sixteen, and the time is seven eighteen am. Computer, begin recording.

The computer beeped its response, and a small red light lit up in front of her on the podium. I’ll get right to the point of this meeting. She touched a control on the podium, and a three-dimensional holographic map of the system appeared in front of the podium. Four planets appeared to be highlighted in red, and appeared to be a slightly larger scale than the rest.

As you all know, the Security Forces were recently deployed to Andoh, Augustine, Corenthia, and Arion on re-acquisition missions. She pointed to the planets in order. Augustine, Andoh, and Corenthia have all been re-acquired. The fighting on Arion is ongoing. At last report, the Prime-Minister’s supply lines have been cut off. We expect to retake the planet shortly.

She took another look around the table, hoping that the good news had softened them up to discuss the bad news. But no one’s expression had changed. She leaned forward and folded her hands in front of her. Now we come to the main topic of discussion for this meeting. You may also be aware that the Security Forces have reported a small incident which took place on the planet Beauregard.

She was about to continue, but the man sitting to her right was staring so angrily at her it broke her concentration. As she scanned the room she noticed that the other board members had similar expressions on their faces. Before she could speak again, the room erupted into chaos as all of the members expressed their own personal outrage at the same time.

Small? cried one board member.

Straker’s report made it sound more like a full scale battle than a ‘small incident’, shouted another.

"And the Security Forces lost!" said a third, getting up from his chair and slamming his hand on the table indignantly. The rest of the voices just blended into a sea of shouting.

Aarla frowned as she unfolded her hands. She brought one hand up and rested her chin on her palm. With her other hand, she absently drummed her perfectly sculpted fingernails on the podium. She’d seen the Old Men get rowdy before when they expressed their displeasure on issues, but on this occasion, they were out-doing themselves. They were all pounding on the hardwood table, almost in unison. Some of them were demanding that Straker resign. One was even calling for Aarla to step down. She was used to this, though. At least one of the Board members acted this way at every meeting. Usually it was a different one of them each time, and for a different reason. But at this meeting, the furor was much more intense. To say that The Jury was unhappy with the recent turn of events would have been an understatement.

Aarla drew a deep breath. Her frown intensified into a scowl as her icy blue eyes focused on an arbitrary point near the center of the room. She hated it when they forced her to do this, but she was perfectly capable of shouting above them all when she had to.

If I might be allowed to continue! The harshness of her voice surprised even her. Her sudden outburst drew their attention back to her. The scowl on her face silenced the room.

A transport ship carrying four prisoners to the Dagmar Prison facility experienced a complete failure of all inboard flight systems over the planet Beauregard. The hostility left her expression and her voice as quickly as they’d appeared. "The ship crash-landed on the planet, and regrettably, the pilot was killed on impact. The prisoners, on the other hand, survived. They acquired a ship from another outlaw named Tavion Karr, and escaped Beauregard before local law enforcement and the planet’s Security detachment