River’s Run – Part 5

“He’s not talking,” the ground force commander said to the captain of the Saratoga. “He said he wants a deal on his prison term if he tells us anything about River Tam.”

“We do not make deals with prisoners,” the captain said. “Tell Mr. Patterson that he can talk or he can starve and have his pain medication for that leg injury cut off.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Any word from the search teams?”

“Nothing yet. They’ve covered the area Flowers gave us, but Tam must be long gone. We’ve expanded the search and have infrared scanners on low flying ships searching. Nothing but wild game, no humans, no settlements of any kind, nothing for hundreds of kilometers. It would be very difficult to survive out there for long. She could be dead for all we know.”

“I doubt it,” the captain said. “Not after the way she handled our troops, took an officer hostage, infiltrated a spaceport, stole a freighter and knew enough to disable another freighter and all the comms in the spaceport. I’ve been reading the report from the freighter crew. The captain said Tam didn’t even flinch when bullets were flying around her. Something about this fugitive is not right. Fleet headquarters wants her bad but won’t tell us why. Who is River Tam?”

The commander had no answer.

The captain grunted. “I guess we’ll know soon enough. Very well. Get down there yourself and coordinate things. But first go see Flowers in Santos City and find out what the hell happened and then get her back here for a proper de-briefing.”

“Yes, sir,” the commander said and then he was gone.

“Sir, we have a Firefly class vessel entering the approach corridor for Paquin,” a sensor tech shouted out. "Transponder reads it as the Utopia….it checks out.”

“Very well. Let it pass. We are only interested in ships leaving the planet, not heading for it.”

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“What’s the Saratoga doing out here?” Captain Oren asked the pilot as they went past the large cruiser, visible in the cockpit windows.