The voice returned.
You’re aware of the special… bond… that the captains share? Chiral entanglement?
Garza felt a chill wrap around his heart as the meaning behind the strange voice in his head, combined with the words Janus uttered, crashed together in his mind, and their implications sank in.
No. It… it can’t be.
A sense of grim resignation flooded into him from the other’s mental presence.
Believe me, I wish it weren’t true. But it is.
How?
They haven’t exactly been forthcoming. See what you can get out of the asshole hovering over you. By the way, the guy’s a real prick.
Garza almost chuckled aloud at that.
Now, he realized that the mental voice held the same flavor as his own inner dialogue, which chilled him all the more.
If this is true….
It is.
Then Janus created you while I was unconscious. How long was I out?
It was several moments before he got a response.
I… don’t quite know how to tell you this, the voice began, but we’re no longer above Beryl. I can’t tell you how sorry I am to be the one to break this to you, but I guess it’s better if it comes from me… We’re on an Akkadian space station in the Alpha Centauri system. And you’re not….
Not what?
The voice let out a long, gusty mental sigh. Well, Garza, my man, you read the after-action report from Valenti. Did you catch Thad Severance’s initial reference to Captain Case—both versions—when he first saw them?
Oh… shit.
Yes. Hello, 2.0.
Garza’s mind faltered, forcefully rejecting what the voice implied.
No. That can’t be. I have eighty fucking years of memories. I remember my sixth birthday party, for star’s sake. No one can duplicate that.
You mean the time Beth asked you to watch over her drink so no bugs got in it, and instead, you caught a fly and stuck it inside?
I’m sure I told someon—
No, you didn’t. Dammit. We didn’t. We’ve never told anyone about that.
Garza shook his head. This can’t be. I’d know. Surely, I’d feel it somehow. I don’t feel any different. I’m me. I mean, I should know if I’m not the original, right?
He cast about for a reasonable explanation. This has to be some sort of Akkadian manipulation.
How?
I don’t know. Maybe they’ve perfected some way to scan memories and share them. You couldn’t know any of that, otherwise.
Unless I’m right.
The mental words landed heavily inside his head, its owner as bowed by the weight of them as Garza himself felt. He could feel the gravity as the voice continued.
According to what the assholes holding us prisoner have said, there are a few very simple tests that should prove beyond a doubt which one of us is the chiral clone.
That word, the word Garza had been avoiding, sliced through him like jagged shards of glass, and he reeled as the certainty in the other voice hooked its claws deep into him.
His sense of self shifted, teetering on its axis, and he sucked in a sharp, steadying breath.
“Good, you’re awake.” Janus’s face swam into view over him. “Get up. We have a lot to do to prep you for your assignment, and very little time in which to do it.”
When Garza remained on his back, the other man’s expression twisted into a snarl.
Janus brought a pulsed, directed energy weapon up and aimed it, point-blank, at Garza’s face. “While it’s true that we need you alive, there are many, many different states of ‘alive’ that you can be in and still be of use to us. I’m a biochemist and a medical doctor. Believe me when I say I know several that are particularly unpleasant. Now… Get. Up.”
CABINET APPOINTMENTS
National Security Agency
St. Clair Township, Ceriba
One week later….
Duncan Cutter was flipping through the major news outlets covering the prime minister’s press release when the rapid thud of footsteps sounded outside his office. He heard his protective detail confront the person, and suppressed a flare of annoyance at the precautions that came with his position.
Most of the time, Duncan had trained himself to ignore his keepers. He’d known when he accepted the role of national security director that he would be surrounded by a cadre of agents. These people were determined to insert themselves as human shields between him and any perceived threat, at the least provocation.
He hated it. Although he understood its necessity, sometimes the feeling of being smothered threatened to overwhelm him.
An alert flashed over his wire, notifying him of a priority incoming message from Harper, his senior analyst. He brought it up on his optical overlay.
The note was brief, but its contents had him pushing away from his desk—just as Assistant Director Sullivan stuck his head around the corner.
“Did you hear? The news conference….”
Duncan nodded in response, purposely withholding the report he’d just received.
Oblivious to the very different concern that now held Duncan’s attention, Sullivan ran an agitated hand through his hair, his mind entirely on the clusterfuck that had just been announced by Garza’s press secretary.
“How in the hell could we have read Garza so wrong?”
Duncan rose. “I don’t know.”
Shoving his hands into his pockets, Duncan walked over to a bank of windows that looked out on the NSA’s inner courtyard. After a moment, he glanced back at the assistant director. The other man’s expression was troubled.
Sullivan adjusted the cuffs of his suit, and then adjusted them again, a mindless habit Duncan knew to be the man’s tell.
What is it, really, that has you so upset?
The thought bounced around in Cutter’s head, yet nothing showed on his face.
Sullivan gestured almost helplessly. “Appointing Jamieson as secretary of defense? Garza knows the woman’s been running her mouth for years about the number of Navy ships deployed outsystem. She’s going to decimate their ranks.”
He paused and then added darkly, “That is, unless the new treasury secretary he just appointed beats her to it by cutting the military’s funding.”
Duncan’s lips thinned into a straight line as he regarded Sullivan. “I agree. Both of those choices are very out of character for Garza.”
He motioned to the far wall, where a holoscreen displayed headshots of various news commentators standing on the steps of Parliament House. The audio was muted, but a ticker scrolled beneath the image, headlining the breaking story.
Already, the news outlets had rounded up experts, and they were busy pontificating over this very unexpected turn of events.
Sullivan’s gaze fixed on the holoscreen, but then snapped back to Duncan when he spoke once more.
“It wasn’t Garza who announced the appointments, though. It was the parliamentary press secretary, correct?”
At Sullivan’s nod, Duncan drew in a breath. “Well, then. Let’s make certain of our sources before anything else. I suppose it’s remotely possible they could have erred in their content.”
Sullivan shot him a sardonic look. “You don’t believe that, and neither do I.”
Duncan’s mouth twisted in a slight grimace. “No, you’re right. But I’d rather believe that than think I’ve so completely misjudged the man. We’ve had numerous conversations. Not once did Garza indicate he’s anything but completely supportive of our need to maintain strong borders and protect the jump gates.”
“So what do you intend to do? Confront him?”
Duncan reared his head back, startled at Sullivan’s brash proposal. “Of course not. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask for confirmation.”
Sullivan nodded reluctantly, and then heaved a sigh. “I suppose I could do that.”
Duncan gave the AD a slight smile. “I would appreciate it.”
He stood there, waiting for t
he other man to take the hint that Duncan intended for him to do it now.
Sullivan startled, and then jerked a nod. With a murmur of apology, he left.
For the first time in a long while, Duncan Cutter voluntarily shut his door. Engaging an added layer of secured encryption that he rarely felt it necessary to invoke, he reached mentally for the file Harper had sent before Sullivan barged in. He skimmed it quickly once more—an easy thing to do, as the entire report was made up of only three lines.
Prime Minister Garza being held in Akkadian maximum-security prison. AD Sullivan suspected of collusion. Proceed with caution.
Duncan’s gaze landed thoughtfully on the door Sullivan had recently exited before he reached out to the analyst who had sent him the alert.
{Harper, I need you to sit on this information you just sent me,} he instructed without preamble, as the woman accepted the ping on her end. {Gather everything you can on it, but be sure it remains untraceable. I’ll set up a meeting with Valenti. I think we need Task Force Blue on this.}
The analyst’s voice sounded both determined and a bit anxious. {I thought you might say that. I’ve already erased all evidence of the report, and taken steps to have the agent’s handler reassigned. From here on out, everything will come directly to me.}
{Excellent. Good work.}
CELLMATES
Shar-Kali Correctional Facility
and Reeducation Center
Aksu Desert
The original Raphael Garza was dressed in prison coveralls, hands bound before him by magnetic cuffs he had no hope of breaking. The place where he was being held was both a prison and a research facility. Though he had a pretty good idea he was on Eridu, he had no real way of confirming it.
His latest round of testing and interrogation complete, Raphael was being marched back to his cell, down a starkly lit hallway buried deep inside a prison that, if he had to guess, was somewhere in Akkadian space. He was acutely aware of the two guards marching behind him, their booted feet echoing off the dirty ceramacrete floor, and the third, who held his upper arm in a bruising grip.
The guards were utterly unnecessary. The patch of skin behind his left ear was raw from the number of times that Akkadian shackles—their equivalent of a ziptie—had been applied since his capture. The subjugation nanopackage that made him both deaf and blind to network comms also controlled the nanofloss lattice reinforcing his musculoskeletal system. All they had to do to render him helpless was activate it.
The spot between his shoulder blades itched in reaction to the weapons trained on him, and he understood this was the real reason he had an escort: it was an intimidation play, pure and simple.
He suppressed the irrational urge to laugh at the absurdity of the situation, and the humor fled as quickly as it came.
How in the ever-loving stars will I be rescued if the Alliance doesn’t even realize I’m missing?
The one person the ziptie could not confound was the man inside his head. Though Raphael’s question had been rhetorical and not directed at anyone in particular, the man whose thoughts he shared responded.
Don’t give up. We can never give up. There has to be a way.
Garza 2.0’s mental tone was groggy, and Raphael realized his own thoughts must have dragged his other self from his sleep.
He suppressed a surge of jealousy at the thought of another man in his bed with his wife, and then extinguished it.
He wasn’t fast enough.
You know it’s not like that. I’ve told Jackie I needed to stay on at Parliament House for the next few weeks, to buy us some time.
They drew to a stop in front of the holding cell he’d called home since his arrival, but Raphael hardly noticed.
How did your keepers respond to that?
2.0 laughed bitterly. They reminded me that keeping my distance doesn’t make her or the girls any safer.
Raphael brought his teeth down on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from growling in rage. It wouldn’t help his mirror twin to add his own anguish to that which his other self already felt.
The door to his prison parted. He saw his cellmate look up, her movement arrested by the sound of the doors swishing open.
The two guards took up position on the other side of the hallway, their weapons trained on him, as the third guard made a production of working the device attached to his sleeve.
Garza felt a small mental pop of displacement, and sighed inaudibly in relief as the nano subjugation released its hold on him. It didn’t make much difference, since the cell itself was a Faraday cage, effectively sequestering all inside. But it sure felt far less constraining.
Not all that effective. It doesn’t block our connection.
That’s something I hope they never find out. Gotta admit, I’ll take the Faraday cage over a ziptie any day, he replied. Remember how Jackson used to describe it?
When he’d been active duty, one of the Marines under his command had likened it to the difference between sex with a condom versus going bare.
Inside his head, 2.0 chuckled. Yeah, I remember having to scour through the history records to learn what in the hell a condom was.
Raphael smiled at the memory. He’d been half amused, half shocked at the primitive method of birth control used by his ancestors.
You have to admit, it was an apt description, he replied.
That it was.
The guard’s eyes flickered over to the woman standing at the back of the cell before returning to him. With a wordless grunt, he stepped back and palmed the door shut.
Raphael felt his twin’s mind retreat back into sleep now that 2.0 knew he was back safely in his cell—though ‘safe’ was a relative term.
He looked up as his cellmate spoke.
“Well, Mister Prime Minister. You don’t look… how do you say it? Any the worse for wear?”
He lifted a brow in polite disbelief as he considered her.
The former minister of state security, the vaulted Rin Zhou Enlai herself, fallen from grace nearly a year and a half earlier when her off-the-books bid to decimate the intelligence community among the settled worlds in one masterful stroke fell short.
“You really expect me to believe you care what condition I’m in?” He favored her with a quizzical look.
Rin Zhou shrugged, then lifted a graceful hand and gestured about her. “If you haven’t noticed, we’ve fallen into similar circumstances. As far as why….” A second shrug accompanied the first. “Why not? There is little else here to entertain.”
A harsh laugh escaped him. “Entertain,” he repeated. “What an odd choice of words.”
“You appear to be physically unharmed by your interrogation,” Rin Zhou pressed, her head tilting in an oddly birdlike motion. “Unless the wounds they inflicted were internal? Yet you weren’t moving with discomfort, and I fail to see the purpose behind an injury, if not to create discomfort.”
The prime minister shook his head. “Our beliefs differ on that quite a bit, I would imagine. The Alliance’s position on torture and interrogation is clear. We don’t condone it. Ever. In any form,” he said flatly.
It was Rin Zhou’s turn to raise a brow. “So, you take the moral high ground? Your words are accusation. You find yourself better than us, judging Akkadia for its ways. I wonder, Mister Garza, if you had to endure the hardships my people have, if you would find yourself so comfortable on that moral high ground. We do what we need to do, what we must, in order to survive.”
Raphael dismissed her words with a tired wave of his hand. This was an old argument, though they’d only been cellmates for a little more than a week.
She abandoned the topic in favor of returning to her previous line of questioning. “What did they want this time?”
He gave her a hard look. “I repeat, why do you care?”
He stepped up to the nearest wall and began to run his hand over it, tracing its contours once more.
“They likely have surveillance on us, you know,” she said con
versationally. “If I were in charge, I certainly would have.”
“You were in charge; you should know.”
She inclined her head, accepting his truth.
“Is this your angle, then?” he murmured. “Are you trying to get back into their favor by chatting me up? Possibly getting me to reveal things to you in an unguarded moment that I would not to those who interrogate me?”
Shrewd eyes met his. “Would it work?”
He gave her a flat stare, and she chuckled softly, nodding.
“I thought as much. Very well, then. If you do not wish to speak of what you know, then I shall speak of what I know.”
This was new.
Garza pushed away from the wall and moved to the cot assigned to him. He sank down onto its threadbare blanket, resting his forearms on his knees before silently motioning for her to continue.
Rin Zhou looked up to one corner of the room and made an odd sign with her hand. Turning back to him, her gaze acquired an intensity it hadn’t had before. “I still have friends within the ranks, and they sneak me information from time to time. They have also allowed me access to a bit of equipment prisoners don’t ordinarily have access to.”
She held out her fisted hand, rotated it, and then uncurled her fingers. On her palm rested a small unit that Raphael instantly recognized.
“You have a jammer?”
Her fingers wrapped around it once more, and it disappeared somewhere into the robes she wore.
“They would kill me if they found it. In showing it to you, I have placed my life in your hands.”
Garza barked a short laugh. “Of what use is this to me?”
Rin Zhou gave him a pointed stare. “Doubtless, I am responsible for many deaths among your people. You could turn me in, see it as a sort of recompense… though, one life for many is not much of a balance.”
Chiral Justice: A Hard Science Fiction Technothriller (The Biogenesis War Book 3) Page 6
